Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T (68U118)

Targeted squarely at the highly mobile, Acer's new 11.6-inch Aspire TimelineX 1830T-68U118 has a lot of punch for its size. Though a little on the pricey side compared to its tiny netbook cousins, the $899 1830T comes well equipped with a much faster processor than the 11-inch MacBook Air (a 1.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) and gobs more storage space for $100 less. It also lasts longer on a charge, providing more than 6 hours of runtime. Best of all, you get all this goodness in a trim and attractive business-casual design that will look equally at home in the conference room or the student library. Still, is this svelte performer worth the premium over other 11-inch Windows ultraportables?

Design

Weighing in at a featherweight 3 pounds (the same as its predecessor), this newly refreshed 1830T is also just over an inch thick. That's beefier than the 11-inch MacBook Air (.11 to .68 inches), but it's a breeze to slip this machine into a bag and tote around town. The 1830T shares other design accoutrements with its forerunner. You'll find a similar fingerprint-resistant black cover featuring a texturized surface, making for a better grip by damp hands between tense meetings and lectures.
Flipping open the 1830T reveals its glossy black bezel, which is unfortunately prone to prints, and its matte black keyboard set in brushed gun-metal gray aluminum. Though it boasts a sizeable six-cell battery, the power source doesn't protrude behind the laptop and won't prove to be a hindrance or snag stray cords.

Heat

The 1830T was one relatively cool customer on our heat tests. After playing a Hulu video for 15 minutes, we measured 85 and 87 degrees at the Aspire's touchpad and between the G and H keys respectively. That said, we recorded a higher 95-degree temperature at the center of the undercarriage. Still, that didn't quite trigger our heat alarms, since we consider anything over 100 degrees to be toasty.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Almost identical to the previous 1830T, this refresh sports the same flat square-style keys crafted with a deliberately rough surface for additional texture. Even so, this does not make up for the somewhat shallow key travel and mushy feel when typing. Also, the keyboard layout, while close to full-size and an accomplishment for a laptop of this small stature, feels a bit cramped. Still, both left and right shift keys are large enough and you can use the 1830T pound out larger documents when necessary.
The touchpad is on the petite side at 2.5 x 1.3 inches. Compounding the problem of tiny input area, the pad appears virtually invisible against the brushed-metal styling of the wrist rest. Fingers also don't slide well against its textured surface. This resulted in a number of uncertain swipes and scrolling errors on our part. Even so, the touchpad supports multi-gesture pinch and zoom motions, which comes in especially handy when web surfing.

Display and Sound

With the 1830T open, the 11.6-inch wide-screen display greets you with a bright, 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, enough to pump out 720p HD video. We fired up Gattaca on Hulu and were pleased with the saturated blues and deep blacks both the display and this title provided. Reds and oranges seemed slightly dampened, though. Viewing angles were pretty good, with the screen still offering visibility at a respectable 60 degrees off-axis. This is likely due to the high-contrast glossy filter applied to the display. Keep in mind that this treatment also easily creates reflections, so you'll have to avoid bright light sources over your shoulder.
With a pair of small stereo speakers underneath the 1830T's front edge, sound quality isn't much to write home about. Still, if you need to listen to music or view video with sound, the laptop is serviceable in this regard. Just don't expect much in the way of volume or base. Using headphones is a much better experience because the 1830T comes with special audio effects by Dolby and SRS.

Ports and Webcam

On the left side of the 1830T you'll find a VGA port, power connector, and USB port. As with the previous model we reviewed, there is an HDMI v1.3 port here as well. With it you'll be able to output HD video to your HDTV. On the right side are headphone and mic jacks, two additional USB ports, plus a Kensington lock slot and Ethernet. To activate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a keyboard shortcut is provided (no physical switches are offered).


The Aspire's 1.3-megapixel webcam is standard fare. Colors looked a bit washed out but video performance was adequate. The bundled Acer Crystal Eye software does allow you to change the resolution, shoot video, snap quick pics, and alter various video processing vectors such as contrast, gamma, and hue.
Source

Posted in: notebook Acer