For our multimedia tests we called in our AV expert Siddharth, and this is what he had to say:

"The screen is 1920 x 1080 to the dot, so that facilitates straight up viewing of HD content, and its pure 16:9 ratio too helps out, as no up, down or 'side' scaling is required. We watched some cool HD clips, ranging from Dark Knight and Hulk 2 trailer to Blu-ray disc content like Independence Day.

The colors were spot on; very vibrant and natural. The screen itself is a reflective, but as I come from the TV realm, where reflectivity is not an issue at all, I will have to give the laptop the benefit of the doubt. Same goes for contrast, which I found only slightly below fantastic; it was really very good. The blacks came out quite well segregated.

The Blu-ray drive performed pretty well. There was no real noise problem, nor any latency in spinning and playing the disc once it was inserted. The sound is quite impressive, considering it's a notebook. I'd suggest using headphones, but this has got some impressive features provided by Dolby, which is at least good enough to stay in the feature list, and not be a total waste."

Our next round of tests was to test the graphical capabilities of the laptop. The games we used were Call of Duty 4, Crysis, and WoW Burning Crusade. Each of these was run at a resolution of 1920x1080 with 2x AA. The results were as expected. In Crysis the game was completely unplayable as it was a crawl show. We had to knock the resolution down to 1440x900 and 'medium' detail before we could achieve any kind of playable frame rate. COD 4 fared a little better, offering gameplay at the native resolution at low fps. We knocked the resolution down one step and switched off AA. This allowed the game to run at an acceptable frame rate of 30.

Our final test was, unsurprisingly, WoW. Despite being quite old, the game has recently gotten some texture upgrades that make it look incredibly sharp and detailed. One such area is the famous dungeon Black Temple, which houses the end-game boss Illidan. In the course of this fight, the amount of detail being pumped out can get really intense and can bring most high-powered rigs to their knees. But here the 8920 shone. It was easily able to keep up with the game, with all features turned up high. There was no lag anywhere.

The battery test held no surprises. The 8920 was able to last around two hours under normal circumstances, and this should come as no surprise keeping in mind its powerful features.

The 8920 costs Rs 79,000 upwards and represents a new breed of powerful all-in-one affordable laptops. Similar configurations from Dell and HP can easily cost over a lakh with the addition of an HD resolution option and Blu-ray. While prices will no doubt fall in future, Acer has to be commended for gaining the first mover advantage.