The bottom line: The 18-inch Acer Aspire Ethos AS8951G is a huge multimedia powerhouse laptop with a unique removable touchpad remote control which might be ahead of its time.
Few things surprise us more than when laptop shoppers tell us that though they are planning to keep their new computer permanently chained to a desk (to essentially act as a desktop PC), they intend to buy a 13-inch (or even a 14- or 15-inch) laptop. If you're removing portability from the equation completely, there's little reason to ignore one of the most fun categories of laptops: The massive 18-inch desktop replacement.
These huge systems cross our door rarely--it's certainly a niche category--but the latest to do so has a potentially very clever gimmick. The US$1,599 Acer Aspire Ethos AS8951G (yes, it has at least three names, plus a model number) includes a touchpad that pops right out from the laptop chassis and can be used as a portable remote control.
This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of the other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Please check directly with your local distributor for details. The 18-inch Acer Aspire Ethos AS8951G is an imposing slab of brushed black metal. Despite being more than 43cm wide and nearly 4kg (without its AC adapter), the industrial design still makes it look sophisticated and, if not slim, than at least not overly bulky. The back of the lid and keyboard tray are black brushed metal, and the wrist rest has a matte black surface that picked up fingerprints a little too easily.
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)System weight/Weight with AC adapter
On a chassis as large as this, the keyboard feels like it's swimming in space, even with a full-size number pad included. The keys themselves are large and well-spaced, but no larger than you might find on a 15-inch laptop.
The row of function keys at the very top do not offer reversed functions, as we've seen on several other multimedia-friendly laptops recently. That means that on the Acer you'll have to hold down the Fn key while hitting F8, for example, to mute the speakers. Laptops this big should really have their own dedicated media transport and volume buttons, but at least in this case the unique touchpad remote takes the place of some of that.
And that's what really makes the Aspire Ethos AS8951G stand out from the crowd. It's a neat party trick to show someone your laptop, then simply pop the entire touchpad off and use it as a wireless touchpad or media remote control. While it certainly looks impressive, and is frankly a pretty good idea we'd like to see others try, the actual implementation leaves something to be desired.
To pop out the touchpad, you hold a small locking switch on the front edge and lift the pad out of its dock. That's simple enough, and we were able to thumb-drive our cursor from across the room. The touchpad has an accelerometer-like orientation feature, so you can hold it horizontally or vertically, but in practice, the orientation detection was both laggy and oversensitive, so we often ended up moving the onscreen cursor in the opposite direction. After a little practice, however, we got better at working with the touchpad, but you have to be careful when waving it around (or even tilting your hand).
Pressing a small, flush button on the upper-right corner brings up some backlit touch buttons on the touchpad for video and music. Touching either of these automatically launches Acer's Clear-Fi media app. Pressing the button a second time brings up even more backlit touch buttons for volume control and media transport. The controls on the touchpad look very snazzy and high-tech. Unfortunately, while the on-pad media transport controls work with several different media playing apps (including iTunes), you'll find yourself accidentally launching Clear-Fi over and over again, no matter what your actual intention is, by accidentally brushing past the Video or Music buttons with your finger.
It's not that Clear-Fi is necessarily a bad media manager app, but people are more likely to stick with what they know, be it iTunes, Windows Media Player, VLC, or online services such as Spotify or Amazon Cloud Music (the play/pause buttons won't work on online services like that, but the volume controls will).
Another reason you might skip Clear-Fi is that it's built around the concept of sharing your media across your home network, but only if all the devices on your network come from Acer--you'd need to be sharing content from your Acer laptop to your Acer tablet to your Acer phone, for example. We've seen other companies hamper their network sharing/management applications in the same way; no one wants to feel like they need to buy all their gear from the same company to take advantage of promised features.
The biggest problem we had with the touchpad remote is that it didn't work particularly well as an actual touchpad. The surface feels sticky under your finger, and we had to crank the sensitivity all the way up in the Windows menu to get a reasonable level of responsiveness. There's a large left/right button bar beneath the touchpad, but there's no way we could find to right-click from the pad itself, which is a problem if you're using it from several feet away.
