Acer Aspire 7736Z-4809

When you first see the Acer Aspire 7736Z-4809's large chassis and attractive 17-inch screen you expect it to be a multimedia and gaming monster. That is until you catch its $550 price tag. Unlike ultra-powerful media and gaming laptops equipped with blazing fast SLI graphics, Intel Extreme dual core processors, and price tags well into the thousands, the Acer Aspire 7736Z-4809 uses a more conservative Intel processor and integrated graphics. That's not a bad thing. The Aspire is still more than capable of running your everyday applications quickly, and at only $150 more than the average netbook, it is one of the most affordable laptops around for those looking for a big screen.

Design
The Aspire 7736Z-4809, like the smaller 15.4-inch Acer Aspire 5738DG-6165, is part of Acer's Gemstone series. While the glossy navy blue lid and neon-blue glowing LED lights under the hood were fresh when Acer launched the design a year and a half ago, it's a bit dated now compared with some of the better looking systems like the HP Pavilion dv7-2170us. Like all 17-inch notebooks, the Aspire 7736Z-4809 isn't meant for the tray table, but is destined to find a semi-permanent home on a desk or kitchen counter. Measuring 16.2-by-10.8-by-1.7 inches (HWD) and weighing 7.1 pounds, the Aspire is not small and is comparable in size and weight to other 17-inch laptops like the Dell Studio 1737 (s1737-USE0145). Again, you won't want to carry the laptop on your back, but it is easy enough to tote from room-to-room.



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The feature that first catches your eye is the Aspire 7736Z-480917's glossy, 17.3-inch 1600 x 900 resolution widescreen display. Although you don't get a Blu-ray drive bundled with this $550 notebook (there is a standard definition DVD player), watching a downloaded 720p clip of dolphins from Microsoft's HD gallery looked bright and crisp. Similarly watching an episode of 30 Rock on Hulu.com was clear and extremely smooth. Beyond the screen's rich colors, I enjoyed taking advantage of the added screen real estate and kept multiple windows open side-by-side while writing this review.

The Aspire 7736Z-4809 like the Aspire AS5738DG has an island style keyboard design, where each key is isolated from another and slightly raised. The keys are comfortable and are easy to type on, though having them slightly raised may result in crumbs or dust finding their way beneath the keys. The laptop is wide enough that it includes an adjacent numeric keypad.

The touchpad supports the same multi-touch gestures as the Aspire 5738DG and were easy enough to get working. Pinching the pad zoomed in on Web pages and images quickly. It doesn't support two-finger scrolling all that well, but that is okay since it has a dedicated scroll bar to the right of the pad. The mouse buttons, however, make distracting clicking noises.

Features
The Aspire 7736Z-4809 has the usual set of features found in any budget desktop replacement, including HDMI-Out, four USB ports, VGA-Out, Gigabit Ethernet port, and a 5-in-1 media card reader. In a video-call over Skype, the VGA-resolution Webcam didn't provide the clearest images, but was good enough to recognize the person. Its Dolby speakers on the other hand, were loud enough to hear from over 20 feet away. The 320GB hard drive is spacious and consistent in capacity to many of the other budget desktop replacements on the market, though the $730 Dell Inspiron 1750 (2211MBU) comes with 500GB. Connecting to the Internet was quick and easy in Windows 7 Home Premium and the system's 802.11b/g/Draft-N Wi-Fi card loaded sites quickly.


Performance
Acer achieves the real savings on the Aspire 7736Z-4809 with its budget performance parts including a dual core 2.1 GHz Intel Pentium T4300 processor, integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics and 4GB of RAM. While it's fast enough to handle the majority of multimedia tasks and easily run everyday productivity application, it isn't the best for heavy photo or video editing. According to the benchmark test results, the Dell Inspiron 1750 using an Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 processor, runs faster. The Dell 1750 beat the Aspire 7736Z-4809 on multitasking, video encoding and Cinebench R10 tests, as well. That said users won't notice much of a difference while running day-to-day applications like a Web browser.

When it comes to gaming and 3D performance, the Aspire 7736Z-4809's Intel integrated graphics cannot keep up with those laptops that even have midrange graphics cards. While the system played back a DVD and 720p .wmv HD clip simultaneously without a problem, those looking for a budget system with better graphics and faster frame rates for gaming should take a look at the $799 HP Pavilion dv7 (2173cl), which packs an ATI graphics card.

The Aspire 7736Z, using a six-cell battery, lasted 3 hours and 32 minutes, which is average and quite similar to the Dell Studio 1737, which ran 4:08 on the same test. By comparison, the HP HDX18t, which has more powerful Nvidia graphics, only lasts two and a half hours on a charge.

The Aspire 7736Z-4809 is ideal for people looking for a laptop with a big screen that can handle everyday computing tasks like surfing the Web, downloading photos and music, and running Office applications and Windows 7. Those willing to shell out an extra $180 can pick up the Dell Inspiron 1750 (2211MBU), which has better performance scores, a half an hour more of juice, and more hard drive space. However, if you are only running productivity applications and living in the Cloud you won't really notice the performance jump.

It might not be the fastest, flashiest laptop, but for $550, the Acer Aspire 7736Z-4809 has the benefit of a large 17-inch widescreen and plenty of other features that once-upon-a-time cost double the price.