Acer Aspire 5742G review

Laptop screens typically have tight vertical viewing angles, and with a glossy finish as well, you’ll have to adjust the 5742G’s screen carefully to get the best picture. Once you do, colours are natural and contrast is good, although a slight blue cast makes flesh tones seem dull. If you want to watch movies on a larger screen, there are both VGA and HDMI outputs, and the latter lets you output both video and audio with a single cable. You’d benefit from a set of external speakers too, as the internal pair aren’t loud enough, and sound tinny.

We liked the 5742G’s touchpad, which is large and responsive with a vertical scrolling area. The single see-saw button means you have to press on either end to get it to work, but it has a reasonably light action. The keyboard is fairly good: there’s a four-column numberpad, but it’s well-spaced and no keys are out of place. The action is light and crisp, providing ample feedback for touch-typists.

With strong competition from other manufacturers at this price it’s the little things that differentiate the winners from the losers. The 5742G doesn’t have an eSATA port for faster external drives, nor an ExpressCard slot for adding peripherals. However, it does support Bluetooth and 802.11n WiFi plus Gigabit Ethernet. Battery life was average at a little over four hours.

The 5742G’s dedicated graphics card makes this a good choice for casual gamers, but it’s missing a few useful features, and so just misses out on an award.