Aspire V7-482PG-9884

Can Americans buy (and ship) from Newegg.ca or other Canadian laptop sites? Would customs be an issue? How would taxes work?

Also the Acer shop site is down as of now (11pm EST 8/1).

 

You can buy the Canadian version from NCIX.com. Search using the model number: V7-482PG-6662

 

Very close to buying this, wondering if anyone considered the n550jv as an alternative? I know its bigger but doesnt seem much heavier from the specs. Also price is a bit less

 

@XFlameWithin

Thanks for that info. Currently shows Backorder and can't buy, but I'll keep checking.

Also weird that retailer sites don't mention the presence of the GT 750M for the -6662.

For others looking into these laptops: the P/PG suffix (i.e. 582P vs. 582 PG) seems to denote the lack or presence of a dedicated GPU.
At least for the 15.6" V7-582P/PG, a dedicated GPU also reduces advertised battery life by 1hr (7.5hr --> 6.5hr), and increases the weight by 0.2kg (~half lb.).

 

I just googled that model number and both the Best Buy and Newegg CA online stores mention the 750m in the specifications.

 

ok so I unboxed this thing and I have a few initial reactions:

One: This thing is amazing. Very good looking. As well built as anything out there. Amazing specs for an amazing price, and very light. Honestly this is the computer I have been waiting years for. The screen is amazingly bright and the viewing angles are crazy good. The materials are fantastic. The speakers are unlike ANYTHING I have seen in a laptop of this size. I had a DV6 with beats and this thing blows that out of the water. It gets insanely loud with the music. Like I am floored by it. It's relatively fast to boot but does take 10-15 seconds or so. Once I put my 256gb msata ssd in and move the OS that should be moot. touchscreen works really well. honestly acer should be marketing the out of this thing. it literally should be THE premium notebook to own.

A couple obvious cons: The trackpad blows. Its made of this metallic-like material and does not track well. Honestly though, trackpads are just those things you have to get use to... so I don't think it will be an issue in a few weeks. Scrolling with two fingers is backwards and apparently not fixable so I have to get an updated driver or something. There was a ton of Acer bloatware, so that took a while to get rid of. Keyboard is really shallow, but theres just no way to get a deeper keyboard w/o sacrificing everything that makes this laptop great. I'm not having much trouble typing. It stays reallllly cool when just using it to use it. Haven't done any gaming but the concerns of heating seem unwarranted (at least this early on). In fact, the fans are CRAZY powerful. When I first started it, it literally sounded like there was a hurricane or something happening in my apartment. I was like "how could I ever use this in public or a classroom if it basically is screaming..." But that issue stopped basically right after the first start up/initial config. I haven't heard the fans since...

Honestly this laptop is perfect. Once I get the 256gb ssd in there along with the 1TB drive, I'll have the perfect computer. I could not be happier. If anybody wants pics or anything, or wants updates on how it handles certain games (Civ 5, BF3, Skyrim), let me know and I'll try to have reports back within the next few weeks.

 

Hello egmont,
I would like to take you up on your offer to get more information about the Acer Aspire V7-482PG-9884 with regards to some pictures, as well as gaming performance with temperatures.
-As for the picture request, I would greatly appreciate it of you could take a picture from each four sides as well as the bottom (I want to see what ventilation this laptop has)
-As for the gaming request, I would like to know what the frame rates are like for any three of the following games on medium settings:
Crysis 3, Dirt 3, Skyrim, Planetside 2, Battlefield 3, Starcraft 2.
-Finally, as for the temperature request, I would like you to run a program in the background after you play an intensive game such as Crysis 3 for over 1 hour and say what the average and max temperatures were, as well as saying whether or not you saw any throttling in the game.

Thanks in advance

PS: What type of material is the screen (glass?) and what type of material is the palm rest + keyboard area (hopefully aluminum)?

