Acer Aspire One TimelineX 3830TG-6431 Review: The Best Laptop You Can Buy For Under $800

The new Acer Aspire TimelineX 3830TG-6431 has discrete graphics and a sub $800 price tag. It is powered by a second generation Intel Core i5 processor and sports a vibrant blue metallic chassis.

Design
The Aspire TimelineX 3830TG-6431 has an attractive cobalt-blue metallic lid with matching palm rest. The laptop sports an incredibly thin chassis. Needless to say it doesn’t have a DVD drive. There is a long speaker bar above the keyboard. The laptop measures 0.9 inches in thickness and weighs 4.2 pounds.

The Aspire TimelineX 3830TG-6431 has a recessed Chiclet-style keyboard with square island keys. The keyboard is comfortable to use and shows hardly any signs of flex. The Synaptics touchpad measures 3 x 1.5 inches. It is small for a laptop of this size, but is quite responsive. There are two discrete mouse buttons below the touchpad.

Heat
The Aspire TimelineX 3830TG-6431 isn’t very lap friendly. It gets warm while playing videos. There is nothing alarming though. Just keep it off your lap, and you should do fine.

Display and Audio
The 13.3 inch wide screen display has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. The display is glossy which means that reflections can be a problem while working in bright surroundings. The laptop has Dolby Home Theatre sound system and delivers quality audio experience.

Ports and Slots
The Aspire TimelineX 3830TG-6431 has 3 USB ports (one of them USB 3.0), an HDMI output port, VGA, Ethernet, a 5-in-1 media card reader, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and headphone and mic jacks.

Performance
The Acer Aspire TimelineX 3830TG-6431 has a 2.3GHz Intel Core i5-2410M processor, 4GB of RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GT540M discrete graphics. Needless to say it delivers impressive performance. The laptop has more than enough power to handle anything you throw at it. In some benchmark tests it delivers better performance than the ThinkPad Edge E220s and the Toshiba Portege R835. Boot times are also good.

The Aspire TimelineX 3830TG-6431 supports the NVIDIA Optimus technology which means that it can automatically switch between the integrated Intel HD graphics and discrete NVIDIA GeForce graphics. Graphics performance is quite impressive. You can watch HD video. Although this isn’t a hardcore gaming laptop, it can play most modern games.

Battery life
The Aspire TimelineX 3830TG-6431 gets excellent battery life. Thanks to the NVIDIA Optimus graphics switching technology it manages to last for 7 hours on a single charge. Few 13 inchers with similar specs can beat this machine in endurance.

Configurations
The Acer Aspire TimelineX 3830T is available in two configurations. The 3830TG-6431 has a 2.3GHz Intel Core i5-2410M processor, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and NVIDIA GeForce GT540M discrete graphics. The 3830T-6417 has a slower 2.1GHz Core i3-2310M processor. This model doesn’t have discrete graphics, but it has a DVD burner.