Acer Aspire AS5750-6667

If you're looking for a desktop replacement laptop that will handle your everyday computing tasks without draining your wallet, consider the Acer Aspire AS5750-6667. Available at Costco for $499.99, this Core i3-powered model isn't the most powerful budget notebook around, but it's no slouch either. Features are pretty much what you'd expect from a laptop in this price range with two notable exceptions; it has a USB 3.0 port and comes with a two year warranty.

Design
Like its sibling, the Aspire AS5742-6811 ($699.99 list, 4 stars), the Acer AS5750-6667 sports a textured matte black plastic lid with a shiny Acer logo as its centerpiece. Fingerprint smudging is kept to a minimum, but the overall design is uninspired. The chassis weighs 5.2 pounds, which is a bit lighter than most 15-inch laptops, including the 5.4 pound Lenovo IdeaPad V570-1066AJU ($629.99 direct, 4 stars) and 5.6 pound HP Pavilion dv6-6013cl ($649.99 list, 4.5 stars).

The 15.6-inch widescreen display has a 1366-by-768 resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio. It won't display high definition content at 1080p, but it handles 720p without issue. As is the case with most glossy screens it is reflective, but the high gloss coating gives the colors some pop and provides decent off-angle viewing with only a trace of color shifting.

The raised island-style keyboard contains large keys and a dedicated number pad. The keys are well spaced and make for easy typing, and the smooth touchpad provides good cursor and gesture control. The left and right mouse buttons are integrated into a single bar, as was the case with the Aspire 5755-6482, but the action is stiffer than it needs to be. Media player controls are used in combination with the function keys; only a pair of speakers, a power switch, and two indicator lights can be found at the top of the keyboard.

Features
Sub-$500 laptops, such as the Asus K52F-BIN6 ($479.99 list, 3.5 stars) and Aspire 4743Z-4861 ($469.99 list, 3 stars), typically come with a 500GB hard drive, but the Acer Aspire AS5750-6667 bucks that trend and gives you 640GB of storage. It also comes with three USB ports, one of which offers speedy USB 3.0 transmissions, a rarity for a laptop in this price range. Missing is an eSATA port, like the one found on the IdeaPad V570-1066AJU. Rounding out the features set are HDMI and VGA video outputs, a tray loading DVD burner, a gigabit Ethernet port, a 4-in1 card reader, and a webcam embedded in the display's upper bezel. Wireless networking comes by way of an 802.11n Wi-Fi card and Intel's WiDi 2.0 (wireless display) technology that lets you wirelessly stream audio and HD video to an external monitor or HDTV (the external device must be connected to Netgear's Push2TV receiver to utilize this function). You won't find WiMAX broadband or Bluetooth wireless networking support on this model, though.

Preinstalled software includes Windows 7 Home Premium, Acer's Clear.fi multimedia file sharing software, Microsoft's Office Starter 2010 and Security Essentials software, Zune, and Skype. There are also a few Acer utilities including a webcam program and a backup and recovery program. Costco members get a two year warranty with the AS5750-6667, as well access to Costco's Concierge Services which includes toll free troubleshooting, setup, and technical support.

Performance
The Acer 5750-6667's Core i3-2330M CPU runs at 2.2GHz and is a dual-core processor. Combined with 4GB of RAM, it turned in predictably mediocre scores on our benchmark tests. Its PCMark 7 score of 2,064 was nearly identical to the Aspire 5755-6482 (2,040), but around 200 points lower than the IdeaPad V570-1066AJU (2,275) and Asus U56E-BBL6 (2,255), both of which use a Core i5 processor. Results were similar on the processor-intensive Cinebench R11.5 test; the Acer 5750-6667's score of 2.11 was right there with the Aspire 5755-6482 (2.13), but well shy of the IdeaPad (2.71) and Asus U56E-BBL6 ($699.99 list, 4 stars) (2.68).

Multimedia performance was also middle-of-the-road. The Acer 5750-6667 needed 2 minutes 17 seconds to complete our Handbrake video transcoder test while the IdeaPad V570 did it in 1:52. The Asus U56E-BBL6 was even quicker, finishing it in 1:50. Likewise, the Acer 5750-6667 required 5 minutes 23 seconds to make it through our Photoshop CS5 test suite, which is 1:21 slower than the U56E-BBL6 (4:02) and 1:22 behind the IdeaPad V570 (4:01).

Armed with Intel's integrated graphics the Acer 5750-6667 managed 20.5 fps (frames per second) on our Crysis DirectX 10 gaming test while at 1024-by- 768 resolution. That's actually a bit faster than IdeaPad V570 (15.6 fps) and U56E-BBL6 (15.7 fps), but still not what you'd consider a playable frame rate. The Gateway NV55S05U and its AMD Radeon HD 6620G graphics chip gave us 36.7 fps, which indicates generally smooth game play at this resolution. On our Lost Planet 2 DX9 tests, the Acer 5750-6667 produced 21.4 fps while the U56E-BBL6 and IdeaPad V570 churned out 19.1 and 19.3 fps, respectively. The NV55S05U led the pack with 38 fps.

The Acer 5750-6667 lasted 6 hours 16 minutes on our MobileMark 2007 battery test, surpassing the Aspire 5755-6482 (5:04) by more than an hour. It also beat the IdeaPad V570 (5:59) by 17 minutes, but couldn't touch the U56E-BBL6's time of 7:42.

If you're looking for killer performance, the Acer Aspire AS5750-6667 is not for you; its Core i3 processor just isn't suited for heavy lifting. However, it will have no trouble handling the day-to-day stuff like emailing, Web browsing, Skyping, and running most office applications, and is one of the few sub-$500 laptops to offer USB 3.0 connectivity. If the 640GB hard drive isn't big enough for you, the Aspire 5755-6482 comes with a 750GB drive for $100 more, but you'll have to sacrifice the two-year warranty and the USB 3.0 port. For $120 more you can go with our current Editors' Choice, the Lenovo IdeaPad V570-1066AJU, and get better performance and a few extra features like WiMAX and eSATA.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE
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