Acer Aspire 5755G review

We were impressed with Acer’s Aspire 5750G; its processor wasn’t particularly powerful, but the dedicated graphics card made it a highly competent mid-range gaming monster. When we heard the company was producing an updated version, we couldn’t wait to get our hands on it, but were surprised to see that the new 5755G isn’t just a simple processor upgrade – it uses an entirely new chassis.

The laptop’s looks won’t blow you away, but the black texture-effect lid and gunmetal grey plastic body look smart and are a definite improvement over the previous model. There are plenty of ports, with a single USB3, two USB, a multi-format memory card reader and an optical drive that reads DVDs but not Blu-ray discs. Build quality isn’t particularly good, with some noticeable flex in the keyboard tray, but overall it feels better made than previous Acer laptops we’ve seen.

The keyboard has large isolated keys that were very comfortable to type on. Even though the laptop has a separate numeric keypad, all the major keys are full-size and spaced well apart from one another. The function keys have shrunk to around half size to accommodate this, but we feel it’s worth the trade-off. There’s not a lot of travel in each key, but the springy actions provide plenty of tactile feedback.

Unfortunately, the touchpad is less impressive; the plastic finish creates slightly too much friction to make cursor movement feel fluid and the buttons use a single rocker bar with a noticeable dead spot in its centre which soon became annoying. It’s good enough for web browsing, but for more precise work you’ll want to connect a mouse.

The 15.6in screen has the standard 1,366×768 resolution that we’re used to seeing in displays this size; it’s fine for web browsing and watching 720p video, but we would have liked a slightly higher resolution given the price of the laptop. Image quality is only average, with slightly muted colours and a lack of contrast at the default settings. Viewing angles were disappointing, with a very small window of accurate colour and contrast, but there’s a huge amount of screen tilt to make up for it. The glossy finish is prone to reflections, making it quite difficult to work in sunlight.

Acer has really gone to town on the laptop’s components. There’s a 750GB hard disk, a very powerful quad-core Intel Core i7-2630QM processor and 8GB RAM. This helped the laptop to a strong overall result of 78 in our productivity benchmarks.

It’s also fast in games. Like its predecessor, the 5755G has a powerful Nvidia GeForce GT 540M dedicated graphics card, but the new model’s card has 2GB of video memory, so it should be better equipped to handle high-resolution textures. It certainly proved its worth in our Dirt 3 benchmark, managing a very smooth 38.9fps; most modern games should be playable at 720p, or at higher resolutions if you disable anti-aliasing. This is also more than enough power to play high definition video on the laptop, or in 1080p on an external display using the HDMI output.

Thanks to Nvidia’s Optimus graphics switching technology, which switches to the processor’s lower-powered graphics when raw 3D power isn’t needed, the laptop managed a very respectable six hours in our light use battery test; you should be able to keep working for most of the day without reaching for the mains charger, but only if you stick to light tasks.

Overall, the 5755G is a welcome upgrade from the 5750G in terms of performance and looks. The quad-core processor provides a major power boost and it’s fast in modern games, but the increased price makes it less of a bargain. Battery life is still great for a laptop this powerful, though, so if you want a laptop that doesn’t compromise on performance for less than £1,000, it’s still a good choice.