Acer Aspire Timeline AS5810TZ-4274 15.6-Inch Laptop – 8+ Hours Battery Life

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5 Reviews

1. I purchased this laptop about a week ago. Spent 2 days making sure the battery was properly cycled (draining/charging). I must say, its an incredible machine. Not cheap in any sense of the word, other than price. I really am amazed at just how snappy and responsive it is considering the cpu speed. Some laptops just feel like toys,this one doesnt. I am getting 8 + hours of battery life out of it on power saver mode. Lots of crappy bloat-ware you must remove, but no big deal. The screen res is perfect out of the box. The touch-pad can be just a bit funny at times but again no big deal. I spent hours researching laptops befor i bought this one. I just cant say enough. Best $500 i ever spent:) OH, and its also very sleek and sexy.

2. It look great.
   It has best sound for laptop that I owned(10?)
   Great battery life.
   Same resolution as 720p TV so you can have dual monitor with same resolution.

   Cons:
   Not really acer’s fault, but vista is bloated and eat up processing.
   Norton is really junk too.
   Acer loads tons of games which cannot be unloaded with one command (probably to discourages business buyers from buying home laptop).
   Keyboard has nice feel and look, but it HUGE cavities which I know will be dust trap.
   Blinking wifi light near the bottom of screen.

   These things are minor and it is better than anything else out there for normal use.

3. First off, let me start by saying this computer is excellent and RCS Electronics (I believe was the company name) is a great storefront here on Amazon.

   My old Acer (which I loved) finally died of natural causes (the motherboard failed) in the middle of April which was a bad thing because it was just as I was getting toward the end of the semester all all my term papers were coming due. As such I couldn’t afford to be without a computer so I immediately started looking around for a suitable replacement. That is when I came across the Acer Timeline series here on Amazon and remembered seeing a commercial saying it had 8 hours of battery life. I decided on the 15.6in model, the 5810, because of two reasons, it was the only model to come with a number pad (which I didn’t really care about until I got it and its awesome)and it was the only model to come with a CD/DVD drive. I could not be happier.

   I’ve heard from several sources that the speakers are weak and touch buttons are not that sensitive and the webcame is blurry etc. THIS IS NOT TRUE! The people of whom put that in their reviews did not take the plastic coverings off. Make no mistake, if you didnt know they were there, you would never realize it. I read that someone had to take off a covering from something and knew to look for it. As far as I could tell there were three places you might not think to look for it: on the strip of plastic above the keyboard where the speakers are, on the webcam, and on the mouspad. Take these off and it will make a world of difference to the sound and sensitivity of the touch buttons. Allow me to reiterate:

   TAKE OFF THE PLASTIC ON THE WEBCAM, TOUCH BUTTONS, SPEAKERS, AND MOUSPAD OR THEY WILL NOT WORK AS WELL AS THEY COULD.

   Battery Life: As the advertisements say, it does indeed get 8 hours of battery if you keep in on its low power mode, This is made easy by two things: it detects when you unplug it and automatically sends it into power saving mode; there is a series of touch sensitive buttons above the number pad that includes a “battery button” meaning all you have to do is tap it and the computer will go into power saving mode. Tap it again, and it will go back into normal mode. I haven’t (as of the time I am writing this review) seen the battery at full performance yet, but I’ve been getting 6-8 hours according to the windows battery gauge. Even on “Balanced”, which if you are not familiar with Windows Vista is a power setting that is made to be used with a laptop that is plugged in, i can easily get 4-5 hours from it. The battery is a lithium-ion (Li-Ion) which as far as I understand is the latest in battery technology and comes in a 6 cell with the computer so the machine sits flat on a table or desk and doesn’t look stupid like an 8 or 12 cell does.

   Performance: I am not a gamer so this laptop is excellent. It’s processing power would undoubtedly be lacking for any type of games that came out after the original Starcraft so if you need a gaming computer, don’t get this one. However, it is more than equipped for any standard user’s everyday computing. As a student I use it ALOT for web browsing and word processing and it has absolutely no trouble doing either. I am able to be on Facebook without hassle and it plays videos from flash sites like Youtube just as smoothly as any other computer. I can have Itunes going while I’m browsing or working and it plays just fine. The 5810 also comes equipped with a webcam and I have no problems (other than the speed of the internet connection I am on) with Skype skipping or stuttering. The only thing I have found that max’s out the computer gauge I have in my sidebar is when I am creating a DVD which isn’t surprising given it takes quite a bit of muscle even on higher end computers as well. DVD’s play without skipping. As a side note, the computer wakes up awesomely fast from sleep. Literally within 10 seconds which is great since I use it for class.

   Monitor: I LOVE the screen on here. When at full brightness, it is crisp and clear and just an overall excellent display. Even on battery power when it dims, unless you are sitting in a bright room it is still pretty easy and clear to look at.

