OC-Freaks Acer Ethos 5943G with ATI HD5850 Review.

Top of the line Acer, is it any good? Wait and you may soon find out.

You might want to check my most recent/previous reviews here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu.../457517-asus-n71ja-x77ja-review-oc-freak.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/493151-acer-aspire-timelinex-5820tg-review-discussion.html

So, mostly out of own interest I bought an Acer Aspire Ethos 5943G, it's an very interesting 15.6"model, since it is packing powerful components as well as allowing for graphics switching to use the intel GFX on CPU's with built in GFX.

Anyway, source and model:
This model has been in stock since mid-june or thereabout, so here in Norway it's not really "fresh" anymore
MPX.no - Acer Aspire 5943G 15.6" HD LED Link to the Norwegian store where I bought it.

LX.PWL02.004
Intel Core i5-450M 2.4GHz (2.66GHz turbo boost).
ATI HD5850 with 1Gb GDDR3 memory.
500Gb 5400rpm HDD
4Gb DDR3 memory
Super multi DVD drive
15.6" 1366 x 768 monitor.

First, let's take a look at the beast.



It has an nice combination of silver and black. The only areas that are fingerprint magnets is the rim around the screen and the touchpad. The rest doesn't attract fingerprints easily.



The screen cover is silver coloured, no it's not aluminium, it's plastic. But it's very robust.

Connectivity


At the right side we have the power plug, kensington lock, optical drive, one USB port and audio/mic ports.


At the left side we have a lot of goodies, first it's the vents, then we have VGA, HDMI, combined USB/E-SATA, firewire!!!, and finally two more USB ports.

At the front there is an card reader as well which I didn't take an picture of.

All in all it offers excellent connectivity, the only thing missing is USB 3.0

Build quality

The build quality of this acer is awesome, it's solid. So far I've not found a single thing to complain about buildwise. It's all around solid built, the screen cover is thick and stable, and hinges feels good.

Attention to details

What surprised me most with this laptop is all the small details on this computer. Let's go through them all, some are quite interesting.



This is the power button and LED, the orange glowing ringformed LED actually change colour. Blue means power is connected and not charging, orange means connected and charging, no light.... means power not connected.



the left button starts acer arcade deluxe for playing media files and discs, and the P button changes the power saving mode (intel GFX or ATI gfx).



It even has an fingerprint reader, and Aspire logo in the plastic!



This are the status leds, from the left: wifi, acer backup manager, HDD and another power led. But notice how they are placed!!! They are placed on the front of the computer. What do that mean? That means the glossy screen won't reflect the status LED light in an dark room! Majority of laptop makers do this WRONG and puts the leds on the top side. Guess they think we enjoy watching the led reflections in the glossy screen when watching movies....... Well I don't.
And there is more; You see those small metal buttons? Yes they are buttons The left is for opening the application to enable/disable wifi/bluetooth, the other launches acer backup manager.
And we have an IR receiver.



YESSS! It's exactly what it looks like, an volume knob, oh how I've missed you my friend.




Notice the microscopic blue leds on the num lock and caps lock keys to show if they are activated or not. Sweet details.

Keyboard
You might notice that the keyboard design is different from the last generation acers (timeline series and most other 2010 acer laptops). And I have to admit, yes it's an clear step up. There is very little flex, but the keys "bends" slightly if you hit them at the edge. Not the best laptop keyboard I've used, but good enough. One thing I dislike is the tiny arrow keys, I rather have an smaller right shift button and numpad "0" button to get full size arrow keys.

Touchpad
I'll say it right out loud; The touchpad S*CKS major donkey A$$. Come on, glossy touchpad? It's smeared with fingerprints after just 5 minutes of use, and the glossy approach also gives higher resistance when moving the finger around on it. Major turnoff.



The touchpad has some interesting multimedia features though, clicking the middle button activates them and they work fine in acer arcade deluxe. Fancy but I'd rather take an good touchpad over an fancy touchpad.