 

Everything is plastic. High quality screen. Very sturdy screen (as sturdy as a plastic lid based screen can be)

going to do a full review eventually. gunna make it all purty, but just since you guys are so curious:

super rough battery life test. Balanced setting with max brightness and keyboard light on torrenting, watching HD videos on youtube and having 8ish tabs open on chrome The laptop lastest 4.5 hours. Not great, (not what i wanted) but it will do. I assume on minimum brightness and less torrenting you can get 5-6 hours.

gaming gets super hot. Ridiculously hot at the top. IDK if it throttles (how do you look that up?) but it very hot while gaming. completely fine and cool when not gaming.

I have battlefield 3, chivalry, and red orchestra 2. I will test them all and give you FPS (which program should i use to capture fps?)

This rating will change but just for a rough idea. I give this laptop a 7/10.
Bad battery life, very hot while gaming, build quality and dumb acer bullsh*t (keyboard light turns off if keyboard isnt touched after a minute and there is no way to change it, no way to force Fn key in bios, bloatware, machine makes a sound when power is plugged in, no way to turn it off, power button on the side, no caps lock indicator), terrible trackpad.

pros: pros are just basically internal hardware is top notch. Great: ram, harddrive, screen, speakers, dimensions, ports, graphics card, processor)

It's hard to be nice to this machine coming from a 14" ultrabook (HP Envy 4) which feels faster (ssd vs hdd, understandable) has better build quality, batterylife, keyboard, and trackpad. All it is missing is graphics card and good screen. IDK if this upgrade was worth 1300 just so i can game on my laptop now.

 

I have not done a real battery test, I guess I never will, I just do not have time to let it sit for hours, and pay attenton to how much time has elapsed. But from what I have seen today, I had the screen at 100 brightness, was downloading movies through cinema now, was using the wifi, watching youtube vids with headphnes on. And it was at 25% after 3.5 hours. Not great, but the HDD was spinning no-stop that whole time. And I like a bright screen. Also the laptop was in Power Saver mode, I use Power Saver 100%, unless I am gaming, then I use High Performance. I am sure that if you really needed the laptop to last, it could go for 6 hours just using the net, and with the screen at half brightness. I used to care a lot about battery life, but I am not in college anymore, and outlets are always available within 3 hours.

But I love this laptop, if you come to this party, come for the screen, there is no better screen at 14 inches. 13 inches are too small, 15.6 too big, this is the best option at 14 inches.

 

Today I played Civ 5, for about 3 hours. I play at 1920X1080, most settings on high, but water and shadow detail on low, The water is just distracting to me, as are the shadows. Vsync off, because I do not really understand what it does. High detail texture on. The game played perfectly. The real test was for temps though. Highest temp recorded was 85C, game seemed to play at 77-78C on average. This to me is very good. My last two laptops with Intel HD3000 and Intel HD4000 maxed out at 85C also. Temps normally are around 50C.

Now the laptop does get very hot when gaming, but my GF mac hits 90C and the thing will burn you. From what I can see this laptop works as it is supposed to. The heat is at the back of the unit, the fans are working, in a laptop this small what else can you expect. If you look closely at the pics on this forum of this laptop. You will see that one cooling pipe runs between the two fans, so I would expect heat, from the left side all the way across to the right side of the laptop. I do not play games with the computer on my lap, I play on a desk or table. So the heat never touches me, this laptop works as it should.

 

Wow I have too many posts in a row, one issue, I cannot get Civ 5 to play at 1600X900 in fullscreen, anyone know what I should do? Sims 3 scales to any res full screen automatically. I have played Sims 3 at 1366X768, 1600X900, and 1920X1080. I like to play at 1600X900, I do not need to game at 1080, I would rather play at 900, and tax the system less, and have better FPS, and push the setting to max.

 

Any of you guys have access to a colorimeter to generate an ICC profile? Not that the colors on this screen are anything but gorgeous, but it'd be nice to have.

 

So I know there were some requests for pics and gaming updates, but in the interests of my own time I'll just provide the breakdowns...

