Acer Aspire 5741Z

Acer Aspire 5741Z review

Acer is one of the most prolific laptop manufacturers and its Aspire range boasts everything from budget portables to the most powerful multimedia monsters. The Aspire 5741Z is the former, a smart and surprisingly powerful entry-level laptop.Budget machines make some tough compromises to cut costs, and one of the first casualties is often performance. However, while the Acer's Pentium P6000 processor has been around a while, it's extremely powerful. We found we could browse the web, play music and run various applications all at once, with only the occasional slowdown.The Acer Aspire 5741Z also scored highly in our graphical benchmark tests. There's no dedicated graphics card, with the processor handling images instead, but we were highly impressed to find we could watch Full HD video and run complex photo editing suites. At this price point, that's quite a feat.We also like the Acer's design, which is undoubtedly smarter than rivals such as the HP Compaq Presario CQ62-220SA and eMachines G627-202G25Mi. The brushed metal interior is resistant to fingerprints and belies the low cost, although we did notice some flex when you press on the palmrests.