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I've had mine for a little over a week now and I think it's great so far but, there are a few things that I thought some people should know about. I now wish I had the back lit keyboard however, the white on black keys are visible well enough from light from the screen. The Window's 8 takes some getting used to but seems easy enough to fumble you way through it. It didn't take long to understand it but every now and again I do something that I don't know how to get back to where I was and I have to start over again from the desktop. The computer gets hot and it all blows out the rear left vent. The display is beautiful. The shape of the computer being a bit wider than my old 17", makes it a bit more difficult to slide into a carrying case because I use a wireless mouse and the USB adapter protrudes out just far enough to get caught on the bag. The mouse pad is nice and very sensitive and sometimes causes me issues when trying to type. This is the reason I got the wireless mouse. My old computer had a button that allowed me to turn off the mouse pad. You have to find the "off button" within the software to adjust the mouse pad. The computer seems well built and looks nice. The keys seem to be nicely spaced and the keyboard "feels" good to use. It ran some YouTube videos a bit choppily, but that might have been cause by other things. My old computer running right next to the new one was running the video fine. One thing that really bugged me, and I'm sure it's not the computers fault, is there were tons of programs trying to tell me that I needed to download them. Trying to uninstall programs was a bit difficult at first but after learning how to do it from the smart phone style desktop it's easy. If I remember, I'll edit my review or add a new one.
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Let me get this nagging thing out of the way: I bought this from Amazon last week, and IMMEDIATELY felt VERY disappointed. Before I placed the order, I spoke with Amazon chat to confirm that "CineCrystal" display on this product's page meant a glossy screen. The sales rep CONFIRMED it does, and it will, as it states on the page. Come 3 days later, after I look around and find NO OTHER gaming laptop has it, I pull the trigger. I open the Amazon box to see the Acer laptop... and *sigh* The side label said "ComfyView"-Their panels that have the anti-glare matte coating.Yes, matte screens are ideal for outside use and all, as there is little to no glare, compared to glossy screens, but this is a portable Blu-ray and gaming laptop for hanging with friends in dimly lit rooms-I WANTED a glossy screen, as it still advertises on this page. I prefer glossy because they have, IMO, a sharper image, better contrast and colors that give off... more of a "pop", so to speak. I bought this almost exlcusively for the MMORPG on PC, "Tera: Rising", which has very vibrant colors, and I remember playing on 2 different 1080p (both TN panels, so don't bring up the "it's a different panel arguement) screens, one with and one without gloss, and the glossy one looked MUCH better! Regardless, if you're on the hunt for a glossy screen as I am, the matte screen does still look nice, and I truly mean it when I say Acer has THE BEST looking laptops. It's a brushed aluminum finish all around, and it looks... beautiful! Just be aware if you buy from Amazon, you MAY receive a product that differs from the description. I read a review on Newegg from a confirmed purchase they received a glossy screen, so I'm REALLY contemplating if I should go through hassle to return and buy from Newegg only for that reason.
Now onto the goods: The chicklet keyboard feels great when typing, and although not particularly ideal for gaming, gets the job done. Be aware that these keys are really sensitive, so pressing on them too hard may recess them in a stuck position-My friend just called asking why when he presses the 'E' key n Windows 8, the "My Computer" pops up. Well, he just needed to tap the Windows key a bit, and that fixed it; Windows key + E is a shortcut to My Computer.
The screen is nice. The viewing angles are like a typical TN: From side to side, you will notice a diminishing effect, but not a lot. Fro mtop to bottom, however, you will absolutely notice that weird loss of color, so position yourself right on this laptop when viewing movies for the best quality. Colors look well, resolution sharp and text is very nice to read.
Gaming. The GTX 760 is a good lower mid range mobile class card, where most people recommend it for 1600 x 900 (HD+) gaming, and not 1920 x 1080 (FHD) if you want to "max" out games, or play on high quality settings. Despite those reviews, and benchmarks that say it's within a margin of error in comparison to the GTX 750M (The Acer Aspire V3-772G 9829 being equipped with that, and about $200 less, but no BD drive and 4GB less of RAM), it games fine at 1080p. I HIGHLY recommend downloading the latest drivers from GeForce's website, and leave the check mark to download and install "GeForce Experience"-It's the difference between playable and non-playable, and will save you LOADS of time! Here are some rough estiamtes in some games at certain settings, as observed through FRAPS running as an FPS marker (I did not set a benchmark, these are what I recall seeing it stable out around; take this as an expectation of sorts):
Tera: Rising -1080p, MAXED OUT (All settings at 6/6, or their maximum equivalent): It ranged from 35-38 FPS questing, and dipping A LOT, going from 8-15 FPS in Corsair's Stronghold PvP Battleground. If you're familiar with this game, you know this is not uncommon, as even my desktop equipped with a 780 dips into the 20's, as this game has not gotten a lot of love for optimization.
League of Legends -1080p, EVERYTHING MAXED: Observed over 70 FPS, and maybe a low of 55 at times, but VERY smooth.
Far Cry 3-1080p, HIGH settings (3rd lowest; VERY HIGH and ULTRA are after, so this is 3/5, so to speak) with no filters or AA, and HDAO: About 25-29 FPS roaming around, and a little higher riding a jet ski. Still looks nice with the pixel density of 1080p on a 17.3" screen.
Guild Wars 2 -1080p, MAXED OUT, with NO Supersampling (Disabled): About 38-42 FPS questing.
Metro Last Light -1080p, NORMAL, Advanced PhysX OFF, SSAA OFF, Tessellation NORMAL, 16x AF: About 35-39 FPS. Playable. I manually adjusted settings for a bit, having it on high with no filters, and where it did hover at 40 or so FPS, there were plenty of areas with just the AI talking it would TANK to like 12-15 FPS for no reason. This is the game GeForce Experience definitely helped out, and why I'd recommend you install for your convenience when you update your graphics driver.
Crysis 3 -This one I have installed, but did not yet try out. I'm listing off what GeForce Experience recommends I set my settings to for the best experience: 1600 x 900 (HD+; lower resolution than the default 1080p), 1x AF, and ALL settings LOW. Yeah, this won't run Crysis maxed out, like at all.
The Blu-ray drive is nice; plays all my Blu-rays, even ones I backed up that my niece loves to throw around just fine-I used ArcSoft Total Media Theatre 6 I have a license for as opposed to the default Blu-ray media. If it ain't broke... This is a Blu-ray reader/ DVD burner. You can however create ISOs out of Blu-ray for mounting on a virtual drive, so that's a plus.
All in all, my few days with it doing light benchmarking and all has been nice. I would recommend either switching out the 5400 RPM drive with a 7200 RPM one (~$88 off of eBay for 1TB), or use an SSD for boot (there is a second hard drive bay that does not come occupied, for future expansion), as this laptop boots a little slower than I'm used to. I'll see if this matte screen can win me over, but other than that one big gripe, I feel the rest of the parts are great for gaming on the go, albeit at medium to high settings.
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