First, there are no intake/outflow ports on the side. All of the intake for the airflow are on the bottom, all towards the back half, with most in the middle and 2 in the corners. The two outflow ports are in the back. This does a reasonable job of keeping the laptop cool in normal situations (the battery is under the trackpad, so no need to cool there), but under gaming situations the keyboard is surely getting warm, though not untouchable.

Speaking of gaming, I've only run the new bioshock so far: ran it at 1080p on "high" and had no visual issues. ran really well. I was surprised. Expected I would have to drop to 900 or 768 but that was not the case. only issue was the intermittent heat under the keyboard (wasd keys) and the fact that the fan would whirl up pretty high every couple of minutes to expel heat build ups. the latter problem was solved by simply turning up the volume or playing with headphones (did i mention this thing has the speakers you would find in a premium car? so that wont be an issue). all in all gaming was a delight, aside from the shallow key issue... ie. dont expect to play counterstrike with this thing if your using the keyboard. generally for keyboard intensive games, a usb controller might be a better idea.

Other than that, let me update you guys on the Msata SSD situation: this thing is fast as ****. though i almost killed my computer in making it work (i still have no idea how i eventually got it to work), it is a great update if you know how to do it. VERY fast.

 

For those of us who plan to do the same thing, could you sketch out what you ended up having to do? Did you need to mod the BIOS, for instance, to get at the advanced settings?

 

I want to apply thermal paste to lower the temperature...is it easy to take the bottom cover off to access the cpu/gpu?

 

i wouldnt recommend doing what i did. my system was a giant paperweight by the end of this, and i dont think i ever really disabled express cache properly. i simply put the 256 in, cleared off the 256, shrunk down the c drive appropriately, and then copied all the partitions from the HDD to the SDD. past that it turned into a ****show. though somewhere in there i changed the boot order via the bios (f2 at boot). theres more to this all though and i dont recommend you go into this without backing up your main disk and bios appropriately.

 

meant to cover this earlier. the laptop bottom is secured by 17 screws. once you get them off the bottom comes off pretty easily (though it still "clicks in" at a few points, so constant removal of the lid will probably wear on the plastic pretty quickly). i've taken it off 3 times already, and the laptop is a lot better laid out then my HPs and sonys that ive had in the past, which sometimes involved taking several layers off in order to access certain components.

i didn't remove the heatsink or anything like that though so i cant speak to that, but the components that i have removed are all pretty accessible and have been easy to take out. fun fact: the laptop wont start off battery if the bottom is not completely screwed on... fun safety feature. also, for some reason when i changed from the HDD to the msata SSD, the battery refused to be recognized, meaning i had to go into the laptop and manually unattach and reattach the battery, which was a b****.

 

Stop using **** instead of curse words. It's pointless since everyone knows what should be substituted for them and it's also not allowed by forum rules. Phrasing sentences without words like this shouldn't be too hard.

 

OK, I just installed my 256gb mSATA SSD. Things couldn't have gone any easier. I think the key must have been not copying any partitions over and not doing any serious setup until I was able to install the SSD.
Here's what I did:


1) Uninstalled ExpressCache, just to be sure, although I don't think it would actually matter.
2) Made recovery media via the Acer Recovery Management program--keep in mind that you'll need a USB drive that's larger than 16 gigs because the program checks formatted capacity. You'll also need to put the pc into High Performance power mode so the USB suspend doesn't kick in and ruin the process.
3) I also made a second programs and drivers USB, as it gives you the option to do, but it turned out to be entirely unnecessary.
4) Opened the case (there are lots of screws but luckily they're all the same).
5) Removed the HDD by disconnecting the SATA cable and laying the drive aside--it's not screwed in or anything.
6) Unscrewed the single screw holding on the mSATA cache (on the opposite side from the HDD), removed the 24gb SSD, replaced it with 256gb SSD.
7) Replaced the bottom without screwing anything in.
8) Booted from my recovery drive--upon starting up the system gives you an error and takes you to boot manager, just pick the only option you have.
9) Chose "Reset my PC" and waited until it was done. It will restart automatically, but in my case it was just doing a boot loop, so I had to do a hard shut off (hold down the power button) and restart manually that way.
10) Messed around with the windows install--removing bloatware, updates, etc. (I had approximately 180 gigs of free space on my SSD--this includes both a 30gb Win8 install and a 20gb recovery partition out of 231 formatted capacity.).
11) Shut down, replaced the HDD, screwed the back on, restarted into BIOS mode.
12) In the boot section of the BIOS, moved the HDD (the WDxxxx drive) all the way to the bottom.
13) Let it restart, then simply clicked "Format" on the old Acer drive and gave it a new label.

