CeBIT 2007: Review Acer Ferrari 5005 Notebook
Scuderia Acer. It's common that various manufacturers aspire to cooperations with noble brands in order to polish up their own image. Acer tries to attract possible customers and reach expensive notebook brands by its Ferrari 5005 and terms like "Power to take the lead".
This review is a summary of tests done on-site. We ask for some understanding that some of the measurements could, therefore, not be done.
Case
Although the Acer Ferrari is a series of its own, you can partly recognize forms which are already known from other Acer series. E.g., the Acer Ferrari 5005's keyboard reminds you on the Travelmates'.
The design is affected by lavish coatings with red accents, black high gloss surfaces to a velvety matt hand ball support. Furthermore, the display cover attracts by carbon-look, and a Ferrari logo placed in its center. In total the design of this notebook looks alright. The input of Italian designers was obviously worth it.
The flexural rigidity of the case is alright, the case is clearly stabler than those of most notebooks of the Aspire series. The Ferrari optically also has the often criticized weakness, a cut across the case above the keyboard, however, it is much better regarding flexural rigidity of this region.
However, we observed deflections at the backside of the notebook, when moving it. E.g., the plastic cover of the hinges deflects clearly to the back when changing the position of the display. Furthermore, we could also detect deflections at the case itself. So, there is yet a long way to reach the stability of a Ferrari Monocoque.
The interfaces of the Ferrari 5005 are distributed around the whole notebook. E.g., the audio ports are unreasonably placed at the front side and 2 USB ports are near the front on the right side of the case.
Input Devices
As already mentioned the Ferrari's keyboard has the flection well-known of Travelmate. In general a slight upward flection should improve the ergonomics. However, it's up to the user to decide, if he can really derive a benefit from it.
The keyboard is not especially structured, still it is passable in use. An interesting detail are two additional keys integrated in the cursor block. Usually other manufactures place a blind or various function keys, where Acer notebooks provide you with separate Dollar and Euro keys.
This notebook's touch pad is alright. The surface has good sliding properties and the pad precisely reacts to user actions. Both buttons as well as the 4-way button in the center can be used without any problems.
Display
The display of the Ferrari 5005 with a maximum resolution of 1680x1050 pixels (WSXGA) appeared to be moderately bright. However, we have to mentioned that the notebooks were very well-lit at Acer's stand. This did not only make us sweat, but also had some impact on the appearance of the display.
Horizontally, the stability to the vantage point of the display was in general alright, but limited by reflections at acute angels. Vertically, the display - as usual - darkened or whitened when deviating too much from the ideal vantage point.
Performance
We do not really feel that the advertising slogan fits well to this notebook: "Power to take the Lead". E.g., the hardware equipment of the Ferrari 5005, an AMD Turion 64 X2 CPU with 2.0 GHz and a ATI X1600 video card with 256MB VRAM, did not really delight us.
Regarding processors a 2.33 GHz T7600 High End CPU by Intel, as well as regarding video cards for 15'' notebooks, e.g., a Geforce 7700 or an ATI X1700 video card would be much more powerful components. On the whole the Ferrari is therefore only average regarding performance.
Still, the provided performance should be sufficient for all current office applications, and even current games should be playable, if you reduce the resolution and the number of details.
Further information about the video card can be found here or in our comparison of mobile video cards. Detailed information about the Turion 64 X2 CPU can be found here.
Please also look at our benchmark list of mobile processors or at our benchmark list of mobile video cards, in order to compare this notebook to other configurations.
Emissions
While the notebook ran idle, we could observe that the temperature moderately increased at the top and and at the bottom side. Remarkably, it increased slightly more at the right side than at the left side.
Battery Runtime
The notebook is equipped with a 7800 mAh 9-cell battery, which should be able to provide a runtime of above 3 hours, depending on the energy settings. Therefore, the Ferrari is well-equipped for mobile use.
Verdict
The Acer Ferrari 5005 clearly differs from the rest of the Acer series by an elegant design. In general the workmanship is alright, despite of a weakness of the display hinges, which clearly deflect when adjusting the display's position.
Also the input devices are alright and do not have any anomalies.
The display has slight weaknesses regarding vertical stability to the vantage point. It's difficult valuate its brightness, because of the very bright environment.
We were somewhat disappointed by the moderate equipment of this notebook, which can not really reach the speed and quality of the Italian noble brand, in particular, because even current technologies were not completely utilized.