Speakers
The speakers are very good, it's an 2.1 system with an subwoofer under the computer. The details and richness in sound is also very good, max volume is average and on line with other laptops with decent sound systems. The only drawback I've found is that some sounds makes the computer vibrate so that some sort of "creaking/vibrating" sound can be heard, most noticeable on dark male voices. Not noticeable for music.

Screen
Guess what? Yes it has an AUO panel, AUO40EC to be exact. Surprise, surprise.... not really. The good news is that the screen is fairly good. Color accuracy feels very good, and details feels good too, even for grey gradients and dark colours. I'd rate it as on par with cheap LG/Samsung screens or even slightly better. The maximum brightness is a bit lower than usual though, but I never use screens at max brightness so it doesn't bother me. No there is no grainyness or stuff like that, so quite surprised over this AUO panel.

Wireless
And Acer did it again, they threw in an crappy broadcom wifi so I can't use it at my bedroom without changing wifi The range of broadcom wifi cards is horrible at best. With an intel wifi I have 4/5 signal strenght in my bedroom, with broadcom I keep loosing connection.... go figure.

Battery runtime
This computer makes no claims for long battery runtime or anything like that, still it's shipped with an large 8 cell 86wHr battery, which is between the timelinex 6 cell and 9 cell battery capacity.
So you might get surprised, I can say that I did at least.

Maximum battery runtime possible:
Brightness at minimum and WLAN disabled, and using intel graphics.
Test: Battery eater 2.70 readers test.

Main Battery Info
Device Name Li_Ion_4000mA
Manufacture COMPAL
Serial # 2DA
Unique ID 2DACOMPAL Li_Ion_4000mA
Chemistry Lithium Ion
Temperature Termal Control Not Present
Designed Capacity 86400mWh
Full Charged Capacity 85234mWh
Designed Voltage 14,4V
Current Voltage 12,46V
Manufacture Date 0/0/0
Cycles Count 0
Cells count 4
Force charge support Not Supported
Force discharge support Not Supported

Work Done
Pi calculations 2765 Cycles
HDD read\write 0 Mb
Fames Rendered 0 Frames

Benchmark Options
Resolution 800x600x32
FullScreen Disabled
Mode Reader's Test

Results
Total time 11:31:50
Discharge rate (minimum) 4294957590 mWh
Discharge rate (maximum) 4294962803 mWh
Discharge rate (average) 4294957763 mWh



Yes that is correct, 11 hours 31 minutes and 50 seconds!
With WLAN activated and bit higher brightness that should translate into somewhere between 8-10hrs of websurfing/office usage.
That is pretty damn awesome for an computer that is not advertised as having long battery lifetime - like the timelinex series.

Let's try an bit more realistic test situation;
This time I've enabled WLAN, increased brightness to about 75% and have spotify constantly playing music at 48% volume.
Then I started the readers test again.

Resolution 800x600x32
FullScreen Disabled
Mode Reader's Test

Results
Total time 8:20:40
Discharge rate (minimum) 4294954192 mWh
Discharge rate (maximum) 4294965525 mWh
Discharge rate (average) 4294955642 mWh



Over 8 hrs with wlan enabled is still great.

For one final test I maximized brightness and used the classic test in battery eater (heavy load).

Work Done
Pi calculations 652214 Cycles
HDD read\write 52384 Mb
Fames Rendered 821653 Frames

Benchmark Options
Resolution 800x600x32
FullScreen Disabled
Mode Classic

Results
Total time 2:27:53
Discharge rate (minimum) 4294927782 mWh
Discharge rate (maximum) 4294959923 mWh
Discharge rate (average) 4294928696 mWh



During load the battery only lasts for 2,5hrs.

Performance

Let's start with the standard WEI screenshot:


No surprises here, and numbers are just where I expected them to be.

Next out is 3dmark06 at stock speeds:



9142 points is an very good score, and very few 15" computers can beat this.



And same for vantage, an very strong score.

Crysis test at stock:


Crysis is playable with high settings, although barely - with lots of explosions and activity it gets a bit sluggish.