Voila! I now have an SSD plus an HDD for storage. Obviously, you can use this same method if you want to give up the HDD entirely.

Does anyone know if it's possible to keep the Acer recovery partition on the HDD (the non-booting drive) only? (The "Format" only formats the main partition on the HDD.) Since SSD space is at such a premium, I'd like to be able to free that up, but I don't want to lose the Alt+F10 recovery. Ideas?

 

Wow thanks a lot antisthenes. I've never replaced hard drives before so I'm a bit worried about pulling the wrong thing in steps 4-7...

 

The cache has "24GB" printed on it pretty clearly, the HDD says "WD Blue." The connectors aren't interchangeable.

 

Thanks for the walkthourgh. I assumed that putting in an msata ssd would be as simple as you explained. I mean it just made sense. But it is nice to have someone else do it before me, now I know when I get my larger msata drive I will be able to install it no problem.

Not sure about the recovery portion on the original hdd, I assume since I have 2 usb sticks with the recovery drive, and drivers, the recovery portion is no longer necessary.

 

To clarify--I only ended up needing the one recovery USB, not the other one you can make in the options. I'm a little reluctant to keep it as a recovery drive, though, since it's a fancy 64 gig USB3 drive and the recovery media process is FAT-only, which means I can only use 32 gigs of the drive. It sucks, but I think the best way to do it is to get a $20 32gb USB online for recovery purposes.

 

again canadians get boned. the canadian version is so awful. sighhhh where do i get an american one.

 

My V7 came in today and I just spent couple minutes tinkering with it.

I have to say, it is a really pretty machine but so far I'm getting a lot of problem with lag and basic multi tasking. I'm thinking it's possible that it just has a lot of bloatware on it so I'm trying to uninstall most of it.

Anyone know the best way to get rid of the bloatware most cleanly?

 

Do not worry, the first day I got mine, it seemed slow and laggy also, windows 8 needs to update a bunch, and it updates automatically, restart it every once in awhile, not shut down and start, you have to use restart to get the updates to take in windows 8. And there was a bunch of software I did not need, uninstall from the control panel what you do not need. Then go into the metro menu, look at all of your apps, and some must be uninstalled from that menu.

After my first day this laptop has been great, it starts up and shuts down so quick. Also I disabled fast start, which is enabled by default on Windows 8, I saw no difference in shut down or start up speeds.
At this point I only want a ~250GB msata drive, so I have no moving parts under normal use.

 

That exactly what I did, I had an 8gb usb 2.0, and a 16gb usb 3.0 for everyday use, put the drivers on the 8gb. And then bought a 32GB USB 3.0 just to keep as a recovery drive, they are only 20 bucks. I use I use Lexar USB drives, they are chaep in price, and 3.0.

 

has anybody been able to update to 8.1?

 

Anyone know where I can get one of these in the UK? In a decision between the v7 with the 750 nvidia graphics card or the Samsung ativ book 8 with the 8870m

Cheers

 

After uninstalling a lot of the stuff it seems to be slightly better. But I'm having a weird, but serious, problem where the resolution of the screen is really off. Right clicking on desktop and clicking screen resolution confirms that it is running at full 1080 but the icons and other stuff definitely are lower resolution. Stuff on the screen looks lower resolution than my 1366 resolution on my old laptop. The funny thing is it is only the big stuff. The bottom task bar row looks like 1080 and the windows 8 tile start menu looks fantastic.

