Laptops Arena

The Aspire 5735Z is an Acer laptop which you can purchase for less than $500 and which is an ideal unit for people looking to buy a cheap and simple laptop that can cover their basic to mainstream computing needs. This Acer laptop comes with a 2.0 GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200 processor and 2 GB of RAM.



The graphics card is the integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500 MHD while the total storage capacity of the hard drive is 160 GB.  The unit comes with the preinstalled version of the Windows Vista Home Premium operating system.

The Acer Aspire 5735Z has a 15.6 inch display with a native resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. The images are amazing as you can notice that we are dealing with a superior quality display.  It is even more amazing when you think about the price of this laptop. The colors are superb, full of vitally and vibration and the brightness and contrast levels are also satisfying. The horizontal viewing angles are decent so if you want to enjoy a movie with a couple of friends, the Acer Aspire 5735Z will not stand in the way. Above the keyboard you will notice that there are 2 integrated speakers. The sound coming out of these speakers is nowhere near satisfying and external speakers are highly recommended. The lack of bass is highly noticeable as well.



The keyboard is great. It comes with a dedicated numerical pad which we love to find on our laptop as it helps us when we have data entry to take care of. The keys are very easy to press and they offer positive feedback when typing. There is just a little bit of flex registered in the center of the keyboard but it’s nothing that could really disturb you while you are typing. The matte surface of the keys will prevent your finger from slipping. The touchpad also has a matte surface and it is very responsive. The left and right mouse buttons are quite loud when pressed. The unit hosts 3 USB ports, one VGA out, a modem port, an Ethernet port, a Kensington lock slot, a multi format digital media card reader and the regular headphones out and microphone in jacks.



The 6 cell battery will provide the laptop with 2 hours and 50 minutes of usage with the display brightness set to medium level, the Windows Vista power management profile set to “power saver” and while surfing the internet. Overall, this laptop has good built in quality and a display way better that we expected to find on a budget laptop. The keyboard is very pleasant to use and the dedicated numerical pad is quite a nice surprise. The performance is quite ok for laptop with the price of the Acer Aspire 5735Z and if most people will agree on the fact that this unit should have more input and output ports, remember that is still offers quite a lot of nice features that you will generally not find on budget laptops.

I have to admit, it’s been a while since I heard anything about the Gateway laptop manufacturer and new Gateway laptops. One of the new Gateway laptops I know is in fact about one year old and the model is called Gateway NV5213u. This laptop has drawn my attention because of its $529 price which seems excellent for the specs of this unit.



This unit is powered by a 2.1 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-64 and 4 GB of RAM. The combination between these 2 components can handle multitasking at a great speed and without affecting the overall performance of the unit. The total storage capacity of the hard disk is 320 GB which is more than enough room for file storage. The 15.6 inch display comes in a native resolution of 1366 x 768 and the screen is quite decent when it comes to quality. The glossy coating of the display provides colors full of vitality and this eventually leads to a much better image. The speakers are quite average and even if the lack of bass is highly noticeable, the speakers still produce quality sound and can be heard from all across a small room. To fill bigger rooms, you will need a pair of external speakers. It is not frequent that we find numerical key pads on 15 inch laptops. If you notice that the keyboard was stretched all the way to the edges of the notebook, it is easy to understand how a numerical pad could have fit in there.

The keyboard feels very comfortable to type on without registering any flex. The touchpad of this Gateway laptop is very responsive and will register a very small amount of lag. The left and right mouse buttons are in fact one single bar which has to be pressed on the left and right edges in order to trigger the proper commands.



The Gateway NV5213u comes with 4 USB ports, one SDHC card reader, a modem port, an Ethernet port, a HDMI port, one VGA out and the regular headphones out and microphone in jacks. Some people will miss the FireWire port even if personally I  don’t find it quite essential for a laptop and I would trade it in anytime for a HDMI port. The battery life of this Gateway laptop was quite ok compared to the scores and performance of other 15 inch laptop batteries. With the display brightness set to 70%, the wireless connection activated and the Windows Vista power management profile set to “balanced mode” this laptop managed to stay uo and running for about 3 hours and 30 minutes, which is more than I can say even for my very own 15.4 inch laptop. With an elegant design and good specs, this Gateway laptop is quite a great idea for a budget notebook. The battery life is decent even if the weight may be a burden standing between you and portability. The integrated ATI HD3200 graphics card will not allow you to play top of the line games but it does allow some softer game play.

The Mini 700 is a Compaq Mini notebook, which, to our surprise, managed to beat the HP 2133 Mini Note. The HP Compaq Mini 700 is actually a very good looking little notebook with a glossy lid and the Compaq logo which definitely got our attention. When you lift that glossy black lid, a nice matte interior will be revealed. This mini notebook is definitely good looking.



With 261 mm x 167 x 25 mm in dimensions and 1.15 kg in weight, this little gadget is sure easy to carry out so you can use the computer whenever you need. However, the unit will be a little disappointing when it comes to battery life as this Compaq Mini notebook will manage to stay on for only 3 hours and 18 minutes. You could say that you’ve seen a lot worse when it comes to netbook battery performance but since the whole idea of mini notebook are to provide us with a computer that is highly portable, battery life should be strongest points of these small computers. Just like most other netbooks, this Compaq Mini notebook also runs on an Intel Atom N270 processor and 1 GB of RAM. This combination is common for mini laptops which belong to the same category. The storage capacity of the hard disk is 60 GB. I know that you have seen mini notebooks that can supports even 160 GB of files but let’s face it, just what kind of files are you going to store on this laptop which is not meant to be a primary computer.

