Acer recently introduced the AMD-powered Aspire 4520 laptop in India. This laptop is aimed towards the entry-level segment which attracts first-time laptop buyers and students. The 4520 is a 14.1-inch value notebook with good specifications and feature set. This laptop model is sold as-is and there is no customization provided from Acer’s end. So, one needs to make sure the specs are nice and the laptop has enough firepower to get through all of your daily applications.
This 2.6kg laptop does feature some interesting inclusions in the form of Dolby-certified surround sound system and the latest nVidia chipset and graphics. For a budget laptop, it does pack in some serious components which are usually not seen in budget systems. More on it later in this article.
Since this model is relatively new worldwide, we’ve tried to focus on providing detailed information with respect to design, usability, specs, build quality, software-support and user experience. The rigorous benchmarking for the laptop components will be done shortly and reflected in this article as soon as possible.
So, without wasting any time, let’s explore the Acer Aspire 4520 laptop.
Design & Build Quality:
The most noticeable thing on first sight is the shiny black lid of the notebook with trademark Acer logo. The design of the Aspire 4520 is based on the new “Gemstone” concept, a joint-creation of BMW’s designer team from DesignWorkUSA & Acer. A lot has been said about the new design and now we see why.
Open the lid, and you’re greeted with pearl-white interiors. Everything from the keyboard, the palm rest and the touchpad is white. The feel is rich and you generally associate such designs from uber-pricey laptop models. Considering this is a budget laptop, no one would mind a bit of style and elegance except for business users. It’s a personal preference in the end. We were happy with the looks and Acer’s color preference. The laptop can be closed easily as Acer uses magnetic the approach. It stays shut tightly the moment you bring the lid closer to the flat horizontal surface. One has to use both the hands to open the lid. The shiny lid also fingerprints very easily. Though it can be wiped off easily, it’s a bit annoying.
Left Side: (From left-to-right)
15-pin VGA port to connect to external monitor/LCD
S-Video Out to connect laptop to a TV-set
IEEE 1394 FireWire
Ethernet Port (LAN)
56k Modem
2x USB ports
5-in-1 memory card reader (SD, MMC, MS, MS PRO, xD)
ExpressCard/54 slot (above card reader)
Right: (From left-to-right)
8x DVD Burner
2xUSB 2.0 ports
Power-Jack
Kensington Lock Slot
Infrared reciever
Sounds ports (Line-in jack, microphone in jack, and line-out jack)
Volume Control meter (free flowing - doesn’t stop in either direction)
What lies below:
Specifications:
Here’s a quick look at the specs of this modest laptop. This model of Acer Aspire 4520 sports the following:
- AMD (Turion) Athlon 64 X2 Processor - TK-53 (1.7GHz, 512kB L2 Cache combined)
- Nvidia nForce 610M chipset
- Nvidia GeForce 7000M onboard graphics capable of up to 256MB VRAM (shared)
- 1GB DDR2 667MHz RAM (512MBx2)
- 160GB 5400RPM 2.5-inch SATA HDD
- 8x DVD Burner with Dual Layer Support
- 14.1-inch WideScreen Acer CrystalBrite LCD (glossy display) capable of 1280×800 resolution
- 802.11b/g WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet
- Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
- 5-in-1 multiple card reader (SD, MMC, MS, MS PRO, xD)
- Integrated Acer Crystal Eye webcam (VGA/0.3 megapixel)
- S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) output for digital speakers
- ExpressCard Slot (Express Card/54)
- 6-cell Li-ion battery
- Dimensions: 342 (W) x 247 (D) x 35/38 (H) mm
- Weight: 2.67Kg
- Warranty: 1-year Internation Traveler’s Warranty from Acer.
