The Acer Aspire is a serious piece of hardware. It features one of the new bright, high-contrast LCD screens in a widescreen configuration and it is utterly gorgeous. Holding the unit reflects the substance behind the style, where the screen itself is well-braced and it won't flex easily. The keyboard also has a good action, the rubberised track pad is easy on the fingers, and there's a four-way scroll bar which works quite well.

It's powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Sonoma processor, bolstered by 512MB of RAM and a relatively large 80GB HDD. It's a 'Premium Entertainment Portable' and both the large screen and dual layer DVD help to verify this claim. The Radeon X600 helped the notebook achieve a 3DMark 2001 score of 11652 and PCMark 04 of 3313 marks. It also performed well in the MobileMark battery test, achieving a total of 219 minutes -- 10 minutes more than rated.

As with most modern notebooks, legacy ports are no longer included, and you'll find three USB ports, a firewire port and a 4-in-1 card reader.

The notebook ships with Windows XP Home, though XP Professional is an option. Also in the bundle, you'll get NTI CD and DVD-Maker and PowerProducer. The ePower system tray icon is handy, and lets you turn features like LAN and wireless off in software, and monitor your battery life and system settings as well.

The Aspire is a very good unit with several features which enhance its usability. It will suit on-the-go entertainment and productivity, at a price that won't burn your wallet.