If you’re in the hunt for a stellar multimedia machine but find 18-inch notebooks to be overkill, turn a sharp eye toward the Acer Aspire 6930G-6723. This smaller brother to the Acer Aspire 8930G packs a powerful Intel Core 2 Duo processor, polygon-pushing Nvidia graphics, a Blu-ray drive, and robust sound. At $999, this is a fine machine for multimedia mavens who want a relatively lightweight desktop replacement that’s not too expensive.
Attractive Design
Similar to the 8930G, the 6930G sports Acer’s Gemstone design, which is an attractive mix of varied textures, illuminated buttons, and glossy finishes. The bluish black lid of the 15.7 x 11.5 x 1.7-inch system looks sharp, and we like the silver Acer logo and its white backlighting. It’s a fingerprint magnet, so you may want to keep a cloth handy to maintain the pristine out-of-the-box look.
While it weighs 1.8 pounds less than the 8930G, the 6930G checks in at a still-chunky 7.2 pounds. The 16-inch Samsung R610-64G, for example, weighs only 6 pounds. So while the 6930G is somewhat portable, you’re not going to want to travel with it.
Upon opening the lid of this notebook, you’ll find a glossy black keyboard above a silver, textured palm rest. The full-size keyboard has a good feel and offers plenty of real estate for lion-pawed users, and there’s room for a separate number pad to the right. The blue backlit multimedia touch controls are serviceable but sit left of center, so getting accustomed to their location takes a bit of time. Unlike the 8930G, this system lacks a biometric fingerprint reader.
On the right side of the 8930G are two USB 2.0 ports, a Blu-ray drive, modem, and Kensington lock slot, which is slickly built into the hinge. On the left side of the system you’ll find ports and connections for the power adapter, Ethernet, DisplayPort, VGA, HDMI, two USB 2.0 (one of which is eSATA-enabled), ExpressCard/54, and headphone and microphone jacks. A 5-in-1 memory card reader is housed in the unit’s front edge.
Audio, Video, and Webcam
The glossy 16-inch (1366 x 768-pixel resolution), 16:9-ratio display is bright and colorful, which made watching the Blu-ray version of Top Gun pleasurable. As the display isn’t full HD, we extended the visuals to a 32-inch external monitor using the HDMI port to watch the movie in 1920 x 1080p and enjoyed rich colors and quality skin tones.
Sound mavens will love the system’s crisp, rich audio, which comes courtesy of Acer’s CineSurround set up (which utilizes virtual 5.1 surround sound) and Dolby’s second-generation Home Theater technology. The Tuba CineBass booster provided plenty of low-end thump.
Acer’s 1.3-megapixel Crystal Eye webcam is one of the best integrated notebook cameras that we’ve ever used. Unlike the vast majority of webcams on the market, it delivered a super-crisp image that exhibited natural colors. Users have the option of taking photos or videos in two different resolutions (320 x 240 and 640 x 480), both of which looked sharp even in low light. The included webcam utility is very basic, however, and lacks such extra features as face-tracking and special effects.
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