Acer Aspire 1694 WLMi Review (pics, specs)

please go HERE
for the review

I hope you guys like it

EDIT: I put the review in the thread now

The Acer Aspire 1694 WLMi is a reliable laptop, with powerful components and useful features all squeezed into a 3.9cm thick case (lid closed). Weighing only 3kg with very powerful graphics, this laptop is bound to please any gamer on the go. It packs a huge hard drive and a nice 15.4" screen and much more.

The following specs for the 1694 WLMi are:

Intel Centrino 760 - 2Ghz
1024Mb DDR2 (2048Mb Max)
100Gb 4200 RPM Hard-drive
Radeon Mobility X700 - 256Mb
15.4" Widescreen display (1280x800 - 16:10 ratio )
DVDRW Dual layer
8 Cell battery
4-1 Card reader
802.11g WLAN
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
1 year warranty

Note: I purchased the extended three year accidental coverage warranty

Why purchased:

I wanted a powerful laptop that had plenty of storage, bluetooth and powerful graphics card, weighing 3kg or less. I wanted a good gaming laptop I could take with me on long journeys on planes/ cars/ coaches etc and also to use around the house to play games and surf the web. When purchasing, I considered buying a cheap Dell Inspiron 6000 so I would be left with much more spending money, but it wasn't powerful enough to meet my demands.

Where purchased:

I bought it from www.acernotebooks.co.uk
It was the cheapest laptop with that specification and I am very happy with it! Delivery was very quick (1-2 day) and I am satisfied with their customer service
The laptop price is £923 inc. VAT with the one year warranty

Build quality and design:

I am quite pleased with the build quality however it is not perfect. The design is not amazing but it is still stylish enough to satisfy me. The case doesn't seem very scratch resistant. The screen build quality is very good and there are no ripples when I move it however, the screen wobbles when I move it and when I carry the laptop, sometimes I feel the screen being pushed in. The laptop has a clean, tidy look with a black keyboard and silver chassis.

Images:


At the front, you can see the three audio jacks, bluetooth and Wireless buttons, infrared, one USB port and two speakers


In this photo, I am using a wireless mouse with a USB receiver. I now use a bluetooth mouse which is connected to the internal bluetooth adaptor.






The blue light is the bluetooth on/ off button and the orange button is the Wireless LAN on/ off button

Display:

The display is very bright and crystal clear. The glossy finish makes the image quality very nice however it is not ideal outdoors on a sunny day as it is very reflective. When the laptop is disconnected from the AC power supply, the screen automatically dims itself to conserve battery life.
When I first received the laptop, it has a dead pixel. After a few days, it completely disappeared and I haven't seen it since. There is no light leakage or any other faults with the screen. The screen is not as vibrant as my desktop matte screen but it is still nice nonetheless.

Speakers:

The two speakers are located at the front of the laptop and are quite small. They can get quite loud but it doesn't have much bass. No surprises here since most laptop speakers are dull anyway. I normally use headphones when using computers so this is no issue for me.

Processor and Performance:

The Intel Pentium M 760 2Ghz is one of the fastest 32 bit CPUs around, and performs higher than my expectations. It takes well less than a minute to switch on and access my desktop. It runs games very fast in conjunction with the X700 video card and it is automatically slowed down when the laptop is disconnected from the mains power supply to conserver battery life. The power management options are very useful, allowing you to change your processor performance to Low, Medium, High and Very High. Low is 800Mhz and High is 2Ghz.

Age of Empires III with all settings to max at 1280x800 resolution runs around 30-40fps. (However shadows need to be set to low/ off as they put a lot of strain on the graphics card)

Battlefield 2 runs at about 30fps with most detail settings on high but it lags a bit. Upgrading to 2Gb ram will fix this. With all settings to medium, BF2 runs at 30-40fps and does not lag at all or freeze.

Quake 4 runs at High settings at 1024x768 very smoothly at about 30-40fps with shadows turned off (Still looks breathtaking). Quake 4 doesn't support 1280x800 so I'm stuck with 1024x768.

Other games such as C&C Generals: Zero Hour and Max Payne 2 run at all detail settings to max with no slowdowns at all.

3DMark05 score: 2570

The laptop GPU averages at about 55 degrees Celsius when playing new games. The hard drive always stays below 40C

Click HERE to see a screenshot of Quake4 with the laptop (59Fps)

Keyboard and touchpad:

The keyboard is a pleasure to use. It didn't take me long to touch type on it. The keyboard has no flex at all and is very easy to use. The keys are just tough enough to not let keys get pressed accidentally when typing at the same time still being easy to push down (A perfect combination of both)
The touchpad is very nice to use and has a 4 way navigation button to scroll trough web pages and other stuff. I use a bluetooth mouse instead of the touchpad most of the time but when I need to, the touchpad is no hassle to use. The touchpad is carefully positioned so that you don't accidentally touch it when typing.

Connectivity

3 USB 2.0 Ports
Firewire, 4-pin
S-Video Out
VGA Out
PCMCIA Slot
Infrared
Bluetooth
Gigabit Ethernet
56k modem
Wireless LAN
4-1 Card Reader

The laptop has internal wireless 802.11g and is quite reliable. It has good signal everywhere round my house and picks up a lot of signals from neighbours too.

Battery

The battery lasts about 2 or more hours when surfing the net and 1 hour when playing high spec games. Sometimes less. I'd recommend lowering graphical details and decrease CPU speed found in the power management tools to get longer battery life

Software and OS:

The unit comes with XP Home Edition SP/2. There are no trial or offers installed on the machine. The only software that comes with it is Microsoft Works and a bunch of Acer programs for your laptop. I am happy there are no silly trial software packages installed but there are no XP discs included. However there are recovery disks which may become useful if something were to go horribly wrong.

Service and support:

When phoning them, they were very helpful and responded to my questions professionally. Nothing much else to say here.

Summary

This laptop is an excellent performer at an excellent price. For less than £1000, you get a bright screen, nice keyboard, good graphics card, fast processor, lots of ram, bluetooth and internal wireless LAN. Now THAT is good value.

Pros:

- Powerful graphics
- Cheap price
- Lots of features
- Good screen
- Only 3Kg and quite thin

Cons:

- 4200rpm Hard-drive (Games still load fast though)
- Wobbly screen
- DVD drive makes noise when pressure is put on it (E.g. when holding the laptop from the disc drive)
- Fan can get a bit noisy when running intensive games

I would definitely recommend this laptop to anyone who is looking for a cheap, portable gaming laptop with very high specs. It also acts as a good business laptop too.

 

Beautiful! Easy to read, concise, nice style. You're very good at taking pictures.

Compliments to your laptop too.

I'll raise my glass to that.
Cheers,
Chaz

 

cheers . I was making last minute tweaks to it after i posted it so it may look a little bit different now

 

Ooooooo' Chazman using my "Cheers, Mike" ending salut?

hhahahaa, just joshin' yah.

Nice laptop, I've used one. I know what you mean by the screen wobble, but oh well.

 

hey Brian/ Abaxter, is it possible that this review will be put up as a proper NBR review?

 

...

I see.. In that case I must leave

 

Update:

I overclocked my graphics card by 13% (both core and memory)

and got a score of 3152

BF2 runs at about 50-80fps with all settings on high except dynamic lighting @ 1024x768

 

Is this better than the Aspire 5672?

 

Hey good review, i've been thinking of getting one of these for quite some time, now you've swayed me i'm gonna order it soon.