Acer Aspire Timeline

Looking sleek, thin and sexy!

Last week I was invited to the Acer Aspire Timeline bloggers event by Daphne Chui and Brian Koh from Ogilvy . It was held about 3 days before the official launch in Singapore at the usual geek hangout (Geek Terminal).
 

Good Point #1: Long battery life
When I arrived at the event, the presentation was already half-way through and my face was staring at this slide:

This slide really delighted me. See the loooong red bar on the 6-hour battery life category? That is what Acer’s product development team identified as the most important concern of consumers, and built a notebook focused heavily on that. The question then is whether they delivered.

I started playing with the laptops at around 8pm+ and was told the battery had been perpetually on Wifi since 6pm+. Check out the battery reading:

3 hours and 35 minutes remaining on dim brightness. This is really a power conserving laptop!
 

Good Point #2: Light Weight and Ultra Thin

Comparison of laptop thinness with my Dopod 818 Pro

Comparison between the 14″ and 13.3″ models of the laptop. Note that their weights are 1.9kg and 1.6kg respectively with the batteries attached.

Personally, I prefer the 13.3″ model as it is much thinner, lighter and sleeker than the 14″ with an equally long battery life. Somehow 1.9kg feels like a bit of a
 

Good Point #3: Super Cooling

The Acer Aspire Timeline uses the latest, cutting-edge Intel cooling technology which keeps the laptop super cool all the time. When I was there, the laptops had been on for quite a while and if you touch the bottom of the base, it is only slightly warm. They are going with the idea of users using their laptops on their lap without getting affected by the heat generated. I believe it is called the “Lap technology”?
 

Good Point #4: Saves the environment your electricity

According to the Acer employees, the Acer laptop is engineered to automatically stop charging when the battery has been fully charged. This saves up to 66% of power consumption which is quite a huge energy saver. Oh and the 8 hour+ battery life you see in the image above applies when you are not on full brightness and wifi.
 

Good Point #5: Convenient mouse gestures

The various mouse gestures supported

The engineers have thought about how the touchpad can become more convenient for users and came up with 3 basic gestures:

– Zoom in/out by sliding fingers in a curve left and right
– Alternate between a group of photos by sliding fingers left and right (usual iPhone stuff)
– Scrolling up and down a document by traversing through a spiral path (shown above). This is the most confusing gesture but they have an alternative gesture where you can slide your fingers up and down the right side of the touchpad.
 

Bad Point #1: Confusing Spec Sheets
They gave us some really confusing spec sheets which the tech guru Lester can’t understand either. He has done us the favor of scanning it in and uploading it here.

If I’m understanding the specs correctly, this laptop seems quite underpowered when compared to other current mainstream laptops. This may be a pay off for the longer battery life.
 

Bad Point #2: YouTube videos jerky??
I tried watching some videos from YouTube on both the 14″ and 13.3″ models and guess what? They were all jerky and laggy. I am not sure whether it was because the laptops were in power saving mode or the processor was just too weak to handle videos, but this is a HUGE negative point. Why would I want a laptop which I can’t watch videos on?!
 

Bad Point #3: Dolby Surround Sound

Dolby has become such a well-recognized industry standard for high quality sound to such an extent that I don’t know whether it would have been better for Acer if they did not highlight this in their specs. I played some songs on the laptop and yes, there was surround sound but the quality was not there. Although the bass support was good (most laptops in the market today don’t have bass support), the music came out muffled and unclear giving me a HUGE disappointment. As a result, listening to music on it was worse than on a laptop without Dolby Surround Sound. Maybe the sound would have been better on connected speakers and headphones?
 

Verdict
As you can see above, there are quite a number of pros and cons which may be beneficial/disadvantageous based on your usage and needs. If you’re looking for a laptop that is high on mobility, doesn’t have teenie weenie keyboards you can’t type on and don’t really care about the quality of entertainment you are getting, then the Acer Aspire Timeline is PERFECT for you. However, if you’re the entertainment and design/coder junkie like me, then you’d prefer to go for the average laptop that would give you more processing power.

Resources you might want to check out:
Review by Nicole
DK’s take on the notebook
Tech guru Lester’s thoughts

Other random photos while we were fooling around with the product: