Mobile Buyers' Guide: 14" and Larger Notebooks and DTRs
by Dustin Sklavos on June 30, 2010 12:53 AM ESTBudget Gaming Notebook: Acer Aspire 5740G-6979
This one wound up being a very easy choice; a quick run through Newegg was evidence of that. Our budget gaming machine is the Acer Aspire AS5740G-6979 we reviewed a few months ago. The intervening period has seen new notebooks from many other manufacturers, but none has managed to hit the staggeringly low $750 price point Acer did. It is simply the most gaming notebook you can get for the price, and one of the cheapest notebooks equipped with a Mobility Radeon HD 5650.
For those needing a refresher of the Aspire AS5740G-6979's specs, it comes with a robust Intel Core i5-430M chip running both cores at 2.26 GHz, 4GB of DDR3, and a 500GB hard drive. In our own testing, we found the 5650 to perform quite well at the low 1366x768 native resolution of the AS5740G's screen. Just about every game we tested was playable at high settings, though DirectX 11 support wound up being more of a checkbox feature than something useful in practice.
There's very little to say about this notebook that we didn't already cover in our review, but if you're on a dire budget you aren't going to be able to find more power than this for $749, and the fact that it's sold out on Newegg at the time of this writing should give some indication as to the kind of borderline-Faustian bargain the AS5740G-6979 (complete with catchy title) provides.
Update: The 5740G-6979 appears to have been so popular that it is now sold out and discontinued! In it's place you can readily find the 7740G-6364 with similar components but a 17.3" 1600x900 LCD for $800. We've listed a few other alternatives in the comments, but really nothing comes close to the price/performance of the 5740G anymore. The updated 5740G-5309 is less expensive but comes with an HD 5470, so it's a big step down in gaming potential.
Budget Gaming Runner Up: MSI GX640
Let's be honest: $1100 doesn't exactly qualify as “budget”, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a GPU as powerful as the Mobility Radeon HD 5850 in anything cheaper than the MSI GX640. The 5850 is easily one of the fastest mobile GPUs available, and MSI makes great use of it with a high-resolution 1680x1050 screen. We weren't hugely impressed with the notebook's looks or its keyboard, and the price is a major jump from our primary recommendation, but again...it's awful hard to beat a Mobility Radeon HD 5850—a card powerful enough to actually make use of DirectX 11—for $1100.
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ExodusC - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
I noticed you mentioned the HP Envy line on the last page. At $1099, the Envy 14 is looking like a fairly good deal for a premium notebook, considering the specs it offers.That being said, is AnandTech planning to review the Envy 14? I'm dying to know. I emailed Anand, but he's a busy man and I'm sure he didn't have time to respond. :) It's hard to find out how to contact the AnandTech writers/editors, honestly.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
Most of us are [name] at AnandTech.com... I'm jarred.walton; others are dustin, vivek, anand, brian, rajinder.gill, ryan.smith, and johan. The email stuff should start showing up again in the not too distant future.As for the Envy, I've asked multiple times to get one of the Envy laptops, and so far no luck. We've recently had HP ship us a couple business laptops, but they haven't sent out consumer stuff for review in quite a while for some reason. So unless that changes, it's unlikely we'll get an Envy review. :-(
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
It's my understanding this isn't at all unusual. I started doing reviews at NotebookReview.com (and still write there regularly), and I've also written for Tech Report. HP tends to be extremely cagey with review hardware of any kind (Sony's even worse that way). Personally I don't think that does them any favors at all; Dell and Acer for example are both extremely forthcoming and proactive about getting review kit in the hands of reviewers.rwei - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
Want to borrow mine? ;) I've been enjoying my Envy 17 for a week or so now but I'm incredibly curious to see what you guys think. I might even be half serious about the borrowing.As someone who's been using (and still uses, to some extent) an A8Jm from 4 years ago, the change was very interesting.
Sure, the 17 is way bigger, but the build quality is immeasurably better, and the high quality (for my purposes, anyways) screen/keyboard make for a completely different experience. Of course, I may just be biased because both hinges on my A8Jm are half to fully broken off, and the 7600 Go can't accelerate video. I suspect that Asus' current mid-range 14" line will have similar build issues - gotta make room for those components somwhere in the price.
I did realize after reading your article I realized that I gave up my Firewire port =(. The thought didn't even occur to me when I ordered. Looks like my 2nd gen 10GB iPod will finally need to be retired...a moment of silence, please.
Milleman - Monday, July 5, 2010 - link
I just hate notebooks with 16:9 screens. Can't do anything productive through that letterbox peep hole, except watching movies or maybe play games. Bot for netsurfing, wordprocessing and other applications, it is just a pain. I want the 4:3 format back on laptops!Akv - Monday, July 5, 2010 - link
Agreed. 16:9 is an intrusion in the computer productivity world.Not everybody watches movies. Some people still write.
anactoraaron - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
What happened to that last giveaway? Up until that mousepad there was an update posted the next day and nothing now for a few days...I still think all of the giveaways Anandtech does is awesome, don't get me wrong...
therealnickdanger - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
The iPhone 4 and Laptop articles ARE the giveaways - and we all won! :)timpagden - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
Interesting snapshot of the marketplace. I am somewhat bemused by the lack of high resolution in notebooks today, a few years (3?) ago, you couldn't move for 1920x1200's in 17" AND with AMD processors! This lack of resolution has pretty much removed me and my family from the notebook marketplace, we now opt for 'transportable' PCs with 1920x1200 LCDs. For on-the-go computing & connectivity, a smartphone (854x480) with a VPN into the at-home servers is looking like the way forward - are we seeing the death knell of the notebook PC?Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
It's actually the reason I opted to replace my current notebook with a Dell Studio 17 (en route) and a netbook. At this point 17"ers are the only place you're going to get a screen with a halfway decent vertical resolution for doing any kind of media work, and actually the 17" lineup is the only place where the move to 16:9 widescreen has actually been beneficial overall. Before, 17"ers were 1440x900 standard, now they're 1600x900. It's true you lose resolution buying top end where you used to be able to snag 1920x1200, but that's not as nasty a hit as the mainstream jump from 1280x800 to 1366x768. It's amazing just how brutal losing even 32 pixels of vertical real estate winds up being for media work.