Acer's Aspire 5551G: AMD's Budget Gaming Laptop
by Jarred Walton on November 27, 2010 12:00 AM ESTBattery Life
We've run our usual gamut of battery tests, and here the 5551G clearly falls short of the competition. Toshiba and HP both have AMD laptops with switchable graphics, and shutting off the HD 5650 dGPU on the Toshiba A660D looks to improve battery life by perhaps 18% in our best-case result. That's actually not as large a gap as we expected, but the results that really hurt AMD all come from Intel laptops—with or without dedicated graphics. Here's a look at some of the latest laptops and how they compare to the 5551G.
Idle battery life is the optimal result you can get, and we've even removed "unnecessary" applications and utilities so we're running a clean setup with no firewall or anti-virus software. In such a configuration, the 5551G nets just over 3.5 hours of battery life. That's not horrible, considering the paltry (but typical) 48Wh battery, but the problem is with Internet usage—a far more realistic scenario. Here the 5551G drops to a bit more than 2.5 hours, and for movie playback it just misses the two hour mark. It's not the end of the world, but without the use of AMD's IGP we're certainly not going to catch Optimus-enabled laptops.
If we compare with the older Acer 5740G (which was likewise discontinued far too quickly for our likes!), battery life is generally a wash. The 5740G had slightly lower idle and Internet battery life but tied in x264 battery life. As another comparison point, Dell's Studio 14 with an Intel CPU and a discrete GPU (granted, it's a slower HD 5470 GPU) manages five hours of idle battery life and 4.5 hours of Internet use, though it also suffers in the x264 test with a result of just 2.5 hours. If we account for the larger 56Wh battery in the Studio 14, Intel's platform with HD5470 is still leading the AMD P520+5650 by 18-49% depending on workload. How much of that comes from the difference in GPU? It's tough to say for sure, but we suspect Dell may have spent a bit more time optimizing for battery life.
Ultimately, when we factor in the much higher CPU performance that Core 2010 offers relative to AMD's processors, it's easy to see why most laptop manufacturers aren't keen on shipping us AMD-based laptops. If you want performance, Intel's Core 2010 parts win easily; Intel also dominates in performance per watt (ULV) and pure battery life (Atom). But then, AMD wins with a better IGP and typically far more affordable prices (outside of Atom netbooks, which we're not too keen on anyway). Hopefully all this will change when we start to see the next generation CPUs from AMD—all those Bulldozer, Bobcat, Zacate, Brazos, Ontario, Llano, etc. codenames we periodically discuss. Where will those solutions fall in the pantheon of laptops? We'll have to wait and see, but with power gating and other enhancements we should see much better battery life from AMD next year.
Temperatures and Noise
Temperatures are quite good, with both the CPU and GPU topping out at around 65C—well within margins for mobile chips. The hard drive likewise stays at a consistent temperature. Again, we don't know exactly where HWMonitor gets the power information, but it's interesting to see a maximum power draw of 20W for the P520, with a minimum power draw of only 3.15W. That's quite good and would make for much better battery life; unfortunately, the chipset, discrete GPU, and other components appear to be consuming the lion's share of the power. At idle, the laptop bottoms out at around 13W of power use, which is almost 3W higher than the Dell XPS 15 with Optimus.
Noise levels are actually very good for a midrange 15.6" laptop—some of the lowest we've measured. Idle noise measures 33dB and load noise topped out at 55dB. Considering the temperatures, the low noise levels are even more impressive.
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guilmon14 - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
Gateway NV53A36u has a triple core phenom n830 2.1ghz radeon hd 5650and i looked up the prices and it sells for about 600
JarredWalton - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
Hmmm... interesting, particularly on sale:http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtool...
$550 for tri-core and HD 5650, but who knows for how long?
danielt - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
You've been critical of Acer's recent notebooks because you haven't tried any of the timelineX notebooks, what a shame...AS4820TG is a gem with incredible performance (better than Envy 14) and very long battery life, which is something hard to find given its price point.
JarredWalton - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
No, we've been mostly critical of Acer's laptops for their sub-par build quality, mediocre displays, and horrible keyboards. Looking at the TimelineX, the only area where it's clearly better than other Acer laptops is that there are a few aluminum panels (or at least it looks like aluminum). The keyboard is the same lousy "floating island" design, and I've read enough reviews to know that the build quality is still questionable at best and the keyboard shows plenty of flex. $800 for the 4820TG is still reasonable, given the overall feature set, but unlike Optimus there's a bit issue with AMD switchable graphics: you can't update the AMD drivers unless you get a driver from Acer with both Intel and AMD graphics rolled into one. So in short...Pros:
Intel Core i3/i5 CPU
Light weight
Switchable graphics gives...
