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Acer Aspire Ethos 5951 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £999
inc VAT

A few very clever features that aren’t well suited to a laptop of this size make the Ethos poor value, despite the powerful hardware and excellent gaming performance

Specifications

15.6 in 1,366×768 display, 3.1kg, 2GHz Intel Core i7-2630QM, 8.00GB RAM, 750GB disk, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

http://www.amazon.co.uk

Unlike its more generic Aspire range, Acer’s Ethos laptop line-up is a much more focused on multimedia. The latest model, the 5951, is packed with the latest technology and plenty of clever design touches that make it stand out from the competition.

Adorned with a brushed metal lid and built with lots of high-quality materials, the Ethos 5951 is rather heavy for its size; despite having a 15.6in screen it still weighs over 3kg. This doesn’t make it completely desk-bound, but you’ll certainly notice it in your bag when on the move. You’ll also need to factor in the weight of the power supply, as the average battery life of four and a half hours isn’t enough to last all day.

Acer Aspire Ethos 5951 right ports

This is partly due to the internal components, which are easily powerful enough for most tasks. Intel’s Core i7-2630QM usually runs each of its four cores at 2GHz, but Turbo Boost can increase this up to 2.9GHz for even more performance. It powered through our multimedia benchmark with a score of 77, making it one of the fastest laptops we’ve seen.

Acer Aspire Ethos 5951 left ports

3D performance was, if anything, even more impressive thanks to the dedicated graphics card. With 2GB of dedicated video memory, on top of the already extensive 8GB system RAM, the GeForce 555m is Nvidia’s fastest current-generation mid-range card. As such, we expected it to cope well with our Dirt 3 benchmark; it passed easily, producing a solid 55.5fps at our default settings, it could also cope with higher detail settings without dropping below a playable frame rate. Unsurprisingly, it had no trouble playing Blu-ray films via the optical drive, either on the laptop itself or on an external display.

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Basic Specifications

Rating ***
Processor Intel Core i7-2630QM
Processor clock speed 2GHz
Memory 8.00GB
Memory slots 2
Memory slots free 0
Maximum memory 16GB
Size 39x381x27mm
Weight 3.1kg
Sound Realtek HD Audio
Pointing device touchpad

Display

Viewable size 15.6 in
Native resolution 1,366×768
Graphics Processor Nvidia GeForce GT 555M
Graphics/video ports VGA, HDMI
Graphics Memory 2,048MB

Storage

Total storage capacity 750GB
Optical drive type DVD+/-RW +/-DL BD-ROM

Ports and Expansion

USB ports 4
Total Firewire ports 1
Bluetooth yes
Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support 802.11b/g/n
PC Card slots none
Supported memory cards SDHC, Memory Stick Pro, xD
Other ports eSATA (shared with USB socket), minijack audio output/S/PDIF (shared), minijack audio input, minijack microphone input, 1x USB3

Miscellaneous

Carrying case No
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore option restore partition
Software included Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, NTI Media Maker 9
Optional extras none

Buying Information

Warranty one year RTB
Price £999
Details www.acer.co.uk
Supplier http://www.amazon.co.uk

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