As you can see, this laptop doesn’t have any weak link in the hardware it comes with. The TK-53 processor is the new mobile processor for S1-socket from AMD based on the 65nm fabrication process (code-named Tyler). It’s 64-bit capable too, so using this laptop with 64-bit operating systems is also possible. This is the only place where AMD beats Intel. Their budget processor offerings are feature rich and very affordable which help to keep the price of laptop down.The 1GB 667 MHz RAM, 8x DVD Burner, 160GB HDD with integrated Bluetooth 2.0 module make this laptop a very killer deal. You won’t need to spend any extra penny to make this laptop the best choice for you. It’s so directly! By far, this is the best deal in the market currently. Not only it has good secondary configuration with respect to RAM, HDD, Optical Drive, Connectivity; it’s a fairly new model based on the latest AMD processor and Nvidia chipse+graphics. New is undoubtedly better than previous generation offerings in this case.
Graphics:
The onboard 7000M nvidia graphics is very basic. It’s strictly for running Aero on Vista and some casual gaming of some older titles. Don’t expect much from these chips and you’d be happy. The graphics core is DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 compliant with support for nVidia PureVideo technology and clock speed of 300MHz. There is no hardware support to help with HD playback due to the use of nForce 610M chipset. The PowerMizer technology helps to improve the battery life of the notebook.
LCD:
The display LCD screen is a glossy one with WXGA (1280×800 resolution). Quite standard for a budget laptop and more than enough for most needs. It has enough screen real-estate which the users will need for common office-tasks, presentations and general usage. The glossy screen is always annoying but you learn to live with it after some time. The images are very crisp on the display. Brightness is on the higher side, one needs to lower it down to suit your requirements. Lowering the brightness helps from the battery-life point of view too. The viewing angles are extremely poor from top/bottom. Thankfully, it gets better from left/right. Light leakage (at both the top and bottom of the screen) is there but it’s not that alarming. No dead pixels were found. Even if you find, there is little you can do because getting a replacement on this criteria is quite a task.
The LCD screen used in this laptop is an AUO-manufactured one.
Webcam & Microphone:
The Acer Cystel Eye webcam is located right at the top, above the screen. When the webcam is under use, a tiny green LED light turns out right next to it. Nothing much can be expected from the webcam, it works and is good-enough for casual video conferencing. The bundled software which helps to bring the best out from the webcam allows to take pictures only. Support for video recording is not present. The microphone quality is really worth mentioning. The sound recorded from it was very true and clear. Somehow, the background noice/echo was minimum. Seems almost similar in performance with the Altec Lansing 502i headset.
Speakers:
The speakers are the USP of the new design as they are Dolby-certified. The sound quality is better than most other laptop speakers. On most laptop speakers, the sound is tinny and not sufficiently loud. But that’s not the case with two built-in ‘Acer 3DSonic stereo’ speakers. You won’t be disappointed with the sound, enough said! Not only it’s sufficiently loud, there is some depth and a bit of bass to ‘feel’ the music. Even at max volume, the sound delivered is true unlike other laptops which are only good up to 50% volume. This makes the 4520 sport the best speakers on a laptop out there. The free flowing scroll wheel for volume at the front of the laptop is handly to increase/decrease the volume swiftly.
Heat & Noise:
The laptop runs very quiet even at none or up to moderate loads. The fans kick in under high load and only then the fan’s noice gets audible. Well within tolerable limits. The DVD burner however is very noisy and produces a lot of vibrations when it’s reading some optical media. After 1 or 2 hours of continous usage on the table, it does get warm. Especially underneath the laptop, just below the battery and centre. But that’s just about it. Nothing serious about it considering it uses the onboard graphics chip for video. If you plan to use it for long hours like a desktop, considering buying a cheap USB-notebook cooler. It really helps to keep the notebook cool regardless of the runtime.
