Acer announced today new Aspire notebooks that will join their existing Gemstone Blue line in the U.S. market. The latest systems place an emphasis on wallet-minded workhorse qualities with a media-centric garnish. Of the three systems, only two are presently available; the Aspire AS5536 and AS7735Z. The AS5739G, which is the most expensive of the bunch, won’t hit shelves until later on this month.

While the systems do vary in horsepower, they all share the same general build. Starting at $480 the AS6636 is the least expensive (and endowed) of the trio. It features a 15.6” 16:9 LED display, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-64, 3GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM, an ATI Radeon HD 3200 GPU, 320GB HDD, 8x DVD drive and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi capabilities.


The AS7735Z starts at $600 and packs a 17.3” display, an Intel Pentium T4200 and GMA 4500MHD, 4GB of DDR3 1066MHz RAM and a 250GB HDD. Jumping up to $750, the AS5739G takes a step backward with its 15.6” display but makes up for it with a Core 2 Duo T6500, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT130M and an 8x Blu-ray drive.