With the Acer Aspire Timeline X, the Taiwanese computer cobbler aims to outdo itself and beat the battery life on offer with the original Timeline, Acer’s first entry into the ultra-portable laptop market. That machine was supposedly capable of running for eight to ten hours between charges. Now Acer’s boldly stating you can expect up to 12 hours of use. Does it live up to that claim, or is it a mere lab testing fantasy? We yanked the AC adaptor out to find out, so read on for the verdict in this part of our Acer Aspire Timeline X review.
Read the rest of our Acer Aspire Timeline X review:
Acer Aspire Timeline X review
Acer Aspire Timeline X review: PC replacement?
Acer Aspire Timeline X review: Intel Core speed and graphics
We fired up the Acer Aspire Timeline X for some heavy internet browsing over Wi-Fi, with Spotify playing in the background and Word running too, with pleasing results. The 14-inch test model gave a good five and a half hours of use before running out of juice.
If you really crank up the demands on the hardware – say, by throwing in a full length movie in a window and getting some downloads going on top of your internet browsing – that number falls to three and a half hours. That’s a big drop, but it still represents an impressive time that will let you watch video and surf the internet all the way from London to Newcastle (If you’ve got Wi-Fi in the carriage of course).
If you’re not going to be doing much – just casual web grazing over Wi-Fi and a bit of writing – then it’s possible to stretch the Acer Aspire Timeline X to a very respectable eight hours, more than enough time to make that train to Newcastle into a round trip.
While the numbers are impressive, they’re not outlandish for the ultra-portable market – the larger MSI X-Slim X600 gives four hours of solid use. What is intended to help the Acer Aspire Timeline X go a step further is the way that power saving has been put front and centre.
A PowerSmart button hovers just above the keyboard to help eek out battery life on the move. Using both the laptop’s power saving and Window’s own power saver mode makes the screen unusably dark, so there are limits to how far the battery can last – but using just Acer’s power saving options gives you plenty of life with little squinting required.
Even in full power sipping mode though, the performance takes surprisingly little toll. The low-energy LED screen on the Acer Aspire Timeline X still displays a clear, bright picture that only needs the brightness boosting when video is playing and the machine is unplugged. The only noticeable feature is the fan on the left of the laptop – you can feel the air blasting out and it can be a tad noisy in an otherwise quiet computer.
Pleasingly, the Intel Core i5 processor chugs along fine in this mode with no discernible impact on performance, so long as you don’t get any ideas about HD video editing. It’s worth pointing out though that the Acer Aspire Timeline X lacks seamless graphic switching as new NVIDIA Optimus machines boast, so you can’t summon up the GPU on the fly in this mode while playing a high deffy video: in fact, you can’t use it at all when unplugged from the mains.
These are grumbles that shouldn’t mar a reasonable set of compromises to save you power and make your charges last longer. While the results with the Acer Aspire Timeline X we tested are impressive, the mind boggles as to how long the lower-spec 4820T could last on a nine-cell battery – the 12-hour battery life claim from Acer seems very plausible.
Read the rest of our Acer Aspire Timeline X review:
Acer Aspire Timeline X review
Acer Aspire Timeline X review: PC replacement?
Acer Aspire Timeline X review: Intel Core speed and graphics
