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Acer Aspire TimelineX 4830T review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £479
inc VAT

A budget laptop that’s small in size, but big on battery life – if you need an optical drive, the 4830T is a great choice

With anticipation building over Intel’s new Ultrabook category, which lays down a specification for thin and lightweight laptops, now might seem like an odd time to launch a traditional ultraportable laptop. However, in many ways Acer’s TimelineX 4830T makes a lot of sense. A 14in screen and internal DVD optical drive could make this the ideal traveling companion for someone that can’t do without physical discs.

Acer Aspire TimelineX

The laptop’s metallic blue chassis, offset by the silver keyboard tray and black keys, looks great. Unsurprisingly for a 14in model, there’s no separate numeric keypad, but the QWERTY keyboard is at least full size. The home, page up and down and end keys have been relocated to the side of the keyboard tray and the function keys have shrunk a little, but we still found typing to be a trouble-free experience. Each key had a springy action and more than enough travel. The touchpad was also pleasant to use, thanks to a smooth plastic finish that creates little friction and two separate buttons with just the right amount of resistance.

Acer Aspire TimelineX keyboard

Despite their being labelled as ‘professionally-tuned’, we still weren’t overly impressed with the Dolby Home Theatre-branded stereo speakers directly above the keyboard. They didn’t sound a whole lot different to any other laptop speaker, with only an average amount of volume, sharp high-end notes and a lack of bass.

Image quality on the 14in glossy screen was reasonable, but hardly breath-taking. A 1,366×768 resolution is average for a display of this size, and although text looked sharp, it isn’t ideal for working on two documents at once. Brightness wasn’t particularly high, even at its maximum setting, and colours were slightly muted. Viewing angles were about what we would expect from a TN LCD panel, but the large amount of screen tilt should help make up for any shortcomings here.

Acer Aspire TimelineX left

Considering its svelte footprint, we were pleased to see that Acer hasn’t skimped out on connectivity with the 4830T. Beyond the internal DVD re-writer, there are two regular USB ports, one faster USB3 port, HDMI and VGA video outputs, 3.5mm audio jacks for headphone out and microphone in and a multi-format card reader. Bluetooth is another welcome inclusion, as we’ve known Acer to leave this out of its budget machines in the past.

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Basic Specifications

Rating****
ProcessorIntel Core i3-2310M
Processor clock speed2.1GHz
Memory3.00GB
Memory slots2
Memory slots free0
Maximum memory8GB
Size27x338x238mm
Weight2.2kg
SoundConexant High Definition Audio
Pointing devicetouchpad

Display

Viewable size14 in
Native resolution1,366×768
Graphics ProcessorIntel HD 3000 Graphics
Graphics/video portsHDMI, VGA
Graphics Memory1,333MB

Storage

Total storage capacity320GB
Optical drive typeDVD+/-RW +/-DL

Ports and Expansion

USB ports3
Bluetoothyes
Wired network ports1x 10/100/1000
Wireless networking support802.11n
PC Card slotsnone
Supported memory cardsSDXC, Memory stick Pro, MMC, XD
Other portsminijack audio output, minijack microphone input, 1x USB3

Miscellaneous

Carrying caseNo
Operating systemWindows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Operating system restore optionrestore partition
Software includedMicrosoft Office 2010 Starter Edition, Acer Clear.Fi
Optional extrasnone

Buying Information

Warrantyone year collect and return
Price£479
Detailswww.acer.co.uk
Supplierhttp://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk