Acer Aspire Ethos

Desktop replacement laptops don't come much bigger than the Acer Aspire Ethos 8950g. The 18.4-inch screen means that the entire unit weighs close to 5kg, with its included half-brick sized power adapter.

It’s a direct descendent of Acer's earlier Aspire Ethos models, the 8943g and 8945g. Originally called ‘gemstone’, these models build in high quality sound and multimedia, and feature a blue LED motif.

Unlike its predecessors, the 8950g isn’t a powerhouse in terms of design. It’s attractive enough, but the mixture of matte and piano black, silver keyboard and surround, and chrome-look barrel hinge doesn't tie together into a single aesthetic.

Looks aside, though, the 8950g is a solidly constructed piece of kit. A 2.0GHz Sandy Bridge-based Intel Core i7-2630qm processor, together with 8GB of DDR3 RAM and an AMD Radeon HD 6850M graphics chip combine to produce a formidable gaming and multimedia laptop – it should have been in our last month’s roundup.

Performance is excellent, in general. The 8950g’s benchmark scores are beaten only by the HP Envy 17. The two have identical specifications for processor, RAM and graphics card, but the larger screen on the 8950g is definitely appealing.

In gaming, it also proved capable. While it only rated 11fps in our Unigine Heaven 2 benchmark, it handled the older Trackmania Nations Forever well. It’s not the sort of laptop with which you can pump all of your settings to max, but if you’re content with medium detail settings you should find it handles most games.

DVD playback via the Blu-ray drive was also excellent, assisted by the clear and crisp display. Full HD is expected on an 18.4-inch monitor, and the 8950g doesn't disappoint. Colour accuracy is rich and vivid – perhaps a little oversaturated at times, but in movie playback, it adds to the experience.

We were pleased to see HDMI, eSATA, and USB 3 ports, as well as three USB 2.0 ports, and a 6-in-1 card reader. A nice touch is the volume control knob underneath the touchpad, which adds to the multimedia credentials. There’s a small button in the centre of the buttons that converts the glasslike touchpad into a multimedia controller – neatly avoiding the need to take up extra space for separate multimedia controls.

That space is instead taken up by speakers – part of the Dolby cinema surround setup that produces rich and detailed sound, particularly for movie playback. It’s a little soft in the top range, rougher when it comes to audio vocals, and the bass lacks punch, but it’s a solid effort for laptop speakers.

The other plus is that the 8-cell battery supplied with the 8950g managed a sterling 4.5 hours on average while playing DVD or video.

Given that most machines of this size and calibre are lucky to get three hours, it’s nice to know you can finish a full-length movie and its special features without needing to recharge in a pinch.

Overall, the Acer Aspire Ethos 8950g is a solid performer that stacks up well against the other multimedia laptops in its class. At $3999, it’s a good choice for those wanting a living room PC that can handle a little bit of entertainment.

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