Blue is the colour of the future, apparently. We could argue, but what's the point? Everyone knows the blue LED is far superior to all other LEDs and any product that uses one immediately goes up in our estimations. Of slightly less importance than the truly innovative blue LED is Blu-ray, Sony's swaggering and victorious high-definition disc format that's now seeing wider adoption in notebooks. Dell recently announced plans to add it to its entry level Inspiron 1525 at a sub-£750 price point (see: Dell Launching Sub-£750 Blu-Ray Notebook) and Sony has been offering a similar deal for a little while now.
Most significant about both these new notebooks is the switch to 16:9 ratio displays, rather than the 16:10 found in most notebooks. Why? Because, as many of you may be aware, high-definition video is recorded in 16:9 resolutions, be they 720p or 1080p. This means you can watch video without unsightly black bars and though it's still nothing like a home theatre experience, every little bit helps.
Indeed, everything about this latest range seems geared towards making watching films, video and other entertainment as easy and as pleasurable as possible. Take what Acer is calling the ‘CineDash' media console, an initially slightly bewildering array of touch-sensitive media controls to the side of the keyboard. Of course, touch-sensitive controls like this are nothing new, but Acer seems to have gone out of its way to make the CineDash as outlandish as possible.
Acer has also made a lot of the speaker arrangement on the new Gemstone Blue series. Claims of "True 5.1 surround sound" through its six integrated speakers may be outlandish, but the 6920G in our possession can certainly pump out an impressive sound. This is helped by the Tube CineBass, which as the name suggests is a tube-style arrangement on the back of the notebook intended to boost warmer tones. This works well for music when combined with the Natural Bass feature, though the Sound Expander is best avoided when listening to music. In films the effect makes its presence known, though you'll still be better off plugging in a pair of speakers or headphones, which in particular sound superb thanks to Dolby Headphone's virtual surround and the warmer tones provided by Natural Bass.
Visually, the Gemstone Blue is an interesting thing to behold. Its blue and black glossy lid certainly looks the part, while the Acer logo is backlight to create a neat holographic effect. Inside, however, it perhaps lacks the elegance of some of the larger notebooks offered up by Sony and HP. The CineDash on the left is quite an imposing feature and the three-tone effect created by the light grey wrist rest, black keyboard and charcoal grey speaker grill is a tad jarring. It does also take a moment to get used to the size of the screen, since it's not as tall as the 16:10 displays one's used to seeing.
Regrettably, our sample doesn't feature a Full HD display either, resorting to a more pedestrian 1,366 x 768 HD Ready resolution that's nonetheless well disposed for movie watching purposes. In its 16in guise the Gemstone Blue will be available in both this and a Full HD 1,920 x 1,080 version. Meanwhile, the 18in 8920G will come in Full HD only and is likely to be the most desirable in terms of image quality, with Acer claiming a 90% colour gamut against the 60% one provided by the perfectly able 16in panel. This should mean noticeably richer and more vivid colours, while both feature a contrast boosting glossy finish.
As ever with Acer, perhaps the most appealing aspect of this new range is the value that's on offer, with the Aspire 6920G starting at £669 sans-Blu-ray and the 8920G at £899 with Blu-ray, a Full HD display and 4GB of RAM. Furthermore, all will feature staples such as Draft N wireless, fingerprint readers, Bluetooth and HDMI, while all but the cheapest in each range will be powered by Penryn CPUs along with nVidia's new range of 9-series discrete graphics.
For us, the highlight of the entire range may well be the 6920G-834G32Bn, which will offer a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T8300, 4GB of RAM, a 320GB HDD, Blu-ray, Full HD display and a Hybrid TV Tuner for less than £999. To our minds that's a truly superb spec for a notebook costing less than £1000. Further details of the ranges can already by found on Acer's UK website (Aspire 6920 | Aspire 8920), with pricing ranging from £669 to £1,149 for the 6920G and £899 to £1,399 for the 8920G. Overall, with the feature set and Acer's typically competitive pricing, the Gemstone Blue series could be a very good one.
It may look a tad formidable, but Acer's CineDash is a surprisingly intuitive interface.
The touch pad is sunk into the chassis, while a fingerprint reader is discretely tucked in between the two touch pad buttons.
There's a webcam too, though it's only 0.3-megapixels.
HDMI is included, as is S/PDIF audio output and the power input can be found on the hinge.
There's a Blu-ray drive and four USB ports, three of which are shown here.
The Acer logo is backlit, creating an unusual holographic effect.
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