Acer Laptop Aspire V3-571G-9686 Intel Core i7 3rd Gen 3632QM (2.20 GHz) 6 GB Memory 500 GB HDD NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M 15.6" Windows 8 64-Bit

Pros: First of all, awesome graphics - this runs all of the games I have tried flawlessly on max settings. It stays very cool also, even after long hours of gaming. I can play comfortably in my lap while watching TV at the same time. Wooo. I've also hooked it up to my graphics tablet and it runs that plus graphics software just fine. So it is also a great laptop for digital art. The webcam looks nice while Skyping, and I love how it is powerful enough to run Flash streaming or games in multiple tabs at the same time. No more streaming content crashing my browser, hooray! (Yeah, my last laptop was really old) So general entertainment and internet browsing is a breeze on this computer. The additional number pad is a very nice bonus, and the keyboard layout and key size does not suffer for it. I like the "feel" of the keyboard very much, and I type at my top speeds easily. I use a USB mouse though so I cannot comment on the touchpad, though it seemed quite responsive before I got my mouse. And finally - the price tag. Seriously, a great, powerful graphics machine for less than $1000. A poor young adult like me finds this to be a big plus. Go for this machine if you are looking for a good portable gaming rig on a budget.

Cons: The shiny casing looks neat, but it attracts fingerprints. This is mostly a nitpick for me - I just wipe the thing down once in a while. The speakers sound kind of bad, but I was expecting that. It IS a laptop, after all. I hooked it up to external speakers to fix that problem. I've been having some connection issues with the wifi adapter, but I believe this is a very fixable driver problem. It doesn't happen often and eventually I will get un-lazy and fix it. Win8 is a mixed bag. I loved Win7 and I do miss it. However, messing around with Win8's settings allowed me to get back to the familiar desktop layout that I like. It runs pretty smoothly too, especially when I got rid of the "apps" I am never going to use. So yeah, I got used to it so now I am happy. No complaints anymore here. The resolution is a bit on the low side of things, but I can live with that too - I bet making the resolution higher would also significantly add to the price tag. So, no biggie for me there, either. Some say this laptop is a bit big to be truly portable, but really it is fine for me - it is much slimmer and lighter than my previous laptop, so I can imagine some coffee-shop gaming in my future. It fits in a backpack just fine.

Overall Review: Get this laptop if: -You want great gaming on a cheap price tag -You want fast overall performance -You need awesome graphics -You'd like some portability -You don't want overheating Don't get this laptop if: -You want to use it outside -You have irreconcilable hatred for Windows8 -You want a fancy gaming laptop with snazzy LED lights -You need super high resolution -You're looking for a super-duper slim notebook -You can live without a dedicated graphics card -You're going to need lots of customer service - I hear Acer has pretty poor service, though I haven't had need for it myself.

Pros: Fallout New Vegas: Ultra Settings Shogun 2 Total War: Slows down with super large armies (+4000) Because the computer is able to switch between the 640M and Intel GMA, I get about 16 watts under normal operation and 90 watts peak with graphic intensive games.

Cons: Because of the dual GPU configuration, you sometimes need to manually set applications to enable 3D acceleration. This might become a pain when web applications start to use things like Web OpenGL, but in any other case, it's great not wasting battery and power in general on a GPU that isn't being used.

Overall Review: I own the model before this which uses an i7 3210 and Windows 7; however it's pretty much the same as what I have. I initially bought this laptop with the intent of getting an i7 with some kind of middle of the road graphics chip. Turns out I bought the replacement for my gaming laptop because this handles games as well if not better than my Core 2 Quad + 460GTX. This laptop uses 16 watts in normal operation and peaks at about 90 watts with a graphic intensive game. Games I've mentioned, run pretty well in 1080p through an HDMI cable to another monitor; needless to say, they run well through the 1366x768 resolution on the laptop's screen too. All of this made it a simple decision to shelf the gaming desktop for this laptop.

Pros: First off, along with buying this I also got a Corsair Force Series GS 180 GB drive and 8gb of Corsair Vengeance Ram. I also didn't even test out Win 8, I immediately swapped the drives and did a fresh install of Win 7. Anyways, keyboard feels good to me, love the full size numpad, trackpad better than average, speakers better than average, CPU is the reason I got, it mine got a ~7300 cpu passmark score. GPU is nice for the price you pay for all things considered. Runs cool, battery life not terrible if you know to how optimize your system.

Cons: I almost gave it 4 eggs but decided not to because this is based off SSD performance. My Corsair Force GS is getting ~380/250 for seq. read/write in crystaldiskmark. Intel RST says it has a 6gbs connection, and 380 wouldn't be possible on a SATA II... I've spent a lot time trying to get it to run up to spec, including tweaks that addressed issues the HM55 chipset was having with SSD speeds, but no dice. However this is HM77, and I could only find one other person with this same issue and no one responded to him. And yes, upon my testing the SSD got 510/505 seq. read/write on another system. (very close to rated)

Overall Review: Overall I'm still very happy, which is why I gave it 5 stars.

