CES 2010: Acer's Core i3, i5 Clad Budget Laptops

Joining the bandwagon including of Dell, Toshiba, Gateway and HP, Acer has now announced Core i3 and Core i5 loaded budget laptops. Two new Acer Aspire laptops include 15.6-inch AS5740 and 17-inch AS7740 which come clad with Intel Core i5-430M and Intel Core i3-330M respectively. Silently, both these laptops also carry ATI's upcoming Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series graphics.

Acer has decked its new "budget" Aspire laptops with its Gemstone Blue design. Both laptops come equipped with Intel's 32nm fabrication process made 'Arrandale' chips and AMD's Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series graphics that support DirectX 11. The Arrandale chips couple 32nm CPU core, 45nm integrated graphics controller and integrated memory controller on single chip die. These new Core i3 and Core i5 processors have Thermal Design Power rating of 35Watt.

Acer Aspire AS5740 has 15.6-inch HD Widescreen LED-backlit display with 16:9 aspect ratio and 1366x768 pixel resolution. This laptop packs 2.26GHz Intel Core i5-430 processor with 3MB L3 cache and 1066MHz. For the graphics punch, Acer packs ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 graphics with 1GB dedicated video memory. Acer offers 8X DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive for burning and reading optical media while AS7740 offers Blu-ray drive.

The Acer Aspire AS7740 comes with 17-inch HD Widescreen LED-backlit display with 16:9 aspect ration and supporting 1600x900 pixel resolution. This Aspire laptop is equipped with 32nm fabrication process made 2.13GHz Intel Core i3-330M processor with 3MB L3 Cache and 1066MHz FSB. Instead of new ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series graphics, the AS7740 has Intel GMA HD with 128MB dedicated video memory. Still, this laptop can be used to watch 1080p HD movies and videos.

Both notebooks have a few common specifications such as 64-bit Window 7 Home Premium, dual-channel 4GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM, 500GB SATA HDD, built-in Webcam, multi-gesture Touchpad, multi-in-1 multimedia card reader, Gigabit LAN port, Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), four USB 2.0 ports, and HDMI out.

Aspire AS5740 offers True 5.1-channel Surround Sound Output which is absent for AS7740. Both laptops come with 6-cell Li-Ion battery but AS5740 offers four hours of battery life while AS7740 offers 3.5 hours. This is bit surprising since the AS7740 doesn't have ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series graphics monster.

Both laptops would be available at price starting $750 (Rs.36,000 approx.) each and would be available from January 17 in U.S.



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