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Bang For Your Buck

Mala Bhargava Mar 31, 2015

<div>Acer Aspire E-5571G Rs 62,499 In these days when laptops are becoming smaller and smaller until people give them up for tablets and give up those for large smartphones, the Acer Aspire E-5 571G seems a colossus. It’s designed for portability but not mobility. A sort of desktop-laptop. The size of the screen only means that this hunk of tech is meant for those who need to sit down and dive into their work, concentrate, and shut the world out. Smaller notebooks are for those who have a more physically active work day, typically rushing from one meeting to another with their devices in tow, and of course for those who travel a lot.  This giant laptop is in either grey-black or a garnet red and it has a plastic casing, though it doesn’t look it. Its texture is smooth and easily wipeable, so I don’t see it gathering too much dirt or fingerprints. But what it looks like is besides the point. The machine is power-packed, at a great price for what it gives. Rs  62,499 gets you an Intel Core i7 4510U with 8GB RAM and 2GB VRAM NVIDIA GeForce. You have 1TB of storage. The machine is running 64-bit Windows 8.1 on a 15.6-inch screen. The screen is adequately bright and has good viewing angles — thankfully it doesn’t wash out if you just happen to move your head a bit. Resolution is 1366x768. But here’s the thing — it’s not a touch screen. By now I think one has begun to associate a touch screen with Windows because that’s how its tiled interface works best. I constantly found myself reaching out to swipe away an application only to remember this wasn’t going to happen. But, should that matter little to you, you’ll get used to working the old way, without touch screens, fast enough. The keyboard is, I often think, one of the most critical parts of a laptop; one that can make or break your entire work speed and style. They keys are well spaced out and allow you to type quite fast. The keys could have done with a little more travel to them, but do work fine without that as well. There’s a large touchpad and the full number pad on the right. The battery gives you seven hours, plus there’s a battery pack. Overall, it’s a good get-down-to-it machine. <img width="640" height="474" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=df17be4e-54f1-4b0b-8c04-91396d1c7598&groupId=222861&t=1426577763167" alt="" /> Lenovo  A6000 Rs 7,000 Lenovo has been busy. It’s been launching phones finely aimed at specific consumer segments. The most recent to hit India is for those who are hankering after 4G LTE and don’t see themselves paying enormous sums of money for it. Quite rightly too. A little 5-inch phone called the A6000 brings 4G capability in just Rs 7,000. Its first sale on Flipkart lasted a mere four seconds for some 20,000 units. What you get is a totally modest phone in all other respects, but the connectivity. It’s got a soft smooth back with removable battery, dual-SIM, and an SD card slot with the capability of moving apps to this external storage. That’s good because there’s precious little storage on board — 8GB of which about 4 is available. The screen looks good despite not being very high resolution at 720p. Sound too is pretty nice, with two front speakers and Dolby sound. Other specs are modest including a 2,300mAh battery, a 1.2GHz Qualcomm 410 processor — except it’s a 64 bit — just 1GB of RAM, and an 8 and 2MP set of cameras. Despite these specs, it performs adequately and runs Android 4.4.4 with the promise of an upgrade to Lollipop soon. I didn’t have a great experience with the camera which I found slow and resulting in noisy images. In low light, you may as well not use it. It’s not much of a looker either, but definitely doesn’t veer towards the cheap and budget look that some phones have. It’s also light while being built well. It’s a good size and very comfortable to hold. The A6000 comes into a market crowded with all sorts of inexpensive wares, including from Xiaomi, Asus, Motorola and others. It has its work cut out for it. <img width="640" height="450" src="/image/image_gallery?uuid=ff49f37f-c239-4075-a9a2-64ce6e2a929d&groupId=222861&t=1426577787545" alt="" /> Xiaomi mi4 Rs 19,999 The mi4 is really about a year old, but not much about this smartphone from the House of Xiaomi is dated. It looks a whole lot like an iPhone, but then so many companies copy Apple — including sometimes Apple. And so to move on from that issue, the Mi4 is a really solidly built gadget, skirted by steely metal all around and carrying a bit of heft in its 5-inch form. Well, that is, the screen is 5 inches. It's a nice screen too, with good strong bright colours. It is, however, a bit warmer in tone than it should be. The back is glossy plastic and though it doesn't look bad at all, the world is in a state of plastic fatigue. The Mi4 is all topped up with hardware specs. Notably the Snapdragon 801, 3GB of RAM, and an 8MP front camera. The rear camera is 13MP and these do a pretty good job of low-light photos. There's the most recent pre-Lollipop Android running on it. This one isn't as cheap as the other Xiaomi phones, but it's still great build and high-end specs for Rs 19,999. What makes it — and other Xiaomi devices — stand out, is  the proprietary interface sitting on top of Android. It's a little Apple-like on the face of it, but once you explore settings and downloads from the Mi account you, there's a lot of customisation you can do. It isn't for those who don't want to tinker with their phones, though even they have at least a good solid phone, it's better in the hands of those who want to arrange how the device looks, use theme packs and enable features. For instance, you can project the screen on a PC. You can record calls. In fact, the MiUI is so popular it's available to download and use on other phones. The MiUI is in version 6 and is regularly getting updates to fix bugs or bring in features. You have to turn to the Redmi Note for 4G, but if you're not in a 4G zone, look at the Mi4 — though you'll have to watch for the flash sales on Flipkart with your finger on the buzzer. (This story was published in BW | Businessworld Issue Dated 06-04-2015)</div>

Mala Bhargava

BW Reporters Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.