Pros: The dedicated videocard and strong processor make playing games on this laptop much better than similarly priced laptops. I play some processor heavy games (mostly the Total War series) and this laptop just flies. Has pretty good battery life, even when watching videos. While it seems that I've listen more cons than pros, the low price I got it for is the driving factor behind the high review. Had I paid "gaming laptop" prices I would be disappointed, but for the "regular laptop" prices you can't beat this rig.

Cons: HDD is very slow, but knew that buying it. No space to add a second HDD, but I am replacing it with a SSD. Also expanding to 8GB DDR3 1600 RAM. I probably wouldn't have bought the laptop not planning to make these upgrades. As others have stated, there is a disappointing amount of bloatware that comes with it, but I usually just accept this as a new part of reality when buying a pre-made computer. Also, maximum resolution is 1366x768. Not a big problem because I usually play through HDMI to a monitor anyway, but just know that ahead of time.

Overall Review: While this is still a way off from a "gaming laptop" I've been very happy with it's abilities. I can play games like Shogun Total War 2 and Mass Effect 3 on high settings, but it does seem to have some problems with online FPS like America's Army.

Pros: The GeForce GT 640M is really good for gaming. I can easily play Skyrim on Ultra settings with an ENB. The i7 is supper powerful, and the 6GB of RAM is plenty. The screen resolution is 1366x768, which isn't too weird, but isn't too common either, and I've seem many desktop wallpapers don't come in 1366x768. The resolution is really good, and is actually higher resolution than 720p.

Cons: The webcam, for me, came broken. It didn't come with drivers for it, and when I finally found them, it said it didn't recognize a webcam at all. I'm not too concerned about not having a webcam, I wouldn't use it very much at all anyway. The DVD drive is SUPER flimsy, and I truly think it will snap off any time now. I mainly use Steam, so that's not too much of a problem for me.

Overall Review: There are other laptops I've seen for about the same price with a GT 650M, but with an i5(usually 3225) and I think the better CPU in this makes up for the better GPU in the other laptops. I like to connect this to my TV with HDMI and play games in 1080p.

Pros: Price, quality, hardware, graphics. This machine is a beast for the price. I coudn't find anything that came close in this price-range. I bought 2 when they were a little more expensive and still feel I got a great deal.

Cons: Chicklet keyboard takes a bit to get used to, but once you do it works good, so not really a con. You will want to disable the trackpad and get a cordless mouse, especially if you do a lot of typing.

Overall Review: Overall, my wife and I are very satisfied with them. I use mine for gaming and coding. For gaming, this thing is great. Load times would be quicker with a solid state, but even the slow HDD it comes with, Skyrim is quick and the graphics on High are very nice. For coding, as I said before, the chicklet keyboard takes some getting used to, and the 1366x768 resolution also can be a hindrance some times when trouble shooting code.. but being able to run multiple programs at once like photoshop, ultraedit, ftp, navicat and 3 different browsers with multiple tabs and not have any lag makes up for it.

Pros: GT640M, a true quad i7, not the "partitioned" dual core shenanigans. Very sleek, everything is great about it hardware wise.

Cons: WINDOWS 8, I thought to myself "How bad could it be?". Turns out I was in for a surprise. I have not hated an OS this much since WebOS. It seems to be lacking compatibility with common programs, such as Steam, and Origin.

Overall Review: This laptop would be PERFECT if only it had Windows 7. Other than that, it is very fast and as far an im concerned it is a gaming laptop. I bought this laptop for 699.99$, then 3 hours later they bumped the price to 749.99$ Oh and it turns out the Newegg 2 day shipping is actually 4 day shipping, waste of 30$.

Pros: Very good price. Speakers are nice. The games I've tried have worked fine even with settings maxed out. The laptop stays cool really well. Screen size is very nice for watching video or movies. No problems out of the box.

Cons: Bloatware is a bit of a pain to remove, but that is always the case. The amount of bloatware on the laptop is pretty normal. Only real problem I noticed is the hard drive is not as fast as I would like, but it is not so slow that it makes me want to chuck the thing out the window. I actually barely notice the problem most of the time I use the laptop, which is why it did not effect the review. It's a bit on the large size for traveling and it's weight actually isn't too bad if it is needed. I did not intend to use this laptop for travel when I bought it, but I figure I would mention it.

Overall Review: This was my first laptop I bought from this site and overall I am rather impressed. I was a bit worried about buying a computer online without trying it out first, but the reviews were very helpful in my decision. This is only my second PC laptop and compared to my old one this is a much better experience (I'm still not sure what to make of Windows 8 though).