Average for category (desktop replacement)VGA, HDMI and mini-DisplayPort5.1 speakers with subwoofer, headphone/microphone jackStereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks4 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, 1 USB/eSATA, FireWire4 USB 2.0, SD card reader, eSATAEthernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, BluetoothEthernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, BluetoothDVD burner, optional Blu-ray player
The giant 18-inch display, with a native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels, is a real highlight on the system. The screen is covered by edge-to-edge glass for a clean look, and is made of Corning's scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass, the same as is found on the iPad. Off-axis viewing was reasonable, and the big, bright display looked great for video and games. The 5.1 speaker system was louder and deeper than the speakers of the average laptop, but there's still no substitute for a big pair of air-moving speaker cones.
The Ethos has a generous array of ports and connections, as you'd want from a multimedia hub that might end up tightly wired into your home entertainment setup. The Blu-ray drive is a good match for the 1080p screen, and your video output options include both HDMI and mini-DisplayPort.
The 2.0GHz Intel Core i7 2630QM CPU in the system is a high-end quad-core version of Intel's current second-generation Core i-series processors and frankly way more power than you'll need for HD video playback, although we're not complaining. In our benchmark tests, it matched up closely with the Alienware M14x and Dell XPS 17 3D, both recent powerhouse laptops, and was much faster than an HP Envy 17 with last year's quad-core Core i7 CPU.
Though not explicitly pitched as a gaming laptop, the system includes Nvidia's GeForce GT 555M GPU, similar to what we saw on the recent Dell XPS 17 3D. In fact, the Acer ran Street Fighter IV faster at full 1080p resolution, at 53.1 frames per second. On our more challenging Metro 2033 test, the game ran at 15 frames per second at 1,366 x 768 pixels, but you could dial down the graphics options to get a more playable experience.
It's a bit of a shocker, but the Acer Aspire Ethos AS8951G ran for a surprisingly long time on our video playback battery drain test, clocking in at 3 hours and 25 minutes--a score many 15-inch laptops can't beat. Partially it's because the Nvidia Optimus system turns the discrete GPU off when not needed, and because there's room in the large chassis for a big eight-cell battery.
Multimedia multitasking test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Adobe Photoshop CS3 image-processing test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Apple iTunes encoding test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Video playback battery drain test (in minutes)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
If the pop-out touchpad on the 8951G sounds like a clever idea, that's because it is. Unfortunately, in this implementation, there are a few problems that keep it from being as useful as it could be. First, the removable touchpad, called the Media Remote, is primarily designed to work with Acer's proprietary Clear-Fi media software, which the system makes hard to avoid. The pad lacks a right-click function, making it less than ideal for casual browsing, and it's oddly unresponsive at times, even with the sensitivity cranked all the way up.
Beyond that, the laptop's actual hardware is mostly top-notch. Acer and sister brand Gateway have always made excellent large 17-inch-and-bigger multimedia and gaming laptops. This one has a full HD 1,920 x 1,080-pixel-resolution screen, Blu-ray, a fast Intel Core i7 2630QM CPU, and a decent Nvidia GeForce GT 555M graphics card. Without the gimmicky touch pad, the 8951G might have been able to come in US$100 or so less, but it's still an excellent big-screen miniature home theater for your den or dorm room, if you can get used to the remote touchpad and its limitations.
In Singapore, Acer is selling a version of the 8951G with a Core i7 2630QM processor, 8GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce GT 555M and dual 750GB hard drives for S$2,988.
The Acer Aspire Ethos AS8951 comes with an international one-year warranty. On its support Web site, you can browse frequently asked questions and other technical issues. Remote troubleshooting is available via online phone, or fax. though in case of hardware failure the unit has to be brought to a service center for repair.
System configurations:
Acer Aspire Ethos 8951G-9600
Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit); 2.0GHz Intel Core i7 2630QM; 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,333MHz; 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 555M; 750GB Seagate 5,400rpm
Asus NX90JQ
Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit); 1.6GHz Intel Core i7 720QM; 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,066MHz; 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 335M; 640GB Seagate 5,400rpm
Dell XPS 17 3D
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) w/ SP1; 2.0GHz Intel Core i7 2630QM; 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,333MHz; 3GB Nvidia GeForce GT 555M; 500GB Seagate 7,200rpm
Alienware M14x
Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit); 2.3GHz Intel Core i7 2820M; 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,600MHz; 3GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M + 64MB (Dedicated) Intel HD 3000; 750GB Seagate 7,200rpm
HP Envy 17-1003
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 1.6GHz Intel Core i7 720QM; 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,333MHz; 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850; 500GB Hitachi 7,200rpm
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