Acer Aspire V3-772G-9820

Didn't see a thread on this notebook, so I thought some peeps might find this interesting.

Acer | Aspire V3 | Aspire V3-772G-9820 | Overview

$999 CDN (Acer, NCIX, Costco, Memory Express)

Memory Express had the laptop for $1100 so after price beat the pre tax total for me was $973.

Windows 8 - 64-bit version - Intel® Core™ i7-4712MQ processor (2.3GHz/3.3GHz w/ Turbo Boost) - 8GB DDR3 memory - 1TB hard drive - 17.3" Full HD LED-backlit display (1920 x 1080) - NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 850M graphics with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM - Mobile Intel® HM86 Express chipset - DVD±RW DL - webcam - Wireless - Bluetooth® 4.0 - HDMI® - USB 3.0 - card reader - 6-cell battery - 1-year limited warranty. Color: Black

Typical Acer, solid no frills chassis filled with good stuff.

1080p TN panel is very good. A little grainy, but excellent brightness and contrast to my eye. Viewing angles are good too.

850m scores 4600+ in 3dmark11 out of the box. F1 2013 73fps on 1080p Ultra, Grid 2 42fps on 1080p Ultra.

Fan noise is low, making for nice quiet gaming. The exhaust gets hot, body the keyboard is comfortable even while running games.

Speakers are fine. Loud, not particularly hi-fi. I removed the Dolby software audio enhancements right away, that stuff is CPU cycle consuming garbage in my opinion.

As a Canadian, I get stuck with the multi lingual keyboard. I still don't like these, but this one is stiff with good key travel. The touchpad is large, but mediocre. I find that uninstalling the Synaptics software and using the generic windows driver results in better performance.

There is a lot of bloat, budget an hour to remove and apply updates. Typically poor out of the box Acer experience. When will Wild Tangent die?

The V3 isn't much smaller than my old Alienware M17x R4. But at 7 lbs or so, its lighter (cheaper build quality, more plastic, less metal). I remember not long ago the average 15" notebook was this weight, so not too bad.

If I was a gamer on a budget, or a school kid looking for a good DTR notebook, this is laptop would be perfect.

If you like pretty things, this is not for you. Likewise, if you want a laptop made of the best materials the V3 will disappoint you. But if either of those things were important to you I doubt you'd have read this far.

 

Yes indeed - that's a great value. What's more it seems like Acer finally admitted that Full HD resolution exists and that GDDR5 is actually better that GDDR3.
So far even on those rare models where FHD was present cards would still use GDDR3 VRAM.

I'm waiting to see a 15" notebook with similar specs and prioce-tag from them.

 

I'd love one of the new travel mates 15" notebooks with this same spec.

Not sure if I will keep this one. It's quite ugly.

 

I wouldn't call it ugly. It's pretty plain - to be really ugly it would have to have some sort of "debatable" styling but this one is pretty simple.

 

Perfect timing, I was just looking for someone to review this 9820 model, and specifically a comparison between the 9808 (seems to be GDDR5, i7 4712, less RAM? )

So, looking to people with some hands on with other similar spec 17"s... can you tell me what there is out there using better materials? I have checked out;

HP Envys (way too much case flex around the keyboard)
Toshiba P70 (shocking flex around screen bezel, high return rate according to my futureshop contact)
Dell 7000 series (poor keyboard, not 1080, dual core i7 4500)
Lenovo Z710 (keyboard flex, no extra HDD or mSATA)

Looking for i7, 8GB+, 1TB, 1080p, quality keyboard and chassis, expansion (2 x SATA + mSATA) has so far led me to this Acer, or the Asus ROG.

 

thx for the review. I have been looking for thr reviews of the new v3 for a while already. Is the new v3 pretty much the same as the old one, except for the cpu and gpu? Can i still upgrade the rams to 32GB? and is the msata slot, and the space for extra hdd still present in the new v3? thx~

 

Thanks Lewdvig. A spot on review. I've had this laptop for about a month now.

I bought this for general use, not specifically for gaming, media or work, just a bit of everything. Honestly, I think for $989 CDN (Costco) it's was a pretty good deal.

As you might have guessed, I'm not the most savvy PC guy. I just wanted to say I'm pretty happy so far, it's easily handled everything I can throw at it. Hope that helps anyone like me looking to buy one!

 

I wonder if you have any opinion about the benefit of saving power, by removing DVD drive from the laptop, or not to have SATA drive -just SSD only?

 

Billybob852, did you come to a conclusion about which was the better choice between the 9820 and the 9808?.

They are the same price and, as far as I can tell, they're identical apart from these differences:

9820: Processor: i7-4712MQ quad core: RAM: 8 gb
9808: Processor: i7-4702MQ quad core: RAM: 12 gb

If the processors were the same, I'd go for more RAM. But, I don't know enough about processors to know if that would be a bad decision.

Any help from anyone would be very much appreciated.

 

Take the one with most RAM. The CPU difference is almost none existing.

Not to mention the Acer V3 772G throttles to 800MHz CPU speed when heavily loaded anyway so max CPU speed doesn't matter when you load it heavily.. I had one and returned it due to this and some other hardware issue causing bluescreen (most likely defective HDD or memory).

Beside this it is silent and great value for the money due to low price.

 

Apologies if this appears twice. I already responded but I can't find my response.

Thanks for your input, OC-Freak. I think I'll take your advice.
I'm now wondering about the keyboard. Lewdvig said that he was stuck with the Canadian bi-lingual keyboard. I'm in Canada too, so I might also be stuck with it; however, I will ask for the US version when I place my order and keep my fingers crossed.
I would like to know, though, what the differences between the two keyboards are on this laptop. I saw another manufacturer's laptops and saw that the ENTER keys were different - long and wide on the US version; tall and thin on the Canadian version. I'm a touch typist and would hate it if I had to put up with a tall and thin enter key.

 

Hi - just spotted this laptop and am considering it. Price is good, specs are pretty good - wanted to see if anyones opinions have changed on this machine since this first post in June. Also I have an SSD that I will take from my old system to this. The old SSD has Windows 7 on it. The SSD is the Samsung EVO 256gb -- does anyone forsee any issues with doing a straight swap?