Acer Ferrari 4005WLMi

Another year, another Acer Ferrari notebook powers its way into PCW. Unlike previous models, the Ferrari 4005WLMi makes more of an effort to live up to the hype generated by its name.

Like the sports car, it looks stunning. The black carbon-fibre lid is subtler than the garish red of previous versions, while the case is very sleek.

Under the hood sits an AMD Turion ML37 processor purring away at 2GHz, supported by 1GB of Ram. In our labs, the 4005WLMi scored 138 in Sysmark 2004 SE and 2,713 in PCmark 2004 ­ both are respectable for such a notebook, but certainly not jaw-dropping.

The 15.4in widescreen display performs well, as do the graphics. Powered by ATI’s 128MB Mobility Radeon X700 chipset, the Ferrari achieved a 3Dmark05 score of 2,411.

Dotted around the sides of the case are all the usual ports and sockets, including four USBs, a mini Firewire and a 5-in-1 memory card reader. There are also options for connecting the 4005WLMi to an external display, in the shape of VGA, DVI and
S-video ports.

Bluetooth, 802.11g and a dual-layer DVD burner are all present. Battery life ran to a reasonable three hours and 24 minutes in our Mobilemark test.

The Ferrari 4005WLMi is a well-designed notebook but, while Acer has tweaked the Ferrari’s engine, it’s still not in pole position in the world of portable computing.

Full performance results can be found here, or to see test results on all products in our labs, go to the Test Bed and click on Performace Results.