Acer Aspire 8940G Review

The Acer Aspire 8940G is a desktop replacement system packing an Intel Core i7 processor, NVIDIA 250M dedicated graphics, Blu-ray, and a massive 18.4" 1080P display. Acer built this system to not only handle everyday gaming, but also to be the multimedia hub in your dorm room or home office. With extra perks such as a backlit keyboard and touch-sensitive media buttons, is there anything not to love in the Aspire 8940G? Read our full review to find out.

Our Acer Aspire 8940G Specifications:

• Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
• Intel Core i7-720QM (1.6GHzGHz, 1333MHz FSB, 6MB Cache)
• 18.4" WUXGA FHD LCD display at 1920x1080
• NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250M with 1GB GDDR3 memory
• Intel 5100AGN Wireless, Broadcom Gigabit LAN
• 4GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM (2GB x 2)
• 500GB Western Digital 5400RPM Hard Drive
• Blu-ray/DVD SuperMulti
• Webcam, Acer CineSurround speakers, backlit keyboard
• 120W (19V x 6.32A) 100-240V AC Adapter
• 8-cell 71Wh 14.8v 4800mAh Lithium Ion battery
• Dimensions (WxDxH): 17.34 x 11.62 x 1.22-1.73"
• Weight: 9lbs 5.5oz
• 1-year warranty
• Price as configured: $1,329

Build and Design
Acer shares the same overall look and feel throughout many of their notebook lines. The Acer Aspire 8940G shows quite a bit of resemblance to the Acer Aspire One ... keeping the same hinge shape and position as well as the protruding rear-edge of the main body that you can see when the lid is closed. The side profile of the 8940G doesn't look much thicker than a smaller 15" or 17" notebook. The sloped front and rear edge do a great job of masking thickness even further while also making it more comfortable to carry. Inside you have a completely flat surface containing the keyboard, touchpad, speakers, and multimedia keys. The keyboard is even recessed just enough so the flat keys lay flush with the outer bezel. Acer did an excellent job of making this laptop look user friendly and organized by keeping so many controls within a finger's reach.

Notebook manufacturers face a difficult task when it comes to making large notebooks that feel sturdy but aren't overweight. Wider panels require more bracing to reduce flex and heavier notebooks require stronger panels so they don't flex under their own weight. The Aspire 8940G feels very well built with a solid frame and only minimal flex on the screen cover when the notebook is shut. The palrmest feels durable and shows no signs of flex even under strong pressure. The same applies to the keyboard and upper bezel, which show only minimal signs of flex under heavy pressure. The one complaint I have with the build quality of the notebook is the use of glossy plastics which scratch and smudge easily. If you are a neat freak then those smudge-prone glossy surfaces might get on your nerves over time.

The upgradability factor of this notebook looks great thanks to a single access panel on the bottom of the chassis. Simply remove the panel and you have access to the dual hard drive bays (one of which is unused in this configuration), two system memory slots, two mini-PCIe slots, and a partial view of the processor socket. I saw no "warranty void if removed" stickers anywhere, including the screws holding the heatsink onto the processor. If you want to add a second hard drive you will need to purchase a spare retention bracket, which mounts to the back of the drive, to prevent it from sliding out of place. The open mini-PCIe slot appears to be intended for an onboard TV-tuner, and as such doesn't have WWAN-antennas pre-installed.

Screen and Speakers
The 18.4" screen on the Aspire 8940G is an "all-glass" style with a protective layer covering the actual display panel. This gives the notebook a very clean and polished look, but also increases glare and reflections. With the notebook turned off the screen surface resembles a mirror and reflects the entire room around you. These reflections are reduced when the screen is on and displaying bright colors. In terms of overall quality the screen looks very nice with good color reproduction and above average contrast. The screen really draws you in while watching movies or viewing pictures ... as if you were viewing that place in person. Black levels look great and the only noticeable areas of light bleed are near the edges of the screen and only visible with the brightness set to 100%. Vertical viewing angles look good until you pivot the screen forward or back roughly 15 to 20 degrees. Horizontal viewing angles look nice right up until reflections off the screen start to overpower the image being displayed. At peak brightness the screen is still easily visible in bright office conditions as well as sitting near a window with the sun casting over the notebook.

Acer includes a 5.1 Cinematic Surround system on the Aspire 8940G that seems to sound a step above most notebooks. The audio system features five speakers, including a Tuba CineBass Booster to increase low-frequency sound. In practice the speakers produced a great surround experience, but I felt the peak volume levels were lacking. Even with the system volume set to 100%, the speakers were nowhere near being over-driven. This causes some trouble if you expect to use the system to watch a movie in your bedroom with it sitting on a dresser rather than on your lap. This can be avoided though if you use external speakers or a home theater system connected to the notebook.

