Updated 13 hours ago

Acer Aspire Timeline 5810T review

Maybe not the most powerful of laptops, the 5810T's battery life is ahead of the pack

Our Score 4

Last reviewed: 2009-07-14July 14th 2009

acer-aspire-timeline-5810t

The Acer Aspire Timeline 5810T makes short work of HD video with the HD ready screen

Though the Acer 5810T boasts a large 15.6 inch screen, its light and thin build means that you won't be bogged down by this laptop when you're taking it out and about.

The 5810T's body is an attractive metallic grey made out of plastic that while sturdy, is light enough to keep the weight of the laptop to around 2.4 kg.

The big feature of the 5810T is the large battery life. Acer is keen for this laptop to be used for 'all day computing'.

Whilst it won't manage a whole day of heavy use away from a power supply, the 5810T can manage around seven hours – which is still a fantastic length for a laptop's battery life.

Performance wise the laptop runs Windows Vista Home Premium smoothly, though a few programs became unresponsive during our test. Most of the time running multiple programs at once barely made it pause, thanks to the 3GB of RAM that comes with the machine.

Although it can't run the latest and most demanding games, it will certainly manage recent games on medium graphical settings. Media playback isn't a problem, with the built-in speakers offering pretty good sound.

Video playback, both standard and high-definition – was very good, with the images reproduced clearly on the decent screen. The 5810T comes with a HDMI output, so if you have a high-definition TV you can play your video files though that. Although this is hardly an essential feature, it's certainly a nice one to have, and adds to the overall value of the laptop.

Acer has been generous with the other outputs as well, including four USB 2.0 ports, VGA monitor port and a wired network port. Wireless networking is built into the laptop, so you can surf the internet throughout your house. A DVD RW multi drive rounds off the features set – though with the HDMI port it would have been nice to have a Blu-ray drive included.

If you are going to be using the Aspire Timeline 5810T for work, rather than play, then you will find the full sized keyboard - with number pad – comfortable to use for long periods of time. The flat keys on the keyboard initially take some getting used to – at first it feels a bit like typing on Scrabble tiles – but the keys are nice and big, letting you type fast if you're in a hurry.

The track pad for controlling the cursor on screen has nice multi-touch functionality, giving you some of the cool features (such as dragging your two fingers apart to zoom in on an image) that are usually found in high-end touch-screen monitors.

Overall this is a nice, reasonably powerful laptop, whose light weight and large battery life means it is a great companion for working on in the great outdoors.

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Your comments (2) Click to add a new comment

benschutt


February 6th 2010

2. Wonderful machine, it does it all! It's thin, light, sufficiently fast, attractive, easy to use, and lasts all day...practically.

It's got a huge screen and a number pad, wonderful! Fits into a backpack no problem, and is very space friendly.

The only thing is...don't drop it! I've now got this annoying line running down the screen with no fix. Also the keypad seems to have separated from the computer in the upper right corner since day one. I've been ignoring it, pushing the "end" button down so the keyboard will snap back into place...until I pick up the computer to move it and, pop! the keyboard has separated again. Annoying yes, deal breaker? Not really.

Today I was in my car working on the laptop. The sun was shining directly on the upper portion of the screen for some time. I noticed after some time that the back plastic border above the screen was warping. The plastic had heated from the sun and was separating from the machine! I know Arizona is a hot place, but we're in winter right now; it can't be that hot.

Bottom line is this computer is wonderful, but maybe I need something a little more durable. It seems to be falling apart in my hands!

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ramsay.k


November 18th 2009

1. Acer should be on a winner with the new set of time if this Aspire 15in 5810T is anything to go by. It is useful to light, has a wide range of practical features such as 802.11n wireless, DVD burner, USB ports galore video and digital output. The 15.6in widescreen display belies the weight of the laptop only 2.3 kg and with a power efficient processor double heart to her heart, she is more than twice the speed of the fastest netbook can actually chewing creative tasks. More information from here as well: http://www.techarena.in/review/17423-acer-aspire-5810t-timeline.htm

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Product Summary

Aspire Timeline 5810T

Acer Aspire Timeline 5810T

Price at launch

£560.00

For

>

Long battery life

>

Slim and light

Against

>

Not that powerful

>

Keyboard takes getting used to

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