Aspire AS7741g-3647

Hello,

I haven't seen any threads on this model. Is it new? I just ordered it from Amazon today. It will arrive tomorrow, but I was wondering if any owners can give me their opinion. It cost me $787 and I think it was a great deal. Here is the link to Amazon's page,

Acer Aspire AS7741G-3647 17.3-Inch Notebook: Electronics

My 330M Sager laptop was able to run Aion on highest settings and 1920 x 1080 resolution (although the fps dropped to 20~ some times) so I have no doubt this Radeon 5650 will do a lot better at 1600 x 900. Same CPU, however. I hear Acer laptops can overclock really well. I suppose it depends on the model. If there are any owners, please comment on the build quality, color, screen, keyboard, heat, and portability. I will give my own opinion, soon!

Thanks for reading.

 

looking forward to the review... may be getting this model soon

 

This laptop runs Aion on native resolution and highest settings very well! I'm really impressed with the ATI 5650. It performs a lot better than my previous GeForce 330M. The CPU is the same.

The laptop is big but very thin and light. I carried it across the far-end of my campus and I had no problems. I am a thin person.
The build quality is above decent. There is slight flex but only if I am pushing hard. The keyboard barely flexes anywhere. I'm really impressed!
The speakers are loud. They are located above the keyboard. Sound quality is above average. I listen to mostly pop ballad.
The ALPS touch pad is good. The surface is smooth (good~ I don't understand why so many use textured pads nowadays) and medium-sized. The touch keys are sturdy but a little loud. EDIT: Upon further use, I hate the touchpad. The pointer can not move smoothly with sensitive pressure.
Keyboard is full-sized and flat. Some people like it, others really hate it! I like it personally but it will take some time to get used to it. The keys feel strong, not spongy.
The screen is beautiful and bright. A lot better than my previous ASUS laptops but they share the same horrible viewing angles. Good thing it can tilt back very far. ewglossybezel! The screen is very glossy so be aware of that.
The lid color is a dark grey and matte textured. Not light like it looks on the NewEgg gallery. I thought it was black at first. The interior is a gun metal color with a glossy black outline. It is a very good looking laptop! (I think so, anyway)
Temperatures are great. Both cores hover between 38-41 on idle. The GPU around 40~
Under load, it goes up to 69 on both cores. I haven't checked the GPU yet. Keep in mind my room is always cold and I use a notebook lift.

Are there any questions?

 

You pretty much alleviated any fears I had. I was looking for a budget gaming rig and was trying not to break the bank. My main fear was how hot it ran as my last acer ran very hot. Glad to hear with proper cooling it should be fine. Thanks so much for taking the time to write back!

 

you are welcome!
by the way, the GPU peaked at 59 and both CPU cores at 71 after playing Aion for one hour. I am playing in a cafe. The temperature is cool, not cold, and I did not use my laptop stand. I'm really happy with the cooling system. I ordered Left 4 Dead 2 today and it will arrive tomorrow. I will let everyone know how that plays.

 

My Dell died finally so I'm looking at this Acer as well as some Asus and HP models. Keep up the info on it. Wish the KB was backlit, but rest of specs look great.

 

Thanks a lot for the review. Ever since the 4820 sold out everywhere, I was looking at this one as my alternate but couldnt find any reviews for it. Just picked it up from Amazon and it should be shipped to my house tomorrow! Cant wait to try it out.

 

Hi everyone. My Left 4 Dead 2 copy arrived today. I was able to play it well on maximum settings but the fps dropped to the 20's during heavy action. Lowering the resolution to 1280x720 helped a lot. Highest graphic settings and 4x AA and 8x AS, by the way.
My room temperature is cold and I am using a notebook lift (not cooler). The GPU maxed at 59 degrees after playing The Parish campaign one time. Both cores maxed at 68 degrees. I'm not sure if the cooling is really really good or my room is just too damn cold. Anyways, I plan to overclock this 5650 a lot. Ask me any questions if you have them.

 

Just ordered it and it should be here Thursday. Thanks so much for the input. I'll contribute what I can to the thread when its in my hands

 

Received it earlier today and man is this thing awesome. Build is really good. Installed Starcraft 2 and I get pretty good framerates on medium settings but I lowered it to low/medium settings on 1600x900 and find that works best for me. Gonna install all my Steam games later tonight. So far I'm really satisfied with my purchase.

 

Mine is due on Tuesday the 21st!

Any way to do a clean install of Windows with the stuff we have to burn to disk?

After realizing I don't need a $1500 plus gaming monster, and hearing my wife express her approval of the TimelineX 5820 I got for her, I took another look at this. Will admit that Hamster's comments helped me pull the trigger.

