Acer Aspire 1830T Timeline X Review

Our Acer Aspire 1830T-68U118 feastures the following specifications:

• Intel Core i7 680UM processor (1.46GHz, 4MB L3 cache)
• 11.6-inch 1366x768 HD display with LED backlighting
• Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
• 4GB DDR3 memory
• 500GB 5400rpm HDD
• Intel HD integrated graphics
• Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11n wireless
• Bluetooth 3.0 (Foxconn BCM92046)
• 6-cell Li-ion battery
• Dimensions: 11.22 (w) x 8.03 (d) x1.01-1.10 (h) inches
• Weight: 3.09 pounds
• MSRP: $899.99

Build and Design
The Acer Aspire Timeline X series is the latest generation of thin and light notebooks from Acer designed to offer solid performance and long battery life in a surprisingly lightweight package. At first glance it's easy to mistake the Aspire 1830T for one of the dozens of Acer netbooks that have shown up over the last few years. Looks, however, can be deceiving.

Build quality is quite good despite the diminutive size of this laptop. The combination of relatively thick matte plastics and black brushed aluminum palmrests leave the notebook feeling solid and showing almost no signs of flex. The screen stays firmly shut with a good amount of tension from the screen hinges when closed. Protection from the screen cover is only adequate; the cover flexes quite easily and distortions appeared on the display when we applied pressure to the back of the cover. Opening up the screen you can tell the hinges should hold up for a long time with strong tension that prevents the screen from flopping around once opened. The body of the notebook seems to be well designed with minimal chassis flex and no obvious creaks from the plastics.

 

One area of the design that impressed me was the bottom of the notebook. The expansion bay provides access to the hard drive, the WLAN and optional WWAN card slots as well as two RAM sockets. The single cover panel is held in place by five screws (my only complaint), so you'll have a spend a minute or two loosing all of those screws before you can swap out the hard drive or add more RAM. That said, I'm always happy to see when manufacturers make it easy for owners to upgrade their notebooks.

Ports and Features
Port selection on the Aspire 1830T is fairly standard for a modern netbook or 11-inch ultraportable notebook. Acer gives you three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI-out, VGA, LAN, and audio jacks. It also features a SDHC-card slot for expanding internal storage or just loading images off your camera while traveling. Since we're starting to see USB 3.0 on more consumer notebooks and there are many USB 3.0 external hard drives on the market we really wish Acer had found a way to put at least one USB 3.0 port on this $900 notebook. Here is a quick tour around the Aspire 1830T:

Front View: Activity lights

Rear View: Battery and screen hinges

Left Side View: VGA out, AC power
HDMI-out and one USB 2.0 port

Right Side View: Media card reader,
Audio jacks, two USB 2.0 ports,
Kensington lock slot and LAN.