The case, which Safire Blue high-gloss display lid is a real eye-catcher, presents itself in the new Gemstone outfit of the Acer Aspire range. Especially voluminous LED lighting provide for creative highlights, particularly in the area of the on/off button. Above all the power button's LED performance is a bit too strident for our taste and also confusing because the visualization of the various operating modes (on/off, connected to main) are somewhat difficult to tell apart. For instance, it's not easy to establish if the power button has been pressed or not under power supply (the ring around the power connection lights up a bit).

Although exclusively plastic components have been employed for the case, this makes a high-quality impression. Particularly the dark gray cover of the wrist rest is responsible for this, which have, apart from a pleasant haptic, also a good stability.

Actually, the whole case shows itself, with a breadth of 383 millimeters, a depth of 250 millimeters and a maximum height of 37 millimeters, in a very compact chassis in a 15.6 inch format. This also puts a frequent carrying around away relatively well.

We could only establish problems in the area of the optical drive in the test. At point pressure we could establish a slight giving in here.  Likewise for the display lid, this gave in slightly under pressure and then also showed image distortions on the display.

The display hinges almost appear to be somewhat under-dimensioned, but hold the test device's screen sufficiently in place, anyhow. These respond to an adjusting of the opening angle with an evident luffing. On the other hand, the hinges are fairly stiff so that a further opening of the lid is only possible using both hands. A limited display opening angle of approx. 135° was also evident, which shouldn't lead to restrictions at stationary utilization with the device.

The notebook is secured for transport with two catches placed on the upper display frame, which are fixated on the base unit. The opening mechanism's counterpart, in the form of a central lever on the base unit, works perfectly but is rather difficult to reach due to the relatively large width of the notebook.

Aside from the ex-factory integrated NetLink Gigabit Ethernet adapter from Broadcom, which provides for a fast wired transmission with the according infrastructure, there is also an Atheros AR5B91 wireless module for quick wireless communication with draft-n support built-in.
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR is is also available as a surcharge-liable option, but wasn't built into the test device.
The integrated HDAUDIO Soft Data fax modem makes internet access via standard telephone lines. A UMTS modem is searched for in vain, though. Due to the lack of an Expresscard slot, there is only the wireless broadband communication extended over an external USB modem left, if required.

Nothing stands in the way of video conferences via the Crystal Eye WebCam built in over the upper display edge, the integrated internal microphone over the keyboard and the corresponding optional software.

Vista Home Premium 32 Bit is preinstalled in regards to the operating system. Additionally a whole range of Vista versions and also XP is supported. Corresponding drivers are available for download on the manufacturer's site. At a configuration of more than 4 gigabytes RAM, you should definitely consider the selection of a 64 bit capable operating system so that the whole memory can be used under Windows. There were four gigabytes of main memory built-in in the installed system. However, there is only a bit over 3 gigabytes available for applications since a part is reserved for the operating system and for installed devices (Memory Mapped IO).
Unfortunately, there is no recovery DVD in the carton. So, it is recommendable to immediately create recovery media with the pre-installed Acer eRecovery Manager. Otherwise, the user is dependent on an intact recovery partition in order to reset the system to its delivery state when trouble strikes. Tough luck if the system doesn't boot anymore at all, or if the recovery partition has been destroyed through a hard disk crash…

Acer grants a 24 month guaranty including 1 year International Traveler's Warranty ex-factory on the Aspire 5536G.

The Acer Aspire 5536G follows a new trend in respect to the applied display format. In the opinion of media enterprises, the aspect ratio of 16:9 should also converge with notebooks, in order to render contemporary movies as bar-free as possible and to use the display to its maximum. At this point you shouldn't forget that we are still dealing with a mobile PC, for which only a small part of its application field is taken up from playing movies. For many daily tasks and multimedia applications, a correlating image height is very much of an advantage.
Then we are at the given notebook resolution of 1366x768 pixels, In assessment to the common 1280x800 format, somewhat of height has been saved and invested into the image width, instead.

The HD Acer CineCrystal LCD built into our test device showed a good maximum brightness of 217 cd/m² in the brightness test, measured in the center display area. However a strong brightness decrease towards the lower left section could also be observed, where the maximum brightness was merely 164.2 cd/m². The Aspire 5536G achieved, in regards to illumination, merely 76% with this.