So far, I'm just planning to do a little video stuff, a few older games I never played (Halo, Far Cry, etc), and lots of photo editing--in addition to all the MS Office stuff.

Very happy to hear about the build quality. Wonder why a machine with these specs shows available since October of last year on Amazon...The i5-450m was not launched until "Q2'10," according to ark.intel.com. Amazon does get dates wrong, and, in fact, the same model without the GPU shows available only since June of this year.

I decided that for the price, I could live with 3 USB ports (my wife's timelineX has 4).

Ok, thanks, Hamster, for starting this thead.

 

I hope you guys enjoy your new laptop.

I overclocked to 590 / 880 (10 and 20mhz intervals) and the temperature remains the same under load. Default clocks are 550 / 800. It is below 59 degrees. Don't forget my room is really cold and I use a notebook lift (not a cooler). It's doing well so far! I will gradually take it to 630 / 960. I will post the results.

EDIT: 610 / 920 now. I can see improvement in Aion. Temperature peaked at 57 degrees. Very impressed...
EDIT: 650 / 963 now. Still under 59 degrees.
EDIT: 700 / 1020 now. Temperature peaked at 62 degrees after playing L4D2 for one hour at maximum resolution.

 

Wow really impressed with the oc results... can't wait till I come back home thurs and get to toy around with this thing

 

After taking time to think about things...(Please read reply to Hamster below).

 

You got a disk with it? I got nothing! :-<

 

I burned the recovery and driver disks (five total), then found instructions here on notebookreview for the clean install using only two disks total!

How do you do the temperature check?

Of course the big bottleneck is the HDD.

 

Should have taken my time. Sorry! Read posting of 9/26/2010.

 

The microphone is total kaka. Slurred and synthesized is how we sound. I can compare it to my wife's Aspire TimelineX and hear a huge difference.

 

Webcam. (Sorry for trickling out of these comments, but I'm too aggravated to put together a complete review.)

Webcam is as lousy as they get. Could not really be more blurry or grainy at any rez I pick.

I'm done with griping; I'm just sending it back, come what may with my Office and Norton licenses.

 

I'm also frustrated with the touchpad. Absolute garbage pad. I haven't tried the mic or the web cam but I trust they aren't too good either. The wireless unit is average. I get 4 bars usually but sometimes dips to 2 bars. I live on the ninth floor of my dorm tower.
The build quality, keyboard, CPU, GPU, and screen (minus the abysmal viewing angles) are what's keeping me from selling this notebook.

 

Hamster, I'm leaning towards liking the notebook now.

I took it out to a crowded library and compared the wireless performance with a few other laptops---a little better than average. In the house, this works very well.

I'm rethinking replacing the wireless. If it ain't broke...

The mic is the worst of the worst. I tried all of the settings to improve it even a little, but the background hiss is atrocious. BUT, when I search this issue, I see that more expensive laptops are using the same lousy Realtek mic. So what can you do? I ordered a cheap non-USB headset.

As for the webcam, yuck. But my wife's "higher end" TimelineX 5820T, which has a great mic by the way, apparently has the exact same darn webcam.

The battery life is just under 3 hours for me, and that's with lots of wireless, file transfers, video, etc. Good news: Acer told me an extra battery costs only $44 +$10 s&h.

I disabled all of the swipe and pinch gestures, and now the touchpad is as good as it was on my 2003 Asus! Meaning, it is barebones, but it works smoothly and accurately.

I don't have time to find the perfect laptop, especially if it means paying more and finding some of the same issues.

This works great with HDMI, has a beautiful screen of its own, and seems built quite well.

So, I've gone from stoked to bummed to content with this. For now.

In the future, I'll live with a laptop for a week before gushing or bashing.

 

1. When I turn off the screen backlight by pressing Fn + F6, the backlight goes off but in few minutes it goes back on by itself. It's very irritating for e.g. when I go to sleep and turn off the screen and suddenly it goes back on.

2. When I put the computer in to Stand-by mode, in few minutes it goes back on.

What can I do to prevent these?

3. HDMI and VGA connectors are so close to each other that it's impossible to use both of these connectors at the same time. I'd like to attach two external monitors to laptop but I don't think there's much to do when the designing of the connectors layout is this lousy. VGA cable without the (useless) achoring screws would fit but I haven't found a VGA cable without the achoring screws.

 

Thank you Cary_Ader! I disabled multi-gestures & gestures in my touch pad settings and it works really great now.
I am definitely replacing the wireless card with the Intel 6200-N. I couldn't get any signal in my class room. The moment I stepped out, all signals were at 5 bars. Strange!
The battery life is close to 3 hours for me on power saver mode. This is with music playing and running Codeblocks.

