Acer Ethos notebooks with detachable touchpad arrive in North America

The newest members of Acer’s Aspire Ethos family were announced earlier this month in the UK, and have now made the voyage across the Atlantic to reach North American shores. The Ethos AS8951G and AS5951G (AS indicates North American version) have been formally introduced by Acer via press release, and are pretty much the same as their British counterparts.

Both the 18.4" AS8951G and 15.6" AS5951G are protected by a sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass, but the 8951 has a Full-HD (1920x1080 pixels) display underneath while the 5951 only packs a standard HD (1366x768 pixels) panel. Otherwise, the two devices feature either Core i5 or i7 Sandy Bridge CPUs along with a 2GB NVIDIA GT555M, up to 1.5TB of storage and up to 16GB of RAM.

Designed as “top-of-the-line multimedia notebook PC lines”, the characteristic feature of Acer’s new Ethos notebooks is obviously the detachable touchpad. The pad serves as a remote control upon its removal and includes LED buttons that launch music and videos. Both notebooks also come with quality sound systems, as the AS8951G comes with five built-in speakers and a subwoofer, while the AS5951 comes with a pair of speakers and a booster.

With regards to pricing for the laptops, the AS5951G and AS8951G will sell for $1,400 and $1,600 respectively in the US and $1,200 and $1,500 in Canada. All different configurations of the notebooks should be available sometime this week at major retailers. 

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