Based on AMD's M780G chip set, a whole range of AMD Turion X2 dual core processors or AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core CPUs can be employed in the Acer Aspire 5536G.  The AMD processors are somewhat behind those equally clocked chips from Intel, in regards to performance but this is not so significant for undemanding applications. Particularly the price plays an important role, especially for multimedia starter notebooks and AMD is the leader here.

Our test device was equipped with an AMD Athlon X2 QL-64 with a clock-rate of 2.1 GHz per core, in this regard. One significant difference to Intel's chips is the smaller L2 cache of 512 KB per core due to its architecture. The QL-64 is manufactured in the 65 nanometer technology and correlates in this regard to the older Merom CPUs from Intel.

The application performance is corresponding to that of a multimedia starter device at a low price. With the reached 4270 PCMarks in the PCMark05, it  even exceeds the, in the beginning of the year tested, Acer Aspire 5530G (3805 PCMarks) by about 11%.  However, other multimedia devices reached similar values already two and a half years ago, though. An example would be to name the Asus F3Jm, which was tested by us in October 2006, and achieved a comparable performance with 4281 PCMarks, although to a considerably higher price then.

The HD 4570 reached 2654 points in the executed 3DMark2006. It places itself between the 9600M GS and the 9600 GT, with that. The use of a GDDR memory instead of a "normal" DDR2 RAM as a graphic memory would most certainly increase the performance a bit.  Then again, in comparison to the Aspire 5530G (2327 points), which can improve its graphic efficiency via a hybrid graphic solution at best up to 20%, a performance bonus of 12% for our test device in the 3DMark2006 benchmark, is to be noted. You can observe an considerable improvement from the HD 3400 series to the HD 4500 series here and in the Cinebench R10 Shading test (+19% for our test candidate - 2598; 5530G: 2098).

Of course, the configuration of the main memory and the mass memory contribute to the performance of the total system. With a total main memory capacity of four gigabytes RAM, the system bids also the maximum of a 32 Bit operating system addressable RAM capacity. However, merely a bit more than three gigabytes are available for applications under Windows Vista Home Premium 32 Bits. The rest is reserved from the operating system for itself and for Memory Mapped IO. If you are considering upgrading this device up to 8 gigabytes RAM, a 64 Bit operating system is definitely necessary.  With this, you would also reach the mainboard's maximum supported capacity. Upgrading is easy, due to the easily accessible maintenance opening, but at least one of the built-in two gigabyte modules will be obsolete.

A voluminous 320GB hard disk from Western Digital (WD3200BEVT) is employed as the mass memory. The 2.5 inch format data carrier runs with a velocity of 5400 rpm and shows adequate access times of 17 milliseconds and transmission rates of up to 65.3 MB/s in the HDTune benchmark test and is therefore in the center span of comparable 5400 models.

Even though it's been conceived as a starter multimedia device and not as a gaming notebook, we did want to take a closer look at the gaming capability of the Mobility Radeon HD 4570.

Doom 3

Older titles like Doom 3 are, as awaited, not a big challenge for the Acer Aspire 5536G. As expected, this game ran smoothly also with a high resolution and ultra details with 45 fps.

Call of Duty 4

We also put the Aspire 5536G to a further practical gaming test with the popular shooter Call of Duty 4. If you choose the minimum resolution of 800x600 pixels and low details, the system very well achieves a playable range with an average of 63.4 frames per second. However, if you increase the resolution to 1024x768 pixels and medium details, it already gets tight in view of performance with an average of 28.44 frames per second and you cannot count on continuous gaming fun, anymore.

System Noise

A constantly running fan could also be observed in the Acer Aspire 5536G at use without and at low load, hence at office mode while surfing in the internet or even in idle mode. This can be described as very audible with a volume of 36.4 dB(A) on our measuring scale, but can still be dealt with due to its pitch. The notebook remains on this level also in classic office applications.

The Acer Aspire 5536G reaches its maximum volume of 42.6 dB(A) under load very quickly. This noise level can sometimes already be called loud. This will be more or less noticeable depending on the application, for instance when your interest is captivated elsewhere in gaming.

Temperature

The left to center upper side becomes noticeably warmer under load. The heating becomes very noticeable for the left hand at typing or controlling games via A-W-S-D with observed maximum values of up to 41.8 degrees Celsius.

A maximum value of 57.6 degrees Celcius was measured on the bottom side in the left back section It even becomes subjectively noticeably hot in the area of the louver.