Keyboard and Touchpad
Even though many notebooks are switching to Chiclet-style keyboards these days, Acer still uses a traditional design with thin flat-top keys instead. The design resembles lily patties sitting on a pond with a very thin top and the support structure tucked neatly out of view. The keyboard also offers a backlit which gives you great key visibility in dark settings. The underlying light elements are adequately shielded, preventing "light bleed" unless you view the keyboard at an angle shallower than 45 degrees. The backlight is non-adjustable in brightness, but you can turn it off completely.

The keyboard is very comfortable for typing thanks to properly sized keys and good spacing. The large 18.4" footprint allows Acer to incorporate a full-size keyboard as well as a full number pad. There is almost no "wiggle" or lateral key travel when you move your hand around the keyboard despite the thin looking keys. The keys are easy to trigger with roughly average pressure required and when pressed give off a very small click sound. The broad palmrest works very well for cradling your hands and wrists. Typing for hours at the notebook isn't a problem unless it is on your lap ... in which case your legs might not enjoy the weight.

The touchpad is a very large Synaptics model that rates very high on my list of best touchpads. It is quick to respond to fast movements, showing no discernable lag at any time. The surface texture is a soft matte finish that makes it easy to slide your finger across whether completely dry or slightly damp from sweat. The only significant complaint I have is the size. This touchpad is so much larger than most of the touchpads that I use that I end up clicking the bottom edge of the touchpad instead of the actual buttons. If you like big touchpads you will love the touchpad on the Aspire 8940G. The touchpad buttons are the same width as the touchpad surface and have a very short throw. Each button gives off a higher pitched clicking sound when you press down. Acer also includes a button to disable the touchpad to prevent accidental movement when using an external mouse. This button is located to the right side of the touchpad and lights up when activated.

Ports and Features
The port selection on the Acer Aspire 8940G is phenomenal. Acer gives you four dedicated USB ports, one eSATA/USB combo port, Firewire 400, VGA, HDMI, DisplayPort, LAN, and audio jacks including digital audio out. To load pictures from a digital camera, there is a flush-mount SDHC-card slot on the front side of the notebook.

Front: SDHC-card slot

Rear: Exhaust vent and Tuba CineBass Booster

Left: AC-power, LAN, VGA, DisplayPort, HDMI, eSATA/USB Combo, one USB, FireWire, Audio jacks, ExpressCard/54

Right: Two USB, BLu-ray drive, one USB, Kensongton lock slot

On the left and right side of the keyboard there are touch-sensitive control keys. The left side has three buttons including one for Wi-Fi On/Off, one for Bluetooth On/Off, and another to access the Acer Backup Manager. The right side offers media quick-access keys including a Media Center button, hold button, skip, play/pause, stop, and fast forward controls, and a switch to enable or disable the touch sensitive buttons. The volume control is a metal rotating dial that gives a slightly more precise method to adjust the volume than a touch-sensitive slider.

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Performance and Benchmarks
The Asipre 8940G performs very well in games as well as playing high-definition video. The Intel Core i7 processor didn't even work up a sweat while we pushed 720P and 1080P video its way. While it is pretty sure this system would have no problem playing Blu-ray movies, we were unable to test playback since Acer didn't include software to decode Blu-ray movies. PowerDVD or another equivalent software package is usually included with systems that offer Blu-ray drives as an option, but we guess Acer wanted to save on the cost of licensing fees and left this up to the customer. The NVIDIA GTS 250M graphics handled Left 4 Dead at 1920x1080 resolution with high detail settings very well. Playing with multiple zombies on the screen framerates still stayed above 30FPS with the average being in the lower 40s. If the detail settings were tweaked slightly or the resolution was lowered to 1280x768, I don't see any reason why you couldn't get framerates above 60FPS.

Wprime processor comparison results (lower scores mean better performance):

PCMark05 measures overall system performance (higher scores mean better performance):

3DMark06 measures overall graphics performance for gaming (higher scores mean better performance):

HDTune storage drive performance test:

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Heat and Noise
The Acer Aspire 8940G maintains very good temperatures even though it has an Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GTS 250M graphics card. Heat coming through the palmrest and keyboard is minimal while running stressful benchmarks and games. The only hotspot worth noting on the top of the system is near the left side of the touchpad, which crept up to 91 degrees Fahrenheit after stressing the CPU and graphics card for more than 30 minutes. Fan noise is very tolerable when the system is performing run-of-the-mill activities. If the processor and graphics card utilization is low the fan is either off or spinning very slow. While gaming the fan throttled between its slower and faster speeds, neither of which was louder than most notebooks.

Battery Life
Battery life is never the strength of large notebooks, even more so when you combine the large screen with a powerful processor and dedicated graphics card. The Acer 8940G stayed on for 3 hours and 10 minutes in our battery test with the screen brightness set to 70%, the power profile set to "balanced," and the wireless active. Power consumption varied between 18 and 24 watts during the test.

