Acer Aspire 4810T Review

Coming in at 338 x 240 x 24 the Acer Aspire 4810t fits into the ultra portable market. Ports include three USB 2.0, HDMI and VGA, Gigabit Ethernet, audio in and out, 7 in 1 Card reader along with a tray loading DVD burner. Now for such a small machine that’s a lot of connectivity, considering most ultra portables would of have ditched the DVD drive.

Under the hood you will find an Intel Core 2 Solo ULV U3500 at 1.4GHz coupled with 3GB of DDR3 RAM, a 250GB hard drive and Windows Vista Home Premium. In terms of wireless connectivity you have access to Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. The display in the meantime offers a 14” HD screen with a resolution of 1366x768 that is LED backlit for an ultra bright and crisp screen.

An area that undoubtedly needed more work was the screen. For common use it is fine with it being very bright without any bleed.  Despite that, viewing angles are somewhat inferior. Yet come to think about it, for what this machine will be used for the high majority of people will not give it a second thought.

I was very impressed with the modern full sized chicklet keyboard that allowed for very fast typing. However it was apparent that there was a lot of flex when using the outer edges that gave the impression of poor build quality. There’s obviously no room for a numeric keypad, but the layout is respectable with multimedia controls on the right.

The track pad however was all in all a joy to use. With its large surface area you are quickly and easily able to navigate the screen, and with just the right texture which allows your finger to glide over the surface without being too “smooth”. The traditional two buttons have been replaced by one long button giving an easier user experience with the buttons being intuitive.

Now consider that you’ll probably end up looking at this laptop for the most of the day you probably will want some design perks. To be honest the use of Dark Grey, Grey and Black may not suite everyone’s design taste, nevertheless it still came across as a modern looking laptop and simply cuts the crap with curves, lights and every other hated bling. Consequently the 4810T comes across as more of a business laptop rather than a consumer laptop.

As for battery life I was expecting Acers claim of 8+ Hours to be pushing the line, yet I stood wrong. With the machine idling with screen brightness set to full I achieved 8.2 hours and when typing up this review with Wi-Fi on I attained just under 7.5 hours. Which is still admirable. So a solid days work with a little to spare on the train journey home. Playing a movie file will indefinitely reduce the life of the battery reaching an average of 4 hours.

Generally speaking, speakers found in any computer offer pretty poor audio quality and the ones found here are of no exception. Way below average. Yet Acer has provided us with Dolby Sound Room and S/PDIF support that provides phenomenal audio quality. Even better quality than machines costing over £1,000. With no hissing or cracking listening to music or watching movies on the go has become a joy again.

Having been a little weary about using a single core processer with Windows Vista I ended up somewhat blown away with the performance this offers. It wont be the next gaming machine or the best device to play HD video, yet it simply gets the job done. So consider the excellent battery life, reasonable performance and great keyboard you have a real competitor of the MacBook Air.

So overall I was very impressed with the Acer Aspire 4810T delivering great performance for productivity work and fairly good build quality. The main factors that really let the 4810T down was the inability to play any HD video without stutter as well as the poor viewing angles. Thus far for £510 it may be a challenge to find a better machine.

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