At their first-ever international press conference in New York, Acer today announced the second generation of their Aspire Gemstone notebooks, the Aspire Gemstone Blue.
The notebooks will use Intel's new Penryn chips on the Santa Rosa platform, but Acer would rather you focus on the admittedly gorgeous 16:9 widescreen displays. Coming in 18.4-inch (8920G) and 16-inch (6920G) sizes, the 1920x1080 resolution monitors are pretty, but the 16:9 aspect ratio means more utilized screen real estate when watching Blu-ray movies. Speaking of Blu-ray movies, Acer reps claim up to 3 hours of Blu-ray playback on the 18.4-inch 8920G and up to 2.5 hours on the 16-inch 6920G, although based on our experience with laptop Blu-ray drives, this claim seems dubious.
The new laptops have what Acer calls a touch-sensitive "CineDash" keypad to the left of the keyboard, which serves as a control panel for media playback on the machine. It works well with Acer's current version of Acer Arcade, a user-friendly interface for multimedia in the vein of Apple's Front Row. The circuitous touch-sensitive controls worked well on the 8920G we played with; scrolling through selections with the touch circle was convenient and even a little fun.
Probably the most interesting aspect of Acer's announcement is that the new Aspire Gemstone Blue line will start at $900, although to get all the Blu-ray and 1080p goodness, potential customers will have to shell out closer to $1700. But when considering that its competitors, laptops like Sony's VAIO AR sell for about twice that, Acer's newest offerings are exciting news for those in the market for a shiny new Penryn Blu-ray laptop.
For hands-on shots of the Aspire 6920G, click here. To compare the new Gemstone Blue notbooks with 17-inch and 20.1-inch Blu-ray competitors, click here.
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