Help anyone?

 

if you are looking to game go with 750 + intel cpu.

 

Take a look at the Windows display scaling settings (under Control Panel -> Display). It's much better at 125 than at 150, but scaling on Win8 is a mess no matter how you do it (8.1 is supposed to fix that).

 

That actually made it a lot better. Not perfect, but good until 8.1 comes out. Which is when, actually?

 

Get scared. I'm currently on page 13 of my review of the Aspire V7. I still have about 4 pages to go. I'll finish in the next 2 days and find a way to post it. At least half the pages are pictures though lol. I finally got my ssd working and now i get to the start screen in 10 seconds. Maybe I should send my excessively long review to anandtech.com and try to get a job there (this review is much less technical than anandtech)
Also, ive tried running windows 8.1 on this laptop, it works fine. I don't really know about the scaling though because i turned scaling down to 100% on both windows 8 and 8.1. I actually like windows 8.1 less than 8 (they take out search features in 8.1)

 

You have done a great job to the community! Thanks! Once I read your review I think I am gonna buy this baby. In my country the 15 inch version comes with 750m. So, what is your opinion? should I buy the 14 inch or the 15 inch V7?

 

So I do not know if it is a factor of resolution, of the games themselves. As I had stated before, playing Civ 5 at 1080 with medium to high setting got the temps up to 85C, averaging in the high 70's. Played Sims 3 last night for about 3 hours. Screen at 1600X900, settings at medium to high, temp maxed out at 81C, averaged in the high 60's. So I on average Sims 3 runs 10C less than Civ 5. So is it because of the screen resolution, or the games? I do not know. I wish someone could post a how-to, to make Civ 5 run fullscreen at 1600X900. Because as I have said, it runs in the middle of the screen. Sims 3 changes resolution and goes full screen with no problems, Civ 5, not so. If anyone knows what to do let us know. And using the Intel Control Panel to match display scaling, does not work, as I can tell, maybe I am not clicking things at the right time.

I was able to get Civ 5 to play at 1600X900 by changing the screen res of the laptop before loading the game, and then running the game in windowed mode, but I do not like the window, I want full screen.

 

If you wanna reduce the temp, just use nvidia inspector and limit the fps to 60 or even 50. But if you wanna more fps then I don't know how. Maybe you can go to the registry and set the resolution yourself? But this method will only help to reduce the GPU temp but since the GPU and the CPU shares the heatsink, I think it will benefit both of them.

Here is one of the method to change the resolution. Answer posted by AeEsBii.
http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?105517-Civ-V-computer-screen-problems

 

Hello, I'm split between buying this one or ASUS UX51VZ. I was set on buying the Asus even though it's 15" screen, when I came across the Acer v7 with its 14" (which I was initially looking for) with great specs. I read almost every posts on this forum and it seems like owners have been adding hardware, etc. I'm really not tech-savy, so I wouldn't know how to that. So, assuming I won't be changing the machine when I take it out of the box, how do these two compare?

Also, I'm going to be reading on the screen for long periods at a time - how's the glossy screen? (I'm just concerned about my eyes getting tired from reading)

- I'm not concerned with price (I just want a really good, high performance laptop). Not a gamer. Heavy multi-tasker with lots of windows open at a time. May be using Photoshop.

I'd appreciate your inputs!!

 

I do not know how to use Nvidia to limit the FPS, I am not actually concerned with temps, I fell a max of 85C is normal. What I really want is to play my games in 1600x900, because I think there is visually not enough difference between 900 and 1080, so better to play at 900, and have smoother game play.

 

Best screen on any laptop, I have had normal laptops with 1366X768 screen, and yes, they cause eye strain because of their low res. But this screen will not give you eye strain issues, it is just too nice of a screen. I have had matte screen laptops, do not like them, high quality glossy is the way to go.

This laptop is so good and so fast stock, you do not need an ssd, the regular hdd and ssd cache is fast. Boot up and shut down times, in less than 30 seconds.

