The Acer Ethos 5951G laptop, with its matt black casing and blue activity LEDs, looks rather purposeful. I continued to be impressed by the cosmetics as I hefted the 3.3kg slab onto my lap even though a closer look revealed the brushed finish on the lid was nothing more than plastic, rather than the implied aluminium skin.

1. 23/09/2011 09:42
blog.bestlaptopbattery.co.uk
Acer Ethos 5951G 15.6in Core i5 notebook
Preview | Laptop Usage Tips
Acer Ethos 5951G 15.6in Core i5 notebook HyperThreading, at 2.3GHz. It has a maximum
Preview | Laptop Usage Tips Turbo Boost rating of 2.9GHz and is backed up by
8GB of 1333MHz DDR 3 Ram.
Review The Acer Ethos 5951G laptop, with its matt
black casing and blue activity LEDs, looks rather DirectX 11 graphics are provided by an Nvidia Ge-
purposeful. I continued to be impressed by the cos- Force GT 540 M chip with 1GB of dedicated video
metics as I hefted the 3.3kg slab onto my lap even memory. This scores 1659 in 3DMark 11 on Entry
though a closer look revealed the brushed finish on settings and 8736 in 3DMark06. That’s about 50 per
the lid was nothing more than plastic, rather than cent better than the GMA HD 3000 graphics that
the implied aluminium skin. Intel provides in the Sandy Bridge core and they
are more than adequate for powering the visual
Frankly, it’s a puzzle why a 15.6in notebook should bells and whistles that are part of 64-bit Windows
weigh quite this much in this day and age, but those 7 Home Premium.
are the facts of the matter.
Yes, the touchpad slips out to become a remote
control
Slimline, yes – lightweight, no The LED-backlit 15.6in screen contains 1366 x 768
joliprint
pixels so it can manage 720p HD video playback,
At first glance, the Ethos 5951G is a conventional though 1080p content can be pumped out through
laptop with a specification that walks down the the laptop’s HDMI port. The optical drive is a multi-
middle of the performance highway. The Intel format DVD unit rather than Blu-ray.
Printed with
Core i5-2410M CPU runs its two cores, both with
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Acer Ethos 5951G 15.6in Core i5 notebook Preview | Laptop Usage Tips
Connectivity is good: USB in its 2.0 and 3.0 flavours, PCMark 7
and there’s a combo USB/eSata port too. You even
get FireWire, and VGA for owners of old projectors.
Longer bars are better
PCMark Vantage
A closer look Longer bars are better
So far, so conventional. The area where the Ethos 3DMark 06
5951G blazes a new path lies, unexpectedly, in the
region of the touchpad. Dubbed the MediaRemote,
it is actually detachable. Slide the trigger at the front
of the laptop to lift the MediaRemote away from its
magnetic catch and you can pull the touchpad clean
out of the chassis.
See Also: Longer bars are better
With the MediaRemote in your hand you can sit
back on your sofa and navigate around websites.
Mainstream performance If you’re really weird, you could watch PowerPoint
or something of that ilk. When the MediaRemote is
The MediaRemote has a rechargeable battery and detached the left and right mouse buttons remain
a wireless range of ten or so metres. You can see in the chassis so you make selections by tapping the
it pulled apart at the FCC website here. pad but you can’t use the MediaRemote to perform
right clicks.
PCMark Vantage Battery Life Test
joliprint
If that was the limit of the MediaRemote’s abilities,
I would have been underwhelmed – the technology
Printed with
would be no better than a Smartphone loaded with
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3. 23/09/2011 09:42
blog.bestlaptopbattery.co.uk
Acer Ethos 5951G 15.6in Core i5 notebook Preview | Laptop Usage Tips
a suitable app. However, I was only scratching the Incidentally, there’s a fair amount of software in-
surface. cluded with the Acer and much of it deserves to
be uninstalled. There were glimmers of hope, such
as the fabulous World of Goo,however it’s only a
demo that limits you to a total of 60 minutes of play
time.
Above the (rather good) keyboard there are three
shortcut keys. One is user-defined, the second lin-
ked to Clear.fi and the third controls the keyboard
backlight.
Premium pricing
Clicking the button that nestles in one corner of
the pad allowed me to switch from mouse mode to
media mode which lights up a set of media control
buttons that were previously invisible. These but-
tons work in conjunction with the Acer/CyberLink
Clear-fi media player software, which stands ready
to play music, photos and videos using DLNA tech.
The lid is plastic, not brushed aluminium, as it might
seem to be
Although the MediaRemote performs well, I have
to confess that I have rarely found it to be much
of a chore to lean forward a foot or two to touch a
keyboard. You might have plans to operate a laptop
that is connected to your TV by a short HDMI cable,
joliprint
in which case MediaRemote could be just what you
need.
I have another word of caution as I found the tou-
Printed with
No shortage of portage chpad operated better in MediaRemote mode than
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4. 23/09/2011 09:42
blog.bestlaptopbattery.co.uk
Acer Ethos 5951G 15.6in Core i5 notebook Preview | Laptop Usage Tips
it did when plugged into the laptop. The problem is
that there was a short lag between the movement of
my finger and the cursor travelling on the screen.
A built-in sub-woofer makes for a better-than-lap-
top-usual sound
Most laptops have audio that fails to impress. Acer
has plastered the Ethos with Dolby Home Theatre
logos and has installed a sub-woofer on the under-
side of the chassis with the upshot that music and
movies sounds OK. The Ethos is certainly better
than many laptops but it falls short of proper Hi-Fi.
I can’t see why the Ethos costs just shy of £900. It’s a
decent laptop but it doesn’t seem to be worth £300
more than, say, an Acer Timeline X 8572T, or any
other big-name Core i5-2410M machine. In short,
you have to have been searching all your life for a
removable trackpad to justify the premium.
Verdict
A good all-rounder with impressive battery life and
that funky detachable MediaRemote touchpad.
joliprint
However, the mark-up for said is a touch too steep.
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