Acer Aspire 5745PG review

The bundled Microsoft Surface programs make the most of the touchscreen. Globe, a 3D version of Bing maps, is an excellent example of how desktop applications can be optimised for touch input. Pinch gestures can rotate and zoom in-and-out at any point in the world, although its usefulness is limited because you can’t search for directions. The Acer touch-enabled multimedia programs were basic and the small control interface wasn’t especially touch-friendly either. There likely isn’t enough extra functionality to entice users away from their media players of choice.

Touchscreen aside, the 5745PG is a well-balanced mid-range laptop. A Core i3-350m processor and 4GB of memory provide decent performance in everyday applications. The nVidia 310m graphics chip will play 1080p video, although a meagre 15.7fps in Call of Duty means it’s not suited to playing modern games.

Mobile devices have made touchscreen technology increasingly popular, so it makes sense for laptop manufacturers to experiment with multi-touch support. Unfortunately, Windows needs a great deal of refinement to make touchscreens anything more than a novelty feature. The added touchscreen hasn’t raised the price of the 5745PG dramatically, making it reasonable value even with this added technology. Whether the touchscreen will be of any use is personal preference, but until software improves we’d recommend avoiding such displays for the foreseeable future.