Acer Laptop Aspire AS5560G-SB485 AMD A8-Series A8-3500M (1.5 GHz) 4 GB Memory 500 GB HDD AMD Radeon HD 6470M 15.6" Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Pros: I would like to preface this review by saying that I am a Certified PC Tech and I fix computers for a living. This Laptop is great. It has the new AMD Fusion APU, what that means is the cpu and graphics are on a single chip. Instead of being wimpy Like Int3l HD3xxx integrated graphics this is the real deal. This laptop packs the A8 (which is the best in the family) and at the time of purchase was the ONLY laptop with the A8, all others had the A6 or A4. I would know because I looked everywhere and at every manufacturer. This laptop also comes with an additional discreet graphics card. Together (the apu, and discreet graphics) are labeled the "Radeon HD 6640G2". Yes AMD's naming system is confusing and rediculous but the product rocks my socks off. This Laptop will run Starcraft 2 on High settings like a champ. I can't get over how sweet it is for gaming. Especially when I bought it for $580.

Cons: Ships with only 4 gb of ram. Many competitors ship with 6 gb even though they only have A6. (I upgraded to 8 gb for 45 bucks). Other cons are it doesn't have USB 3.0 ports but whatever, and also it doesn't have a Blu-Ray Drive (which could be a pro depending on how you look at it because many manufacturers will jack up the price by 100 to 200 just for including a Blu-Ray Drive.

Overall Review: Keyboard has the new island style keys with a full number pad and is a joy to type on. Sound quality is decent for a laptop. Could be a little louder I guess. The touch pads double tap click is annoyingly sensitive so I turned that particular feature off. Buy it, you won't regret it!

Pros: 1) Price, 2) Quality Build, 3) Mid-Range CPU Speed, 4) Extremely Fast Hard Drive, 5) GPU rocks in 3D, 4) Decent Sound, 5) Logs into Windows in 20 seconds (after uninstall of "bloatware")

Cons: 1) Pre-installed "Bloatware", 2) RAM speed, 3) Fragile keyboard buttons, 4) BIOS, 5) Takes several minutes to log into Windows with pre-installed bloatware.

Overall Review: Note that I build gaming computers for a living, so no laptop is going to excite me much. However, here's my two cents... 1) The CPU (WEI 6.7) is comparable to a desktop's PhenomII dual core @ 3.2Ghz. Not great, but not bad either. 2) The memory is surprising slow (WEI 5.9). I've seen DDR2 run faster. And you cannot adjust the timings or frequency in the Bios. 3) The GPU (5.9 and 6.5 WEI) does very well. It's comparable to about a $75 desktop GPU these days. 4) The hard drive (7.2 WEI) is impressively fast since it uses AHCI. SSD's on SataII barely notch out this little hard drive. Overall, AMD has made a great combo with this APU. There is little noticeable lag once you get rid of the bloatware. You'd be hard pressed to find a better $600 laptop.

Pros: Extremely responsive even when all 4 cores are at 100% workload under prime95. The video is uncanny for a laptop. SCII, contrary to popular believe, IS playable at ultra high settings (18fps). 60fps at medium. crystal mark benchmark test reported 10fps when 10,000 sprites where on screen (total CM benchmark score was 120,000. Switchable gpu allows for use of integrated video for less power consumption when doing trivial tasks. The best part is that all of this comes in a sub $600 package

Cons: BIOS is completely useless. The only thing your can really do is change the boot order. Only came with with 4gb ram. This is actually a minor inconvenience though. With teamviewer, diskdefrag, mcaffee, and prime95 using 300mb, the laptop only used 90% of the ram.

Overall Review: This laptop was such a great deal that I am about to buy 2 more (one for my wife, and one to replace my desktop). Within 24 hours of turning it on the first time, I put this thing through benchmark hell. It just chugged along and never failed.

Pros: - You won't find a cheaper price for this setup - Quad core processor AND dedicated video card for $520 - Clear and crisp virtual surround sound - Fast responsive hard drive - Very quiet - Won't heat up at all

Cons: - 4 Gigs of RAM is below industry standard at this point, but memory is cheap. All that really matters is having a good processor and video card. - Another arguable con is lack of BluRay and USB 3.0, but I can live without these technologies. USB 3.0 doesn't seem to be catching on and having a BD-ROM usually makes the manufacturers jack up the price quite a bit anyway. Plus I have a PS3 for my BluRay needs. - BIOS sucks. Doesn't allow configuration of just about anything.

Overall Review: I don't understand why people list bloatware as a con. You can uninstall the prepackaged filler within minutes, it's not a permanent condition for a computer. That being said, some of the bloatware for this laptop is quite useful. The instant file encryption and virtual drive for protecting private files works rather well. Overall, this great piece of technology is a steal and makes an excellent gaming laptop for someone on a budget.