   Keyboard: Unfortunately given its power saving innovations, the keyboard is not backlit. But the keys are spaced such that it is easy to hit them without hitting the one next to it as well and they have a satisfying “clack” as you type. Having the number pad takes some getting used to but once you do, it is almost invisible. Speaking of the number pad, it is VERY useful to have. I never really noticed since I’d never had one on a laptop before but its great for using the computer’s calculator or even entering data like phone numbers or passwords.

   Mouse pad: The mousepad has nifty little button next to it that allows you to literally turn it off so you don’t bump it and send the mouse blasting across the screen and somehow managing to click on the “x” to cancel the program you are working in. I dont really use it because my fingers are long and bony enough that i can reach the keys while keeping my palms off the pad, but for someone not quite as fortunate, it is there to use. One of the cooler features about the pad is the fact is has the “multi gesture” capability. Its not NEARLY as good as Apple’s, but it gets the job done. It is supposed to have three things you can do: zoom in and out by spreading or drawing your fingers together much as you would on an Ipad or Ipod Touch, but its not quite as smooth on screen and can actually get a little annoying when you are browsing a website and suddenly a single word takes up the whole screen. The second is what is wrongly depicted in the pictures as how to scroll up and down pages. You do not move your fingers in a circular motion on the pad to scroll up and down. Instead it is just like most other laptops in that there is a dedicated strip of the pad on the right hand side that you just run your finger up and down. This action is MUCH smoother than the zooming and is actually very useful. Then there is my favorite and that is the “finger sliding” in which you put two fingers on one side of the pad and slide them over to the other. This is particularly useful when navigating a web browser like Firefox as it lets you go forward and back pages without having to click on the designated buttons at the top.

   Hardware: On the outside it has a very handsome looking gunmetal aluminum case so it feels sturdy and yet retains its light weight. On the sides it comes with 4 USB ports, a mic jack, a headphone jack, an HDMI port, and some other thing I don’t know what is. The 5810 comes with a CD/DVD drive which is always good and it can read and write media actually pretty fast. I dont know what the actual speeds are but in real practice it wrote a standard 4.7GB DVD in under 10 minutes. To me thats pretty fast. With mine I got the SU2700 processor which as far as I was able to tell was the lowest end of the processors that Acer uses for the Timeline series. As I said before, though, it is more than adequate at doing whatever I need it to. I got a 320gig HDD which is awesome because my previous laptop only had a 120 and that was getting full. It also comes with a webcam that works perfectly for talking to people (in my case a friend in Okinawa) and taking funny pictures of yourself with. Finally the computer is designed with like 6 heat vents so it NEVER gets hot. It got a little warm sitting on my bed while trying to encode a DVD, but when I picked it up and set it on my lap it was comfortably warm, not hot.

   All in all this is a great system. As I said, I am a student so the battery life is awesome. The computer only weighs in at like 4.7 pounds or something so it is light in my bag and easy to move around. If you are a student, I highly recommend this machine. It will do anything you need it to, including hook up to a projector.
   Five stars.

4. I bought this laptop mostly to browse the internet and watch videos on it. While this is definitely not a gaming machine, it did surprise me how incredibly thin it is compared to other laptops and another thing is that it doesn’t get hot at all no matter for how many hours you are running it. The battery life is OK for a 15.6 inch laptop. I haven’t completely discharged the battery yet. But it does give me about 4 hours of work time before I connect it to the charger. I don’t travel with this laptop (for this purpose I have an Acer netbook) So I don’t care much about advertised 8 hours of battery on power save mode although sometimes I do use this mode. I have upgraded it to windows 7 which works flawlessly in this machine. I am not a fan of Windows 7. But it runs better and smoother than Vista. So far I had only one problem with this laptop. Ever since I connected it to my Dlink router it would occasionally drop the connection especially when I was copying something from any other computer in my home. So I had to reestablish it manually. It was very annoying. I googled the problem but haven’t found any good solution. But eventually after playing with my router and trying out different wireless settings I solved the problem by changing the security mode from WPA to WEP. It’s less secure but at least it works now. Another things that I find strange but can live with, are: the keys are a little slippery, the caps lock doesn’t have a separate light indicator and an awkward location of the CDRom eject button which makes me worry that it may start to malfunction one day. The manufacturer has installed a lot of bloatware so I had to spend few hours uninstalling it, putting Windows 7 and reconfiguring it to my liking and after that I simply created a ghost backup image. Other than that it is a really nice classy looking laptop with enough power even to do some photoshop work. I just hope nothing happens with it so it will last me at least for 2 or more years. I recommend investing a little more money though and purchasing this model with windows 7 installed on it.

5. Computer looks beautiful. Everyone will envy you just by the sleekness. Battery life, sucks. Get 8-9-11 hrs for the first two weeks, after that if you’re getting 5 hrs, you are lucky. Everything else is lovely. Problem is I brought this for the long battery life. Wish I had gotten an HP for fast performance as the processor is extremely slow.