Acer Aspire 5738G

Full Review

On the exterior, the only difference between the Acer Aspire 5738G and Acer Aspire 4736 is the form factor. The Aspire 5738G's 15.6-inch glossy screen is encased in a glossy blue screen lid, and the rest of the chassis is textured gray. While the Acer Aspire 4736 holds it water in terms of look in the budget section, the Aspire 5738G looks dull and boring compared to the Dell Studio 15, Dell Inspiron 14z, and the Lenovo Ideapad Y450. At 2.8-kg, the Aspire 5738G is also the heaviest laptop of the bunch, and not the easiest to lug around.

Its specs are in line with the Dell Studio 15--a Core 2 Duo 2.2-GHz processor, 4GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive and a GeForce G105M graphics card. It supports Draft-N Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI--but eSATA and FireWire ports (which the Studio 15 has) are omitted on the 5738G. Unique to the Aspire 5738G is a fingerprint reader and a multi-gesture touchpad which lets you flick and zoom through images and documents. It also has a full chiclet-styled keyboard with a dedicated numberpad--something which the Dell Studio 15 misses out on. There's even a nifty button to switch the touchpad on-off.

The Aspire 5738G performed well through WorldBench 6 and our gaming benchmarks. Its screen was good to look at, onboard audio wasn't disappointing. It had no problem playing HD content either--both 720p and 1080p files. But the Aspire 5738G didn't compare to watching movies on the Ideapad Y450, which had a superior audio-visual experience. And its battery life didn't quite compare to that on the Inspiron 14z.

Bottom Line

Having said that, the Acer Aspire 5738G is still a very good laptop. It may not be as light or good looking as some other laptops, but it performs well and comes with a decent feature set. Consider buying this for its large screen, full keyboard, and multigesture touchpad.