Acer's Aspire 5742G is a 15.6in laptop that offers good performance and battery life in a surprisingly light body. It's comfortable to use and it feels well built. We think it's a good all-rounder that can be used by students, home users and even business users for tasks ranging from office work to video editing and even a little bit of gaming Acer's Aspire 5742G is a 15.6in laptop that's big, but not all that heavy. It weighs only 2.4kg and it actually feels light when you hold it in your hands.
It's a well-balanced notebook with a nice design, it performed well in our tests, and it has good battery life considering its large size. We think it would definitely suit a student looking for a good all-round notebook for Web browsing, running productivity applications, accessing multimedia files, and even a little gaming.
Performance And Battery Life
The Aspire 5742G runs a Core i3 370M 2.4GHz chip with an Nvidia GeForce GT 420M GPU. This gives access to the Optimus technology--that is, when the Nvidia card is not needed for hefty 3D or movie work, it switches to the Intel graphics to save on battery life.
3DMark06 brought in a score of 6,713, less than the AMD-powered Aspire 5552G, but it's still a respectable result, which allows the 5742G to play some modern games at modest settings. PCMark05 came a little under the 5552G as well, scoring 5,784, meaning that while it should be fine at office and productivity tasks, it's not as powerful as the AMD alternative.
Where the 5742G really came into its own was battery life. With all power-saving features turned off, screen brightness and volume set to maximum and an Xvid file played back, the laptop lasted 2 hours 24 minutes and 29 seconds before going into hibernation.
Acer 5742G Notebook Hardware Details:
• Processor : Intel Core i5-460M Mobile Processor (3MB Intel Smart Cache, 2.53GHz)
• Chipset : Mobile Intel HM55 Express
• Memory : Up to 3GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Storage : Up to 500GB SATA hard drive, 5400RPM
• Video : NVIDIA GeForce 420M graphics
• Audio : Integrated microphone,Integrated monospeaker,Highdefinitionaudiosupport,Headphones/speaker
• Interface Ports : DC-in,RJ-45 LAN,VGA,Headphones/speaker/line-out,Microphone
• Card Slot : 2-in-1 card reader supports optional MultiMediaCard or Secure Digital (SD) card
• Dimensions & Weight : Acer CineCrystal 15.6″ (1366 x 768) TFT display
• Power : AS5742 and AS5742Z models: 65-watt AC adapter,AS5742G models: 90-watt AC adapte
• Compliance : ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) 3.0Energy Star
• price $750
