Acer budget laptops pack Blu-ray

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22 Jun 09 19:11 by Jared Newman in category Notebooks/Laptops To news archive

Acer’s latest line of Gemstone Blue laptops are interesting for a few reasons, but none more than the inclusion of a Blu-ray player inside a $750 notebook.

The Acer Aspire AS5739G has a combo 8x Blu-ray and DVD drive, with a 15.6-inch screen, stereo speakers and a bass booster. There’s also 5.1-channel output for surround sound, according to several reports. Other specs include an Intel Core2 Duo T6500 processor, Nvidia’s GeForce GT130M graphics card, 4GB of RAM and a 250 GB hard drive.At $749.99, the AS5739G undercuts Sony to become the cheapest Blu-ray laptop on the market. Last week, Sony unveiled the VAIO VGN-NW180, which costs $880 and includes a BD-ROM drive and BD-Live. It also has an HDMI output, which Sony is pushing as a way to turn the notebook into a portable Blu-ray player.

It’s not clear whether Acer’s laptop has HDMI or which Blu-ray profile is being used. High-definition output could be crucial, because the difference between DVD and Blu-ray is negligable on a 15-inch screen. BD-Live isn’t quite as important because, well, a PC can do the whole interactive Internet thing on its own.

The Acer Blu-ray laptop ships at the end of June. If Sony’s VAIO VGN-NW180 sounds more interesting, it’ll ship in a couple of weeks.

3 Comments

CDR Sam
Posts: 225
Posted on: 22 Jun 09 22:42
look out I'm first in line! Oh wait no one else is with me?
ferd
Posts: 243
Posted on: 23 Jun 09 11:58
Notebookcheck says the GT130M graphics card supports "HDMI up to 1920x1200", which would work fine on your full-size HDTV. However, the laptop display itself only handles 1300 x 768, which is also probably just fine for a 15-inch display.
rexroach
Posts: 60
Posted on: 25 Jun 09 21:40
the question on my lips is, as cheapo laptops have notoriously poor battery charge till empty times, has this got enough juice to actually play a film on one charge ?

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