Foreword:

The Acer Aspire 3935 can be known as a trendsetting laptop for the company that has been looking for a dramatic change in their products. Do not be repelled by its $900 price tag (Acer always overprices its products), for this is one of the slickest looking laptops Acer has made till date. With an inch-thick width coupled with a brushed aluminium lid, this laptop is nothing short of stylish. At 12.7 by 9.4 by 1 inch, the Acer 3935 competes with the Macbook 13-inch’s thinness, while at 4.1lbs – the laptop is an immensely portable one – trouncing the “heavyweights” in the category of ultra-portables, namely the Apple Macbook 13” (4.5lbs), the HPd3vz (4.6lbs) and the Lenovo IdeaPad U330 (4.2lbs).

The 13.3” widescreen of this laptop is nothing short of gorgeous. With enough area to display multiple spreadsheet columns as well as play 720p HD video, the Aspire 3935 is perfect for your home as well as business needs. The screen bears an aspect-ratio of 16:9, thus making the resolution a trifle larger at 1,366×768 as compared to the norm of 1280×800 found notably in the Macbook and HPd3vz notebooks. The full-sized keyboard with comfortably spaced keys is quite new for Acer, with larger keys than the Macbook serving your fingers very effectively. With the thinnest (in the category) touchpad, Acer did not want to leave behind multi-touch interfaces that have been the forte of Apple Macbooks. While not as polished or fluid as Apple’s touchpads, pinching and expanding images and other windows works – however in my testing they were unresponsive often.

+Ves:

• Even with its thin width, the laptop boasts a built-in dual layer DVD writer. While moving away from the current trend of not having optical drives built into the laptops, this might be a welcome solution for those who wish to be spared the trouble of plugging in an external DVD drive. Highly Portable.
• Comes with a one-year labor and parts warranty.
• A versatile and speedy processor.
• A very comfortable keyboard that takes the best portions out of Sony, Apple and Dell’s design. Full page-up and page-down keys are a welcome sight in any laptop’s keyboard!
• The 3935 has acquired environmental certifications from three institutes – the EPEAT (Silver), Energy Star and RoHS for environmental safeguard and energy efficiency…
• … leading to the impressive 4h 50m battery life that was siphoned out of a mere 39Wh battery – which Apple, Dell and HP (especially the last with its monstrous 85Wh battery), with larger batteries could not triumph over. Kudos!

-Ves:

• The mouse-buttons are very resistant.
• The screen is glossy and reflects stray light – outdoor use will be affected negatively.
• The build quality of the optical drive is too cheap, especially when compared to the solid build of the laptop itself. It creaks and rumbles even under gentle handling.
• The touchpad has too many features cramped into a tiny area. Many multi-touch gestures require a little bit of area to register as a hit or a miss – and most in this case were misses.

Final Word:

While the sleek design and sturdy processor (an Intel Core 2 Duo) promise a lot, it does have only an integrated graphics card, no video out except VGA and the promising touchpad that fails to deliver. With a price tag of $899, this ultraportable laptop could be yours.