THE Acer Aspire 6920G is one of those notebook computers that aims to be a portable home theatre system by having everything bundled into it – from a 16-inch CineCrystal 16:9 panel that the company claims as having high-definition (HD) TV-quality and wide colour range realism, and Dolby Home Theatre speakers with Virtual SurroundSound, to a dedicated media control pad that the company calls the CineDash Media Console, and the typical Windows Media Player remote control.

The Dolby Home Theatre speakers boast top-panel speakers with one that extends towards the back of the notebook, dubbed the Tuba CineBass subwoofer – as the screen is designed to cup the back of the notebook, audio from this rear speaker is bounced forward towards the viewer.

As for the Virtual SurroundSound True 5.1 output, it simply means that it is a 2.1 (that’s two speakers and one subwoofer) with digitally enhanced virtual surround sound.

The CineDash Media Console, which sits on the left side of the keyboard, allows you to do some basic navigation, start/pause, forward/back, enter, back and volume toggle, all without any tactile feedback since it is basically a glorified touchpad illuminated by subtle blue backlight that seems to fit the overall theme of the Aspire 6920G.

Similarly, the exhaust vents are located on the back, and with the screen in the open position, this allows hot air to blow up the left side of the screen. I’m not sure if that is a good or bad thing – the exhaust should be hot enough to melt anything, but it does tend to unnecessarily heat up the display.

With the highest liquid crystal display backlight, the Aspire 6920G cycles through the battery at about 22 per cent per hour, which should theoretically yield about four hours playing HD DivX-encoded movies; throw in a Blu-ray disc and you should be able to finish an entire movie on a single charge.

True to Acer’s claims of a cinematic view with 33 per cent more colour range, the Aspire 6920G plays back full HD 1,080p beautifully with good brightness and contrast ratio versus those of conventional non-multimedia notebook displays. It works equally well regardless whether you are sitting in a room with evening sunlight shining in or under normal fluorescent light.

And if the screen is a bit too small, you can even have it output on your big HD display through the high-definition multimedia interface output.

Despite all its Blu-ray glory, the Aspire 6920G seems to have a glitch: It shudders every few seconds during playback with fast-moving action or complex graphics regardless whether the notebook is plugged in or running on batteries. This apparently has more to do with the Intel platform and the drivers rather than the notebook or even the Matsuhita Blu-ray drive, which is quite a letdown considering the hype over the notebook’s Blu-ray playback capability.

If it is merely a driver problem, then with a driver update, the Aspire 6920G should be able to live up to its hype hopefully in time to cash in on cheaper Blu-ray titles.

Product: Aspire 6920G
Manufacturer: Acer
Enquiries: Acer Malaysia (Toll-free: 1-800-881-288)
Price: RM4,499

Specifications

• Dimensions: 44mm by 275mm by 385mm
• Weight: 3.3kg
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 2.1GHz, 3MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB
• Operating system: Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
• Display: 16-inch, 1,366-by-768-pixel WXGA CineCrystal HD TFT-LCD
• Memory: 2GB DDR2
• Hard drive: 320GB
• Graphics card: NVidia GeForce 9500M GS 512MB (up to 1279MB with TurboCache aka shared memory)
• Connectivity: 802.11a/b/g/ Draft-N WLAN, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
• Battery: 4,400mAh lithium-ion
• Other features: Blu-ray optical drive, integrated six-in-one card reader (SD, MMC, MMCplus, MS, MS Pro and xD), Acer Xpress VoIP phone

Our verdict: ***
Physical design: ***
Documentation: ***
User-friendliness: ***
Features: ****
Performance: ****
Value for money: ***