Overclocked results:
After some testing I found maximum GPU overclock to be 690MHz Core (up from 625MHz) and 1050MHz memory (up from 800MHz).



3Dmark06 score increased to 10736, not far away from HD5850 with GDDR5 memory results.



And we can see an similar increase in vantage score.



Crysis is now almost at 40fps average, an nice and welcomed increase!

Just to include it:

3DMark06 with GPU at 690MHz/1090MHz.



10871 points, but the GPU is not stable at this memory speed, and will crash sooner or later.

Summarized:
Excellent gaming performance for an 15" computer, with some GPU overclocking it gets even better.

Heat.

Heat is always an issue with powerful laptops, lets see how the Acer 5943G handles heat.

Running prime95 max load and furmark max burn test at the same time, many laptops fails this test and throttles the speeds.



As we can see the temps rise, but it didn't reach throttle levels. Keep in mind that furmark + prime95 is higher load than you will normally reach. Personally I'm pretty surprised and satisfied with the measured results. Let's see if GPU overclocking changes anything:



Not much, the GPU reach a few degrees more when running at 690/1050MHz.

For an gaming temp result I played starcraft 2 for 1 hr or so at ultra setting (yes ultra is playable in singleplayer, for multiplayer I suggest dropping down to "high").



Interesting enough the temps from playing SC2 is about as high as the stresstest temps.

But there is one serious heat issue; The area around the keys gets very hot during load, and the keys itself gets a bit warm as well. For long gaming sessions the heat is very uncomfortable. Notice that the wristrest never gets hot though.

Summary

Positive:
Build Quality
Speaker system
Solid performance
Switchable graphics
Excellent battery runtime
Features/design.
Connectivity.
Low noise, even under max load.

Negative:
Glossy touchpad.
Uncomfortably hot keyboard area during load.
Broadcom wifi which means poor range/ low signal strength.

Things I'd like to see:
USB 3.0
An higher resolution screen.
7200rpm HDD.

Bottom line:
Acer made an gaming computer that is surprising in many ways; The build quality is great, the battery runtime is even better and performance is very good compared to size and price. Too bad the hot chassis (keyboard area) during load and glossy touchpad are major turnoffs, if acer could deal with these two issues and maybe add USB 3.0 and an higher resolution screen - this would be the ideal 15" laptop.

 

Nice baseline 3Dmark06. Is that without any OC on the GPU?

What is the resolution on the display? 15.6" right?

Is it OC'able with SetFSB?

Looks like you're starting an Acer collection.

Bronsky

 

Why won't this damn laptop come out in England!

 

That is stock speed yeah.

15.6" 1366 x 768 (I tell you - that resolution is perfect for an 13.3, an 15.6 should have 1600 x 900 as default).

If I knew the clockgen IC I think it would be overclockable. Tried almost all options in SetFSB - no luck so far. Selecting asus G73JH doesn't give an error message, but reported numbers are wrong and changing FSB does nothing.

 

Acer seems to ignore England. Are there any TimelineX models available yet with the HD 5650 GPU? Maybe its revenge for hundreds of years of colonial rule.

Nice GPU but I would need better resolution on a 15.6" display.

 

But it's not even out in America.

 

Started adding images and stuff.

 

The glossy trackpad is so lame... I feel your pain OC-Freak.

Have you made sure there isn't a thin layer of clear film over the trackpad? Maybe it's really matte .

 

Added surprising battery runtime results.

 

Wow , impressive results.

Could you eventually do some 3d-mark/game-tests and, if possible, real battery-time under webbrowsing to confirm the test results ?
Does the Ethos stay cool (load-temps?) ?
Is there an external plug for a tv-antenna (there should be a free mini-PCIe-slot inside), for a manual installation of an internal pci-e-tuner ?

btw thanks for your nice review

 

review is not complete yet.

There is no external tv antenna plug.

 

Review complete, and computer going back for an refund. The heat around they keyboard area makes gaming uncomfortable.
And I also realized how much lighter my Acer 3820TG is compared to this one

 

I kind of hate the glass trackpad.