Acer Aspire 5745DG review

Aside from the graphics card, the 5745DG is a well-configured mid-range laptop. The Intel Core-i3 370m processor is powerful enough for the majority of tasks, gaming and video encoding included. With 3GB of memory, multitasking was also very quick. An overall score of 85 in our benchmarks proves it’s a very capable machine regardless of its 3D abilities.

The dedicated graphics card might drain the battery quicker than an integrated solution would, but Acer has countered this with a mammoth 9-cell battery. It’s so big that it sticks out from underneath the chassis, which helps creates a surprisingly comfortable typing position. The 5745DG was only ten minutes shy of an impressive six hours in our light-use test.

As the main feature of the 5745DG is its 3D display, we should point out that a lot of the problems associated with viewing 3D content are still present here. Wearing the glasses is an inconvenience, and they need charging after a few uses – though this can be done over USB. A pair is required for every simultaneous viewer, only one comes with the laptop and extra pairs cost almost £100 each, but we can’t see multiple people crowding around such a small display anyway. Colours looked dimmer when wearing the glasses, so video isn’t as vibrant as it could be. While these aren’t issues unique to this laptop, they are still hurdles to overcome before 3D becomes more widely-accepted.

The 5745DG is an interesting example of what the future might hold for laptops. The 3D video element works as advertised, there’s very little content currently available for it, particularly as this model doesn’t have a Blu-ray drive. Everyday performance was great, but the graphics card isn’t powerful enough to enjoy games in 3D at full details. Add all this up, and considering that you can get a similarly specified non-3D laptop for around £250 less, and the 5745DG ends up looking like a very flawed experiment.