Sorry, kakka9, I'm not sure how to help you. It never happens to me.

 

IKilledYourHamster said: "I am definitely replacing the wireless card with the Intel 6200-N. I couldn't get any signal in my class room. The moment I stepped out, all signals were at 5 bars. Strange!"


I have so far only tried the wireless at my local library and all over my house. Works well.

As for the mic...When I use Windows Sound Recorder, even with a new headset mic, I get this horrible hissing if I set the Real Tek recording quality above DVD, like to Studio Quality , 96000 Hz. Is it the Real Tek ciruitry or Windows Sound Recorder? I'm guessing the Real Tek.

This sucks, because I thought a headset mic would fix the problem.

Back on the fence.

BTW, anybody else tried the Webcam? Just use the Crystal Eye app on the Start Menu to see. Ugh. Then again, maybe I don't want people seeing me in hi-def!

 

Low/medium graphic settings on SC2?!

I play SC2 on high with the 5650 at stock clocks at 1920x1200 res... around 40 fps... drops to 30fps in big battles.

 

Aggravating that Acer put such a lousy sound "card" in this. (I know it is integrated, just a couple of tiny chips on the mainboard.) The sound on a nearly $800 machine should be good enough to use with Skype type apps and online games.

The webcam should be decent enough to have a vid conference with your wife and kids. Not looking for high def, just something bright and clear enough to not make us look like blurry zombies.

Communication has become a big part of what we do with notebooks now. Acer went with parts that are pathetically cheap, that barely qualify as sound chips and webcam. Obviously the engineers were told to come in under a certain price.

So they gave this a decent build, great screen, good Core i5 and a capable ATI GPU, but skimped on the internals.

They saved, what, another two or three bucks per unit using ALPS instead of Synaptics touchpads? Pennies on the cheapest RealTek rather than what they used in their TimelineX series? A few more pennies on the wireless card?

Very hard to buy a notebook these days. Easy to make the mistake of thinking that the basic components are going to match the quality of the sexy features like the CPU and GPU. Not the case, and in the cyberscape of online buying, how do we know? Few reviewers bother to mention the placement of the USB and other ports. Fewer mention anything about the sound or the webcam, so laptop makers think they can get away with using complete junk.

Thank goodness for the online stores that allow easy returns. Have you ever tried to really test drive a laptop in a big box store? Or get an answer to what components are used?

It's a jungle out there.

 

I returned the 7741G today. We were only together for a week, but we went through a lot together.

The laptop I am buying to replace it comes from another company that begins with "A."

That said, my wife is still pleased with her TimelineX.

 

Did you get charged a 15% restock fee?
Anyway, I hope you find a better laptop. I plan on returning mine but the screen is so good. I wonder if I will ever get this lucky again with a screen. I've always gotten dead pixels, dim lighting, bright pixels, or a grainy wash..

By the way, I'm sorry I convinced you to buy this notebook!

 

You are right about the screen. And I thought the keyboard was very good too. But as we are pretty heavy users of vid chat, the bad sound (from the built-in mic or a headset) made this a defective unit for me.

Plus, ordering an extra battery for my wife's TimelineX took close to 20 emails to Acer customer service. We'll see if it ever comes, and how much they actually charge my card.

For the $$$, Acer did give a great screen and serviceable GPU. But as the chasis is the same as the sub $500 unit at W-M (5741z), I didn't feel comfortable with the long term quality, especially considering how they used the cheapest components for wireless, webcam, mic, and touchpad in a unit costing closer to $800.

By the way, hamster, did you figure out what the little empty compartment underneath is for? The one to the right when you lift off the access panel?

Good luck with your machine! Enjoy! Frag some cyber monsters!

PS Just a note about webcams: at BB, they DISABLE the webcam on nearly all of their display units. Couldn't tell me why. But they do let you go into Device Manager and see the brand and other info that might be there.

 

I am not sure. I was curious myself.
I sent it in a week and half ago and Amazon gave me a full refund for some reason... Usually, they take off 15%
Anyway, my new laptop is on its way. Take a look at the Sager NP5135, Cary_Ader. I owned the NP5125 before and it was incredible minus the screen problem but I am just unlucky.

 

does any of you know if the 7741G accepts 12.5mm thick hard drive? I'm planing to upgrade and use this lap as a desktop replacement and use a 1TB hdd inside.

 

Hey guys. I was thinking about buying this laptop, but now, since the both of you have returned it, I'm getting cold feet.

Can't say that I will use mic of webcam that much, but I'm still a little worried, I want it to last atleast 3 years.

Another alternative is Acer Aspire TimelineX 5820TG with the same specs, except the screen has a lower resolution, but it's also 300$ more expensive.

What do you think?