Acer Aspire Timeline 4810T

Full Review

Will a slim, 14-inch laptop, with unmatched battery life and mediocre performance float the boat of potential mainstream customers? The folks at Acer think so, and are certain of it. And after a lot of internal debate, we think it may well do so. The Acer Aspire 4810T—the T stands for Acer's Timeline series—is less than an inch thick, with its screen lid closed. And it also comes with a DVD writer in that slim form factor. Weight isn't an issue as well, as the thing weighs just 2-kg, by far the lightest laptop in this category. It just looks like an ultraportable laptop more than a mainstream, bullky laptop.

The picture at its processor level isn't very rosy, though. The Aspire 4810T runs off an Intel ULV (ultra-low voltage) Core 2 Solo 1.4-GHz processor. To complement the processor, there's 2GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 320GB hard drive. Due to the slow processor alone, nothing can save the Aspire 4810T from nose-diving in the performance charts, when compared to others like HP Pavilion dv4 and Dell Studio XPS 13. A WorldBench score of 56 is slower than regular 2-GHz Core 2 Duo-based laptops we've reviewed. But there's a better flip-side to the slow processor. It's 6-cell battery lasts well over its claimed mark of 8 hours, which is simply excellent coming from a mainstream laptop. Acer's focus is clear: the Aspire 4810T is meant for people who require more than 8 hours of battery life and easy portability with a slim laptop.

And it comes with Windows Vista Home Basic, as well. What that means is you can still do most day-to-day work on it, and watch movies, too. Just don't do too many things at once, and you'll be fine. The 14-inch screen can display a maximum screen resolution of 1366x768. It is very well stacked in terms of features: it has all the input-output ports, a DVD Writer, Gigabit ethernet, Draft-N Wi-Fi, HDMI, even an SPDIF port. The Aspire 4810T has a very good chiclet-styled keyboard and a multi-gesture touchpad that is very convenient to use. A very good laptop, overall.

Bottom Line

The Acer Aspire 4810T is easily the most slimmest and lightweight notebook of the bunch. Performance is not its strongest point, but buy this for its unmatched battery life of over 8 hours and excellent ultraportability.