Pros: Very nice value, screen is clear and has good contrast at any brightness, of which there is quite a range. HDMI out, using it cleared up some graphical errors that occured in the beta for BF3. Decent processor and graphics speed results in somewhat-playable performance in Battlefield 3(retail) on lowest settings. Considering how glitch-prone and greedy the program is this says volumes for this laptop, as it hasn't crashed once due to graphics issues(some connection-related stuff that has to do with my internet being to slow, also, don't try wireless g.) The 500GB Seagate Momentus Hard Drive drive(Model ST950032 5AS), comes properly configured, with the windows speedboost/etc disabled to prevent the SSD portion of the drive from getting overused. Using this drive results in signifigantly faster windows and often-used program load times and still leaves platter for more cost-efficent storage.

Cons: Shipped with 1 pixel out in upper-left portion of screen. This only appears when the content on the screen is very dark or black so not enough to distract during most gaming/video. It does seem somewhat fragile and the spacing between the keys seems to be asking for stuff to fall into it. I experienced a peculiar quirk where in games the keyboard and touchpad can't be used simultaneously. This isn't a real problem for someone who has an external mouse, but I'm sure it wouldn't demo well in a shop because of this. The sound/speaker performance isn't extremely good. Nothing here to remove an egg for considering the value.

Overall Review: 6640G2 = the on-apu HD6620G + the discrete HD 6470M. The dynamic between the on-apu and discrete graphics makes for some interesting performance issues on games that demand more cpu. I replaced the default RAM with G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1333 Model F3-10600CL9D-8GBSQ easily and am satisfied with the performance gains considering the cost. I bought this because my old tower system(It weighs in at about 52lbs) was getting too old to move without having to check all the cable connections and such.

Pros: I wrote a lengthy review on this but it didnt make it to the post. so i will skip all that stuff, but wanted to add somthing about the GFX on this machine. Generally speaking out of the box things are good. I noticed if i left programs open, like an IE browser openf for sometime teh cpu frequency would peg out and the video would judder when manipulating objects. The supplied GFX driver/bios seem to be the cause. there have been 2 bios updates since the version mine shipped with. also the GFX drive is many generations behind. and it can not be updated in the usualy ways. there are some hacked driver install packages that will work. but ultimatly i found it best to do a clean install with a regular win7 disc. if you use the hidden partition or burn the backups to disc you will ust go right back to those preloaded settings. SO i did a clean instal of win7 pro 64 and foudn the drivers for the video right from AMD and the others from ACER

Cons: NOTE* there is an SM Bus controller driver included in the acer vga driver bundle. just google the componet name and you will easily find a stand alone driver for it. all ther others are available at AMD.com and acer.com Since the clean install and BIOS updates it has been running like a dream, and i have since updated the GFX drivers using the usual AMD channels without inncodent. I think the proprietary acer VGA driver has issues and I am happy to be rid of it. if you are going to do a clean install i recomend leaving the hidden recovery partition and just do a format of C: partion and install there. it uses a GPT and didnt like it if the other partions and bootmanager were missing, so i had to put back that partition structure and then do win7pro on C: no bigge though. It ships with these WEI number Processor 6.5 RAM 7.1 GFX 5.7 Gamming GFX 6.5 HDD 5.9

Overall Review: I upgraded to 8gig of the next higher ram(forget the model but you it only supports the next speed higher, just look it up on crucial.com) also it is very overclockable with K10Stat My usual clocks are now 2.4 top continuous with a 2.8turbo and have no issues with this setitng, runs 41-45c normal 57c underload. no extra voltage needed for this setting, and you can easily undervolt the stock settings for power savings. with voltage i have done 2.8 3.0 boost but it was unstable overall. with the OC and Ram upgrade the WEI numbers are Processor 7.1 RAM 7.3 GFX 5.8 Gaming GFX 6.5 HDD 5.9 It will play force unleased 2 at 720p medium to high settings at a conssitant 28-30frames. Crysis 2 at 720 medium is only 17fps, drop the rez a setting and its playable with 24+fps. those are the only games i have tried.

Pros: If you are looking to find a blend of a pretty decent gaming laptop with a decent multi tasking ability, you won't find anything else close to this laptop if you can get it for the 520 Newegg had it at. I disagree with some reviewers that thought it did not have a quality feel. I think it feels fine for a mid-level laptop. I REALLY like the matte design on the case, which also carries on to the keyboard surround. The disc drawer feels solid (although the button on the drawer is impossible to find in the dark..) Unit has great sound and a great picture.

Cons: The keyboard buttons are the only thing that have any kind of budget feel to them. Not a keyboard for those that literally pound on their keyboards.

Overall Review: Couldn't be happier and very grateful that we grabbed it hours before Newegg jacked up the price !

Pros: Can play WoW even at Ultra graphics mode.

Cons: No option to buy this machine without Windows installed.

Overall Review: I bought this laptop for my daughter. The only performance criteria I had was that it play World of Warcraft at decent frame rates. It was impossible to get actual WoW performance stats for the AMD Radeon 6470M anywhere, so here are some FPS numbers of when I was flying around Stormwind: Mode | FPS -------+--------- Ultra 10 -> 20 High 15 -> 30 Good 18 -> 30 Fair 18 -> 40 Low 23 -> 55 The framerate varies substantially when flying depending on how much terrain is onscreen, players, etc. Framerates in dungeons is substantially higher.