 

I agree that you don't need to add anything to this laptop. With the cache the startup times are already negligible. The main advantages of this laptop over the VX are obvious:
-Price (500+ less... getting a touchscreen VX with enough space is 2000+)
-Haswell/750 (both processors are a generation newer)
-Smaller form factor

The screen is the best part of this laptop. I'm partial to glossy screens though, but this is by far the best glossy I've ever owned.

The only reason I personally am putting an SSD in is because of my sad personal history with HDD's failing me one too many times.

 

Can someone recommended a laptop sleeve for this? I got a Zeroshock III off ebay, but unfortunately the 14" model is too big and elecom doesn't have a 14.1" widescreen model.

The dimensions of the Aspire V7-482PG-9884 are:
W 340 mm H 240 mm D 20 mm
( W 13.4in H 9.5 in D 0.8 in )

...and just to reiterate what others have been saying: the screen on this is gorgeous. Also, after some tweaking--both in the synaptics control panel applet (and the synpatics branch of the registry [to disable the edge gestures])---I'm more than happy with the trackpad.

 

Could someone post some pictures of this laptop from several angles, particularly from the side please? I'd like to get an idea of how thick the laptop looks.

 

Should I get this or wait for the Lenovo U430? Thoughts?

 

The Lenovo may be slower with the 730m compared to the 750m.
V7 has a mSata slot for an SSD.
U430 has a M.2 42mm slot for an SSD.

 

Thanks. I actually have been waiting for the U430 this whole time but I really think I might just pull the trigger on the V7 because I need/want a laptop now.

Would I still be happy with just the stock HDD or is a SSD definitely recommended? I'm a college student in business and will be doing work, and watching HD video. I also may do light gaming, think LoL. And what is the difference between M.2 42mm and mSata (I'm not very good with all the technology atm).

Also, what is the battery life consensus on this machine? The U430 is rated at 10hrs, which I believe means it can get ~8hrs. Is this V7 going to get 6+ or what have people been getting? How about when browsing the internet and watching Netflix or HD movies/youtube?

 

Now in-stock over at the ncix us website. Was showing back-ordered a few hours ago. Only a few though, about 12 I believe.
Acer V7-482PG-6662 14.0IN1080P IPS Touch i5 8GB 24GB SSD 500GB HDD WiFi BT 4.0 Iron Win8 Notebook
Two things prevent me from pulling the trigger on this:
1. Pretty sure that i5-4200u will be a bottleneck, especially in cpu intensive games.
2.GT750m with 4GB(Really???) of what ram? DDR3 or GDDR5?? I want to see a GpuZ screenshot from this machine so as to verify.

 

I ordered this model off a different site a few days ago and it is currently in the mail. I'll post the GpuZ and a review once I receive it. I also believe that both models GPUs are ddr3.

 

Am I the only one that no longer sees the GT750m mentioned with this listing?

 

I don't know much besides the spec sheet of the 15". I would say buy the 14" it comes with the same stuff but is lighter and apparently both laptops have the same battery size so there are no improvements with the 15" besides for a numberpad and a physically larger screen.

GPU is DDR3 which i think is a bad idea. i know it is cheaper but i much rather have 1-2GB of ddr5 than 4gb of ddr3. Heres the gpu-z and some benchmarking while i postpone the review yet another day. sorry guys. Remember 94(CPU) and 92C(GPU) is really hot but these are purely in stress tests. in real life situation you probably won't get above 87C. Also. don't let heat scare you. the laptop is not uncomfortable when hot and cools very very very quickly. the bottom does not get uncomfortable compared to other laptops and the only part that gets painfully hot is the bar of plastic above the keyboard and the top middle of the keyboard. Battery life is still bad. still no official tests but you can expect 4+ hours when not gaming and 5 hours with casual settings. possible to stretch battery life to 6hrs but ive yet to try.

Also, adioni, please tell me how to disable gestures on the touchpad! i hate how i always accidently bring up the charms bar when touching the left edge of the touchpad.