Conclusion
The Acer Aspire 8940G is a well built and good looking multimedia notebook that can also game. The sound system is great if you can get past the weaker volume levels. The spacious 18.4" display is great for sharing a movie in a small room; something that might be difficult with a 15" or 17" notebook. System performance is very good with the Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GTS 250M graphics ... although slightly less than true gaming notebooks. The biggest strength of the 8940G though is its $1,329 price, which is lower than any other Core i7 system currently on the market.

Pros:

• Huge touchpad
• Comfortable backlit keyboard
• Beautiful display

Cons:

• Knee breaking 9lbs 5.5oz
• No Blu-ray software

Related Articles:

• Acer Aspire One D250 Review

 

Looking good, but the 250M is not as fast as i hoped.

 

Because it's crippled with GDDR3 memory instead of the GDDR5 memory it should have...

 

Great.

I'm just wondering, is it just me or does Acer have to put good hardware in oversized laptops? My old 6920G had a T5750 and GeForce 9500m GS in a 16", while this 18.4" has the lowest i7 processor and a relatively weak (for an 18.4") GPU. I mean even 16" can take i7-820QM and better GPUs. I mean I'm sure an 18.4" should have space for an i7-920XM and 4 RAM ports, not to mention dual GTX 280m, and a much higher resolution screen (1920x1080 is seen even on 16").

Just my $0.02.

 

Great review..... and it looks like the Acer 8940 is a nice value!

Looking at the Technical Specs here, this model appears to be a base model. I hope Acer will offer other 8940 models soon.

Thanks Kevin!

 

Very nice rig for the price....hope it can handle the I-7920XM and knowing it's a MXM 3.0type B I wouldn't be surprise to see someone fit a 280M GTX or even a ATI 4870 if one can be found!!!

 

I wouldn't be surprised to see this machine breaking 10K 3dmark with some overclocking. For the money this is a great value. After seeing Toshiba X505 and DV8T, I think this is a great price/performance ratio laptop.

 

it's a multimedia machine, priced at $1300. it does what it's supposed to and fits the projected price bracket. you're asking it to be something else entirely.

 

You can't swap the card into higher end model due to higher thermal foot print. (Not even GF 260M)

 

Nice review.

It got the looks and the price tag is nice too, but i personally prefer a more mobile notebook than this.
But if your looking for a cheap Intel mobile i7 notebook for multimedia and casual gaming this will fit the description nicely.

 

Well it weighs almost same as M15x and DV8T and a pound less than x505. If you want more portable system Envy 15 with a higher price tag is your only bet.

 

Nice review, Great looking desktop replacement/multimedia notebook for a nice price. If I was looking for this type of notebook, I'd probably buy this one

 

Hi
I had a question on the wPrime tests that are shown in the review. Are the times for 4M or 32M?


Regards

 

32M. Yep it is pretty good.

 

The upcoming 5940G will be equipped with the Core i7 as well, so there's no need for Acer Chasers to go run out and get this behemoth.

And as for the Blu-ray software, that's an abrupt 180 from Acer's previous offerings. My 6920G came with Acer Arcade Deluxe pre-installed, which handles the Blu-ray playback on my system.

 

I think the Acer is a great bang for the buck, that's why I got it and given that,

• The HP Dv8t Core i7 has the weaker NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M (and no LED Backlight Screen or illuminated keys from what I've read).
  
• The Dell XPS Core i7 uses the weaker ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 and 4670 and no 18.5 inch screen.
  
• The ASUS G Series G51J-A1 Intel Core i7 has only 15.6 inch screen
  
• The Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q830 has a 18.4" Screen and NVIDIA GeForce 250M but with DDR5 but that weird 1680x945 resolution and no LED Backlight or illuminated keyboard and only 320gig HD (HD size I don't really care for). It's also more expensive and no fingerprint reader (the Acer has this but wasn't mentioned in the article).
  
• Lenovo uses GeForce 240M and a 15.6 inch screen

I like to go by what I can relatively easily change and what I can't. I can't change the screen size or native resolution but I can change the processor and graphics card at a latter time (because the Acer is MXM).

Seems like Toshiba is going to toe to toe with the Acer but if I don't like the Acer I would go for the ASUS because of the warranty and video card, all that actually makes the price inline or better.

In my experience, I still have my 15 year old Acer Aspire running strong, it's only down cause it way too slow of course.

I have a 6 yr old ASUS board that just wont quit, I even spilled soda on it while on and it didn't skip a beat.

I used to recommend Toshiba's but when one of my relative's Toshiba Satellite Notebook stopped working 2 years ago (you could not plug the cord into the laptop and have the battery charge and even power up the laptop) and toshiba customer support was no help it looked bad on me for recommending them.

