Acer Aspire 6935G 844G32Bn widescreen notebook

Launched in early 2008, Acer’s Gemstone Blue range of notebooks has recently been refreshed to include Intel’s Centrino 2 technology.

The first example of the updated line-up we have seen is the Aspire 6935G-844G32Bn, a stylish 16in desktop replacement notebook that is crammed with features – and at an attractive price, just under £1,000.

The Gemstone Blue design results in a stylish notebook.

The lid has a dark blue, high-gloss finish that is set off by a gloss black bezel and keyboard surround, with a matt black chassis bottom and grille above the keyboard.

The wristpad with its textured coating has been changed from the light grey finish of earlier models to a darker finish, making the whole thing look much classier when you open the lid.

Powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 (2.26GHz) processor, backed by 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 memory, the 6935G has plenty of power to deal with everyday tasks and scores a creditable 5,862 in PCmark05 and 3,822 in the PCmark Vantage benchmark.

Powering the graphics is a 512MB Nvidia 9600M GT, which does give a fair bit of games playing potential (6,321 in 3Dmark06), albeit at lower resolutions and detail setting, but the 6935G is aimed more at being a multimedia notebook than a gaming one and in this respect the 16in 1,366x768 pixel resolution screen, with its 16:9 aspect ratio, is just the thing for watching movies on. It may not be full HD, but it’s still good enough to watch DVD or Blu-ray movies using the built-in Blu-ray drive, or to watch TV on through the analogue/digital TV tuner card.

Aiding the movie or TV watching experience is the audio subsystem. Two speakers are hidden under the grille above the keyboard, while the subwoofer is cleverly built into the screen hinge and the system supports Dolby Home Theatre.

The keyboard has good responsive keys, but the controls for the Acer Cine Dash force it off centre – and for the most part the jury is still out on the Cine Dash. While it does a good job of controlling your media content with responsive, touch-sensitive controls, we would prefer the space to be taken up by moving the keyboard to the left and using the space on the right-hand side for a full numeric keypad.

The touchpad features vertical scrolling and is pleasantly responsive to use, something that is aided by using the same textured coating as the rest of the wristpad. Sitting under it are two fairly small mouse buttons separated by a small fingerprint reader.

Storage is provided by a 320GB 7,200rpm hard drive, which sounds a lot but once you start downloading TV programmes you will soon find that filling up fast, so it’s a good job the Blu-ray drive is also a DVD burner. Built into the underside of the front panel is a 7-in-1 Flash card reader for easy access to your photos.

In terms of connectivity, all the usual suspects are there to help connect the 6935G to the outside world; 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N wireless networking via an Intel Wifi Link 5100 card, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR – and a good old-fashioned modem.

Battery life is disappointing, but it’s debatable whether something that weighs 3.8kg (including power brick) will be carried around all day. When we tested with the latest version of Mobilemark 2007, the six-cell 4,400mAh battery gave a life of one hour, 51 minutes for the DVD Playback test, two hours, 34 minutes for the Productivity test and three hours, two minutes for the Reader test.

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