Acer -Aspire 7741- An Excellent Decent Performance Laptop

Acer's Aspire 7741 has a smart, slimline design. The textured lid opens to reveal a brushed-metal keyboard surround, without any gaudy LEOs. It's implanted with a powerful Core i3 330M processor, and the 17.3in screen is generous for the price.

The l,600x900 resolution gives you more desktop space than most laptops at this price. It has a bright, even backlight, colour accuracy is good and contrast excellent. The large screen means there's enough room for a numeric keypad, and all the keys have a light but firm action. Similarly, the large touchpad is responsive, and has a vertical scrolling area.

The Core i3 330M's built-in graphics processor can handle HD video, and you could use the HDMI output to watch Full HD content on a larger external screen. Aspire is powerful enough for most applications. However, we've seen better battery performance from other Core i3-equipped notebooks, with the 7741 managing just three hours and 12 minutes.

Despite this, the large screen, great image quality and decent performance make this laptop excellent value.