Keyboard & Touchpad:
If you’re a laptop user already, switching to the Aspire 4520 won’t be a herculian task. The size is pretty much standard of what laptops feature. Within no time you get adjusted to its layout. Having used Acer laptops in the past, the keyboard featured on this model is radically different. We’re not talking just about the use of white color. It’s not curved as some earlier keyboards of Acer laptops were - to bring in ‘ergononics’. The text marking are etched in black color on the white keys, so there are no readability issues. The second use of a key, is highlighted in a cool shade of blue. The keyboard is a bit cramped near the arrow keys. Usually the space left and right of the up-arrow key is left blank so there are no accidental presses. But Acer has provided the Euro and Dollar key there. You just have to be a bit more careful due to this.
The touchpad is very near to the funny-shaped Space key. There is no distinct physical separation in the form of some gap or barriers betweek the space bar key & the touchpad. Due to this, while typing one can easily trigger the sensor on touchpad which may lead to some errors. The pressing of the touchpad keys does produce some clicking noice. Otherwise, the touchpad was very responsive and felt durable.
Acer offers a nice feature-set of additional keys in addition to the Fn+combo options. One can switch off the LCD, choose between external monitor or the laptops display , mute/enable voice and switch-off touchpad easily. In addition, Acer provides LED lights for HDD activity/ Caps and NUM lock status on the top left. The power button is right at the top-centre with an attractive blue light around it when the laptop is running. Bluetooth and WiFi LEDs are the bottom side and can be seen even when the lid is closed. The green-colored “e” button triggers the Acer Empowering software in Windows. About five other shortcut keys are found just below the Power button for mail, web browser, etc. These are also user configurable via the bundled software.
Battery life:
The laptop comes with a 6-cell 4800 mAh Li-ion battery. With some casual websurfing, a 30-mins audio playback, software installation and word processing; the laptop lasted nearly 2 hours. Quite decent for a budget laptop. If you tweak a litte, additional 15 minutes or so of usage can be extracted from the laptop’s battery.
Benchmarks:
As mentioned in the specs, this laptop features the new 65nm based TK-53 processor. It is no match to the Core 2 Duo’s. Intel continues to hold the performance crown. But the TK-53 does manage to better the Core Duo processors which is evident from the SiSoft Sandra Processor Arithmetic benchmarks. The Memory Bandwidth is around 4000MB/s.
Vista’s Windows Experience Index score for this laptop turned out to be 2.5 It is determined from the lowest sub-score from the values for Processor, Memorym Graphics, Gaming Graphics and HDD transfer rates. Since this laptop features onboard graphics, a low score in the gaming graphics sub-score was expected and that was exactly the case.
Software Issues:
The Acer Aspire 4520 comes pre-installed with some basic Linux (which is also named as Basic Edition) distribution. The choice of Linux was to keep the laptop’s end price down. The driver and recovery CDs feature the Acer software suite and device drivers for Windows Vista. If you can live with the shiny new version of Microsoft’s latest operating system, then all is fine.
If you are a Windows XP fanatic, you will run in to a lot of problems. Although, the Windows XP installation ran smoothly, the problems started to crop up when we decided to install one device driver after another. The drivers on the Acer UK and Acer’s China site were all downloaded. Initially, we had trouble installing even the basic chipset drivers from nvidia. Thankfully, the nvidia website had some solution. Then we managed to get the video drivers working too. The next restart revealed XP running on the native 1280×800 resolution crystal clear. Bluetooth drivers weighed a good 90-odd MB but the installation went fine. There were two separate driver models for webcam and WiFi. Apparently, components from different manufacturers were used to build this laptop. So, getting the drivers to work required some trial and errors. But, most of the components were up and ready to work. The sound drivers played unfair all along. Nothing helped! Nor the Vista drivers, XP drivers from the China website and neither did the Realtek’s solution from their official website. By this time, we gave up on XP and Aspire 4520 duo. Somethings are just meant not meant to be together. At this point of time, XP is not gonna happen on 4520, taking into consideration all these issues. Average user will get lost surely. Some users on the web claim to have got XP running well with all the devices working from the driver locations we hinted above, but we were not so lucky.
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