The final nail in the coffin happened recently when a colleague of mine bought a Toshiba Laptop 4 months ago and 2 months latter the same thing happened with the power adapter. Toshiba isn't soldering them to the board well and 2 years later little has change, you are SOL if this goes and you're out of warranty, it's not worth the price to fix at that point, the alternative is just too slow.

I cant wait to see how the Acer performance.

 

I have been looking for a Notebook to buy for the last couple of months and was eagerly awaiting this notebook from Acer.

After looking at this notebook for several hours, and having played with it in person just 2 days ago, I have to disagree on the review posted here in Notebook review.

The reviewer has not thoroughly looked at the screen or the keyboard.
The screen has HORRIBLE vertical viewing angles, and although ACER claims that it is an LED display, its not a true LED display. True LEDs have far better colors, contrast and specifically, viewing angles then the model advertized by Acer. Only the center lamp is powered by LEDs, the rest of the screen is not.

For anyone even mildly interested in design or photography, this screen just will not do. Color shifting happens almost immediately when you modify your vertical viewing position making it very hard to see all the colors on the screen correct.

The keyboard, although back lit, is VERY flimsy and bendy. On the Acer stand, out of 5 models on display, 3 of them were already missing keys... and this laptop JUST shipped a few weeks ago!

Be very wary of the screen on this model. I believe even the 8930G series had a better screen.

=V=

 

Great review Kevin! I was looking forward to read this after hearing from how it performed.

BTW, I disagree with this being the cheapest i7 laptop around (video). The Dell Studio 15 carries an i7 and it starts at 999 bucks.

I am quite surprised how this performed, considering the i7 was an "added", cause the hardware is pretty much standard...4GB DDR3 RAM, a 5400RPM Drive, a good-not-super-awesome GPU.

Thanks still for the review!

 

Well DV6t can be had for $899.

 

The type of backlighting does not determine viewing angles. LED or not, most of laptop display (note that almost all laptop displays use cheap, but inferior, TN panel) have poor viewing angles and color representation.

Now extinct IPS panels had great colors and viewing angles, although they used fluorescent bulbs. Also, there are some "pretty good" fluorescent TN panels, as well (say, dual-lamp panels on some Sony laptops)

BTW, I always felt that larger laptops tend to have more flimsy keyboards.

 

Exactly.....for a multimedia rig at that price point, you're getting quite a deal.


Good review too

 

I'm going to be getting a new laptop soon and I'm thinking about this one. Anyone know where I could get the configurations in the review? The only places I've seen online have the 240m videocard instead of the 250m.

Also, is it possible to customize this laptop when ordering? It seems like this laptop come pre-customized.

Any help would be great!

Thanks!

 

i have used acer aspire laptop.... and it is the worst laptop i have ever seen...
with in no time, u will get problems

 

Why, what kind of problems did you have? What makes it such a bad laptop?

 

this thing is one of the best, if not the best bang for the buck Laptops out there right now. I'm very close to purchasing it, but its just a bit to big. Its unfortunate that the new 5940G has such a lame resolution.

 

Anyone know if Acer has whitelisting on the mini PCIe slots?

 

The Acer looks like a good DTR for the money, competition coming namely from Toshiba and HP. $1300 gets you an i7 720, 1080p 18" display, Blu-Ray, 500GB HDD, and a better-than-average 250M. Is this RAID capable? The speakers and Blu-Ray are nice media bonus for a system with such a large screen. Battery life is pretty dang good too.

 

I doubt acer whitelists..

While this review is more technical than previous ones I failed to notice a review on the built in webcam, what is it native resolution, is it low light?

Also Acer Arcade Deluxe will play back blu ray movies just fine, bundled with all the bluray laptops, they don't use power dvd or win dvd or arcsoft.. only manufacture to use their own bluray software, it's pretty easy to use and has a great interface, good for the big screen to, simple to use

 

Does anyone have a pic of the backlit keyboard connector?
Wondering if I can upgrade to s backlit keyboard on my 5740G.
Thanks.

 

For the money this is a great value.

 

It is great value, so i bought (a year ago) in the ridiculously expensive greek market for 1700Euros.
Its the I7 720QM 1.6Ghz , Geforce GT 240 M with all the rest wonderful stuff.
The laptop CRASHES (boom zzzz power off only solution) in flash applications, it has low performance in some games, it has low performance on some HD videos 1080p mostly.
Im not the only one who has these problems apparently.
Aspire 8940g - Irregular Crash The Acer Guy Forum
Behold in video
YouTube - Acer Aspire 8940 G Crash
I have talked to a person with the same laptop that didnt have these problems. But not in a million years i wouldnt buy ACER again.
And i still love this laptop.