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Acer Aspire 3935-6504 review: Acer Aspire 3935-6504

Acer Aspire 3935-6504

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
Dan Ackerman
5 min read

It's easy enough to find a thin, sexy 13-inch laptop, such as the Dell Adamo or Apple MacBook. Finding one for less than $1,000 is a little tougher, as the base model aluminum MacBook starts at $1,299 (yes, there's a $999 plastic model, too), and HP's recent Pavilion dv3 is certainly inexpensive, but it's not particularly petite (and, until very recently, was only available with an AMD CPU).

7.7

Acer Aspire 3935-6504

The Good

Slim, polished design; powerful for a sub-$1,000 13-inch laptop; good battery life.

The Bad

Wimpy touch pad, VGA-only video output; some parts feel quite plastic.

The Bottom Line

Thin, sexy 13-inch laptops are reasonably common, but the Acer Aspire 3935 is one of the slickest available for less than $1,000.

Acer's new Aspire 3935 manages to fit a standard Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 3GB of RAM, and a decent 250GB hard drive into a slim chassis with a brushed metal finish, all for $899. The trade-offs are the integrated graphics (the standard MacBook offers Nvidia's excellent GeForce 9400 GPU), a touch pad that's merely adequate, and a dearth of any kind of video output besides VGA.

Price as reviewed $899
Processor 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7350
Memory 3GB, 1066MHz DDR2
Hard drive 250GB 5,400rpm
Chipset Mobile Intel GM45 Express Chipset
Graphics Intel GMA 4500MHD (integrated)
Operating system Windows Vista Premium
Dimensions 12.8 inches wide by 9.3 inches deep
Height 1.0 inches
Screen size (diagonal) 13.3 inches
System weight / Weight with AC adapter 4.2/5.0 pounds
Category Thin and light

The eye-catching Acer Aspire 3935 is only 1-inch thick, and the attractive bronze chassis has a brushed-metal overlay on the back of the lid. It's not as sturdy as the all-metal construction of the ($400-more-expensive) MacBook, but it generally felt solid and well-built, with a couple of exceptions. The plastic optical-drive tray wiggled and clicked under our fingers whenever we picked the system up, and we could occasionally hear the hard drive shutter and groan during even gentle handling.

A familiar-looking keyboard apes those found on Apple, Sony, and recent Dell laptops, with widely spaced, flat-topped keys. It's comfortable and easy to use, and includes full page-up and page-down keys, which we always find useful. The touch pad is usable but slightly cramped, and the mouse buttons require a firm click to register. The touchpad does, however, include a handful of multitouch gesture controls, including a photo-zooming pinch, and two-finger horizontal scrolling. We're fans of touch-pad gestures, but actually getting the gestures to register was hit-or-miss, and the small touch pad surface didn't give us a lot of room to work.

The 13.3-inch wide-screen LED display offers a 1,366x768 native resolution, which is standard for a 16:9 screen this size, and slightly higher than the usual 1,200x800 found on most non-16:9 13-inch laptops. The display was bright and easy to read, but also very glossy, so be warned if stray light reflections bother you.

  Acer Aspire 3935-6504 Average for category [thin-and-light]
Video VGA-out VGA, mini-HDMI or Mini-DVI
Audio Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks
Data 3 USB 2.0, SD card reader 3 USB 2.0, mini-FireWire, SD card reader
Expansion None ExpressCard/54
Networking Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optional WWAN
Optical drive DVD burner DVD burner

The Acer Aspire 3935 performed on par with other mid-priced 13-inch laptops, such as HP's AMD-powered Pavilion dv3z, and Gateway's Gateway UC7807u. None were a match for the more expensive MacBook, but in the 13-inch category, Dell's high-end $2,000 Adamo was far behind in each of our benchmark tests, thanks to its slower ultra-low voltage CPU (although that same chip helps the Adamo be arguably the slimmest laptop on the market today).

In anecdotal use, we found the Aspire 3935 well-suited for everyday multitasking, including Web surfing, media playback, and working on office documents. The integrated Intel graphics aren't going to do much more than play casual Web games--another area where the MacBook has an advantage, with its Nvidia GeForce 9400 graphics.

The Acer Aspire 3935 ran for 3 hours and 2 minutes on our video playback battery drain test, using the included four-cell battery. That's decent for a 13-inch laptop, but a few models, such as the HP dv3z and the 13-inch MacBook, can run for much longer. Our battery drain test is a grueling one, so you can expect longer life from casual use. Acer also includes a button labeled PowerSmart above the keyboard, which automatically dims the display and changes the color scheme to Vista basic, along with a few other power profile tweaks. It's nothing you can't do yourself manually, but the one-button operation is handy.

Acer includes an industry-standard, one-year, parts-and-labor warranty with the system. Support is accessible through a 24-7 toll-free phone line, and Acer has made some improvements to its previously unfathomable support Web site.

Multimedia Multitasking test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
HP Pavilion dv3-1051
901 
Acer Aspire 3935-6504
1003 
Dell Adamo
1864 

Adobe Photoshop CS3 image-processing test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
HP Pavilion dv3-1051
223 
Acer Aspire 3935-6504
247 

Apple iTunes encoding test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Acer Aspire 3935-6504
185 
HP Pavilion dv3-1051
202 

Video playback battery drain test (in minutes)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
HP Pavilion dv3-1051
281 
Acer Aspire 3935-6504
182 
Find out more about how we test laptops.

Acer Aspire 3935-6504
Windows Vista Home Edition SP1; 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7350; 3072MB DDR2 SDRAM 1066MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel GMA 4500MHD; 250GB Toshiba 5,400rpm

Gateway UC7807u
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1; 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6400; 3,072MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 128MB Mobile Intel GMA 4500MHD; 250GB Western Digital 5,400rpm

HP Pavilion dv3-1051
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.3GHz AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core ZM-84; 4,096MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 320MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3200; 320GB Fujitsu 5,400rpm

Apple MacBook Core 2 Duo - 2.4GHz / 13.3-inch
OS X 10.5.5 Leopard; Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz; 2048MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 9400M; 250GB Toshiba 5,400rpm

Dell Adamo
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U9300; 2048MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 779MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 4500MHD; 128GB Samsung SSD

7.7

Acer Aspire 3935-6504

Score Breakdown

Design 9Features 8Performance 7Battery 7Support 7