Acer Aspire TimelineX 4820T review

It’s almost impossible to please everyone all of the time, but Acer’s Aspire TimelineX 4820T wants to do just that. By fusing the light-footed panache and class-leading stamina of the previous Aspire Timeline range with the power of Intel’s Core i5, Acer has sought to create a portable powerhouse for sensible money.

Take a good long, hard look at the Aspire TimelineX 4820T and you’d be liable to mistake it for a modestly equipped CULV laptop. It’s certainly impressively dainty. At just 2.07kg and measuring a mere 25mm thick, the TimelineX is highly portable for a 14in laptop, and it looks good with it. Brushed aluminium sweeps all around, the stylish black lid softening into a silver and glossy black two-tone effect on the inside.

Neither the Acer’s weight nor its size is liable to grab any headlines, but beneath its mild-mannered exterior there lies stunning potential. Where its predecessors all made do with Intel’s low-voltage processors, and paid the performance price, the Aspire TimelineX 4820T does nothing of the sort.

A full-fat Intel Core i5-430M processor barrels along at 2.26GHz, Turbo Boost punching it up to 2.53GHz when the occasion demands it, and Acer has obviously been practising its sleight of hand, as it’s managed to slip in dedicated ATI graphics too.

It certainly makes for stunning performance. Our application benchmarks were dispatched with an overall score of 1.56, but that isn’t the end of its talents. Thanks to the ATI Radeon HD 5650 graphics chipset, this laptop is also a capable gaming machine.

We had to push our Crysis benchmark all the way up to 1,600 x 1,200 resolution and High quality settings before the frame rate dipped to an unplayable level. For such a lightweight laptop, it’s immensely impressive.

What’s astounding, then, is that Acer has managed to combine breakneck speed with deep reserves of stamina. Switch over to the Intel HD graphics embedded in the Core i5-430M processor – a case of clicking the right mouse button and selecting the menu option – and the Acer will idle for more than nine hours before the battery gives out.

Swap back to the more powerful ATI chipset and push the Acer to its limits, and you’ll still get 1hr 42mins of use before the TimelineX comes limping back to the mains socket.