Full Review

Some realities associated with buying a budget laptop: low price always corresponds to low-level innards, mediocre build quality, and performance always comes at a price. This fact resonates true with the Acer Aspire 5738. At Rs. 39,000, it is merely 15% more costlier than the most inexpensive Dell Inspiron 15, and yet outclasses every other budget contender: be it performance, features, or design and usability. The Aspire 5738 has a 15.6-inch glossy screen, and runs on Windows Vista Home Premium. It is very well built and weighs an acceptable 2.7 kg. It's hardware is a notch above the rest: Core 2 Duo T6400 2-GHz processor, 3GB of DDR3 RAM, and a whopping 320GB hard drive. All the others in our Top 5 come with a mere 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. What's more, it also has an HDMI port, and the only budget laptop to have both Gigabit ethernet and draft-N Wi-Fi support. As a result of its superior innards, a WorldBench score of 83 is a mere formality. And it is equally impressive when you get down to using it, day in and day out. The Aspire 5738 has a chiclet-styled keyboard and a dedicated number pad, along with a multi-gesture touchpad. Working with the laptop, whether you're typing a long email or watching a movie, is a pleasant experience. We like the multi-gesture touchpad, and the nifty button to turn the touchpad off so you don't accidentally encroach it while typing. Seeing how laptop speakers aren't of the best quality, the Aspire 5738 definitely had pretty good onboard audio. Its battery lasted just under three hours in our benchmark tests, which is good for an entry-level laptop.

Bottom Line

The Acer Aspire 5738 is an excellent choice for a budget laptop. It has a very good set of features, build quality, and comes with Windows Vista Home Premium. Except gaming, it does pretty much everything else expected off a decent budget laptop.