Acer Aspire AS5536-5883 15.6-inch Budget Laptop PC

Oct 5 2009 - With a price tag of between $450 and $500, the Acer Aspire AS5536-5883 offers up a good overall package for those on a budget and aren't too concerned about the size of their laptop. The system uses an AMD based processor with ATI integrated graphics that help keep the costs down but still provide it with decent overall performance. The larger size allows for a full keyboard layout but the trackpad will give many issues due to its placement and design. If you can get past some of its flaws, it is a good overall value for those on a tight budget.

Oct 5 2009 - Acer has elected to use the AMD Athlon X2 QL-64 dual core mobile processor in the Aspire AS5536-5583. This provides performance nearly on par with the Pentium Dual-Core T4200 found in similarly equipped Intel based laptops. With the 3GB of DDR2 memory, the system does a decent job of just about any general task that home users will have but may struggle a bit in tasks such as video editing.

Battery life isn't spectacular in the Apire 5536 but that isn't too surprising with many lower cost laptops. Expect the system to run a bit more than two hours of typical usage. Video playback tends to average around one hour forty-five minutes.

The laptop uses a slightly larger 15.6-inch screen that provides it with a very wide and bright display. Driving the graphics is an integrated Radeon Mobility HD 3200 processor. While this doesn't provide a lot of performance for tasks like gaming, it is capable at lower details and resolutions and does perform better than Intel's solution in HD video.

If you are using the Aspire 5536 for gaming or video, you might want to look into using headphones or external speakers. While Dolby has their name on the system, the overall audio quality it certainly below average and quite low in volume compared to the average laptop of this size.

One of the nice features of the Aspire 5536 is the larger keyboard. The wide 15.6-inch screen allowed for Acer to manage to fit a full keyboard layout including the numeric keypad. The flat key design works well but may take a while to get used to for some. The trackpad below the keypad will be the problem for many people. First, it is offset slightly that means that ones hands may brush it while typing. The slightly sunken design also has no distinction between the pad and buttons that can also lead to some odd cursor movement when clicking.