The graphics card is also the most common choice for this notebook category and we are talking about the integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950. Performance, as you could probably tell by now, is not one of the key elements of this unit. You also get an integrated Bluetooth device. The keyboard is awesome. The keys are square and wide and they feel very comfortable to use. They are easy to press and they offer positive feedback. The 10.2 inch display has a native resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels.

As for the ports and connections, they are not as they should be on a 10.2 inch mini notebook. We have 2 USB ports, an SD/MMC media card reader and one single headphone jack which also acts as a microphone input. There is not VGA out and frankly we have never seen such a poor selection of ports and features not even on smaller notebooks. It’s a real shame since everything about this notebook was so fine until we reached the ports and connections chapter. Back in March 2009, the price of this Compaq Mini notebook was about 243 pounds which is a good value for a 10.2 ultraportable notebook.



As you can see, overall this netbook is quite a fine machine as it fits the pattern of an ultraportable laptop. Too bad that it really hit the bucket with the selection of ports and features and I really don’t understand how HP could have made just a big mistake.

The Asus g73JH-A2 is one of the best notebooks that money can buy right now. In fact, it’s a gaming notebook that can be considered quite cheap for the specs that it has inside. We have discovered a powerful unit for the price of $1599 and we have decided to share the specs and features with you today.



For the price mentioned above, you will get a notebook which is based on a 1.6 GHZ (2.8 GHz Turbo Mode) Intel Core i7-720QM processor and no less that 8 GB of DDR3 RAM. Now I can imagine this laptop literally flying when it comes to running any kind of applications because this combination between processor and RAM is absolutely amazing. The graphics card is the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 with 1 GB of GDDR5 video memory. The storage capacity takes shape in dual 500 GB hard drives which adds up to a total of 1 TB of free disk space which is going to be pretty hard to fill.

The 17.3 inch display comes is a HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and it has a glossy surface that makes the colors look superb and the image looks more beautiful. The horizontal viewing angles are excellent so movie watching with friends is going to be a breeze. Aside from a pair of rather regular notebook speakers, the unit also hosts an integrated subwoofer which produces sufficient bass for you to enjoy your favorite shooting games. Along with the beautiful keyboard comes a dedicated numerical pad. The keys are supported by backlights so typing in the dark is going to be very easy. There is a bit of flex registered in the keyboard area but nothing that could disturb you while you type. The touchpad is huge and if this were not a gaming laptop, you probably would not need an external mouse. The matter surface is pleasant to the touch and it’s very responsive no matter if your hands are dry or moist. The left and right touchpad buttons are in fact one single bad which is quite hard to press.



A gaming laptop is generally very rich on the ports and connections chapter. This unit comes with 4 USB ports, one media card reader, a HDMI port, a VGA port, a Kensington lock slot, an Ethernet port and the regular headphones and microphone jack. There is no FireWire port but that didn’t bother us very much. We still believe that this is one of the best notebooks at this time.  Battery life however could be a bit disappointing for some but we think that a 17 inch laptop is most likely going to stay on your desk the whole time so portability is not one of the strongest points of this unit. The included 8 cell battery does manage to keep the laptop on for about one hour and 50 minutes which is pretty good and also surprising for a gaming notebook that has the specs of the Asus g73JH-A2.

The dv4t is one very special HP Pavilion notebook that deserves all our special attention. This unit came at a price of $1470 back in 2008 but the prices have dropped considerably since then so one quick look on the HP official website will tell you everything you need to know in terms of price.



Let us take a look though the configuration of the unit reviewed. This HP Pavilion notebook came with a 2.8 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 processor and 4 GB of RAM. So far, this combination seems perfectly capable of handling multitasking without any problems or slowing down the performance of the system. The graphics card is the nVidia GeForce 9200M GS with 256 MB of dedicated video memory. The total storage capacity of the hard drive is 320 GB. It also comes with a Blu-ray optical drive which is quite a pleasant surprise even if it should be a must for most multimedia laptops from the market.

The 14 inch display comes with a native resolution 1280 x 800 pixels which offers bright and sharp colors and an excellent overall image. The horizontal viewing angles are excellent and the levels of brightness and contrast are also above average. The keyboard is fully sized and it feels very pleasant to type on. There is not the slightest amount of flex registered in the keyboard area and the keys have great travel and good response.  It is about the same case with the touchpad which is also very responsive and there is a very little amount of lag registered. The surface of the touchpad is very glossy and this is going to be a burden to use until it collects some natural finger oils.



The selection of ports and features is important on any laptop and it is even more important on a multimedia laptop because it increases the amount of devices that can be attached to the unit. For 1 14 inch laptop, this HP Pavilion certainly manages to impress as it comes with no less than 3 USB ports, an eSATA and USB combo port, an Express Card slot, the Ethernet port, a 5-in-1 multi format card reader, an Expansion port, a VGA out, a HDMI port, a Kensington lock slot and the regular headphones out and microphone in jacks. The combination between the HDMI port and the Blu-ray optical drive is certainly something we would love to see more often as we can now attach external HD TVs and enjoy HD movies on the Blu-ray drive right onto those beautiful plasma TVs.  As for the battery life, the unit manages to stay into the limits of the category average. The 6 cell battery will provide us with 3 hours and 25 minutes of laptop usage if we set the display brightness to 60% and activate the wireless card while we set the Windows power management on “power saver”. With a good selection of ports and good performance for quite an acceptable price, this notebook is definitely one of the best choices when it comes to small multimedia notebooks.