-Great battery life
-Good graphics performance
Cons:
Build quality
Keyboard
LCD
Switchable graphics driver updates
I'd like to see a TimelineX update with Optimus GT 425M (or higher) and a backlit keyboard -- the latter mostly because it would make it impossible to use the floating island keys that feel loose and have terrible travel, and hopefully address the flex issue as well.
rocky12345 - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
So what your saying is now days if a company does not use aluminum panels their build quality is sub standard. get real not everyone wants a piece of metal sitting on their desk that will get scratched or dented & look ugly after 6 months. Plastic has been the main building point of laptips for many years & I guess we can thank Apple for making people think we need to use aluminum panels for a laptop to be good.As for the keyboards yea Acer keyboards can be soft but that is common among most laptop these days. I fixed mine by lifting it out & putting a thin layer of one sided sticky tape to take up the space & now the keyboard is very solid. If all you have to worry about is the keyboard being a bit soft then count yourself lucky that these keyboards are not like a lot of other companies that actually have the keys falling off a lot fo the time.
LCD screens again this is common of most LCD's these days they all pretty much suck on a laptop unless you spend bigger bucks for the unit to begin with. We can only blame our selves for companies like acer & others for putting out sub standard screens in laptops to keep costs down. Most people these days think of computers as an appliance & as such do not want to spend much on them I am talking about the every day joe or someones grandma & grandpa. They want something good but do not want to pay much for it so we get laptops with lower quality screens & smaller batteries.
Speaking of battery life & switchable graphics who actually needs to have 10 hors of battery life these days. Not to many people do & with so many ways to charge up these units these days whether it be the wall plug or a portable car charger most can get by with a laptop that can get 3 or 4 hours only. it is Apple that would lead you to believe that we all need 10 to 15 hours of battery life between charges & it looks like you agree with that somewhat.
I personally believe that in the near future that companies should release laptops with built in charging features that would allow them to take a charge while in direct sunlight or any kind of room light that would activate the charging system. Maybe I should patent the idea before someone like Apple does & hordes the idea for only themselves. lol
My point is if you want a high quality laptop you have to pay the price these units are at a low price point & as such are built at a lower build quality. Maybe in the future if you want to see better screens & build quality review each companies high end product lines not these low priced units that the average joe six pack will pick up at Wal-Mart. Most of your readers here not your average computer user it is ok we can handle the sticker price shock most of us know you have to pay to get quality.
JarredWalton - Saturday, November 27, 2010 - link
You don't have to have aluminum or whatever to have better build quality, but certainly it can help. I also don't expect budget laptops to have the build quality of, say, a ThinkPad. Slapping aluminum panels on top of plastic still won't give good build quality, though I do think the end result is a bit nicer looking than straight glossy plastic.My point is that you get what you pay for, and when someone says that "you've been critical of Acer's recent notebooks because you haven't tried any of the timelineX notebooks", I want to set the stage. I'd *still* be critical of the TimelineX in areas that warrant criticism. I don't think it's asking too much to get a better keyboard into Acer's laptop -- and I'm not talking about the flex issue; the keys are terrible! Use any chiclet and it should be better, and something like a ThinkPad or a Latitude is worlds better. The TimelineX is decent, but it has plenty of flaws and problems; that's all I said above.
danielt - Sunday, November 28, 2010 - link
OK so you're talking about the apparent build quality and keyboard.I'm more interested in performance relative to price factor. In a core i5 setup of 4820TG, its graphics and gaming performances are better than the new Dell XPS and even Envy (with i5), while at the same time cheaper than them.
JarredWalton - Sunday, November 28, 2010 - link
Exactly, which is what I was trying to get at in this review. The 5551G isn't the world's greatest laptop, but priced at $650 or less it's an amazing deal for the performance. I've known quite a few people with Acer, Dell, and HP (and other budget) laptops where they've started to fall apart after a couple years, but then I know others where the laptops lasted several years without problems. It all comes down to how you treat it.From the price/performance perspective, the TimelineX also has a really nice feature set. I'd love to see another $50 put towards addressing build quality and the keyboard, but $800 for the 4820TG is a very good price.
Samus - Monday, November 29, 2010 - link
I can't believe it! Acer has a fanboi?DanNeely - Sunday, November 28, 2010 - link
It doesn't need to be aluminum/magnesium, especially on a budget laptop; simple matte plastic that doesn't turn into a fingerprinty smeary greasy disgusting mess will due.