Acer Aspire 5 Review - A Quality, Affordable Laptop

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Acer Aspire 5 design

Connections and ports

Keyboard and touchpad

Decent screen

Sound and speakers

CPU performance

SSD speed

Some games can be played

Laptop portability

Warranty

Extra software Acer Aspire 5

Total

Are there alternatives?

Benefits of the Acer Aspire 5

Disadvantages of the Aspire 5

There are laptops more expensive than $ 1000 (58,000 rubles.) with an all-metal body, 4K UHD display and a full-day battery. However, not everyone can afford them, so there are laptops on the market like the Acer Aspire 5.

Read Also: Acer Swift 3 Review: Budget Laptop with Top-End Features

A few years ago, budget laptops were made fromsqueaky plastics, and they suffered from extremely poor performance. Now laptops like the Acer Aspire 5 with a 15.6-inch Full HD display, a Core i5-7200U processor, a discrete Nvidia MX150 graphics card, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 256GB SATA SSD cost $ 600 (35,000 rubles).

But, has Acer managed to maintain quality while cutting the price? Let's try to find out.

Acer Aspire 5 design

Acer Aspire 5 case 2.2 cm thick almostIt consists entirely of plastic, except for the panel with the keyboard. The construction is rigid, nothing creaks, and the build quality matches the cost. The screen is securely hinged, the keyboard does not bend, there are only problems with the lid, which deforms too easily - you cannot put anything heavy on it.

The black color is interestingly combined with the plastic silver Acer logo, the chrome frame runs along the keyboard panel. The Aspire 5 looks modest, which is to be expected from a budget laptop.

Connections and ports

The Acer Aspire 5 has a variety of connectors available forold and new devices. On the left side you will find an RJ-45 Ethernet port, a USB-3.1 Type-C Gen1 connector with speeds up to 5Gb / s, a full-size HDMI port, USB 3.0 Type-A with power off charging, and an SD card reader.

On the right are two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a dedicated charging jack and a 3.5mm headphone port.

Keyboard and touchpad

The Acer Aspire 5 has a standard 10-key numeric keypad. The buttons are medium in size, they are located in the usual places, except for the greatly reduced arrow keys.

The text is typed easily and quickly, the movement of the buttonsdeep. There is no backlight, but the white inscriptions on the black background of the buttons become unreadable only in complete darkness. The large and responsive touchpad responds smoothly to gestures, and Microsoft's Precision Touchpad protocol is supported as well as Windows 10 gestures.

As with older budget laptops, the Aspire 5 does not have a touchscreen, and the stylus is not supported either, but the keyboard and touchpad are better and more comfortable to use.

Decent screen

15.6 inch Acer Aspire 5 Screen with Resolution1080p - looks great considering the price of the laptop. However, the panel only displays 41% of the AdobeRGB color gamut and 55% of the sRGB color gamut. Color fidelity is 7.36 - 1.0 or less is ideal.

The contrast is extremely low - 70:1 at full brightness, compared to 940: 1 on the Asus Zenbook UX330UA and 530: 1 on the Acer Swift 3. A gamma of 2.5 means colors are too dark. The screen is very dim, the brightness is only 181 nits - not enough for comfortable work on a sunny day, the matte coating of the panel does not help here either. The video looks too dark, the colors are muted, and the viewing angles are narrow.

Acer has clearly sacrificed display options to save money, which diminishes the device's appeal for those looking to watch photos or videos on a good screen.

Sound and speakers

Acer Aspire 5 Dual Downward Firing Speakerslocated near the front of the chassis. They give out loud and clear sound, which allows you to watch videos on YouTube, but nothing more. The bass is weak here, the upper range sounds unrealistic, so the speakers are not very suitable for listening to music.

CPU performance

A 7th Gen Intel Core i5-7200U processor and 8GB of DDR4 RAM deliver decent benchmark performance for this price range.

Aspire 5 scored 3645 points in single-core modeGeekbench 4 and 7090 in multi-core, which is on par with other laptops with a dual-core i5-7200U. The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 scored significantly more in multi-core mode thanks to the 4-core i5-7300HQ.

Complex and close to real workIn the Handbrake test, which converts the 420 GB mp4 video format to x.265, the Acer Aspire 5 coped with 1076 seconds - again at the level of competitors. The Asus Zenbook UX330UA achieved 1,445 seconds in the same test, while the Inspiron 15 7000 achieved 460 seconds.

The processor does not get very hot, the coolers are not too noisy, and the Core i5-7200U has enough power for any but the most difficult tasks.

SSD speed

I am glad to have a solid-state drive instead of a hard drive. The 256GB Hynix SATA is much inferior to the fast PCIe NVMe SSDs on expensive laptops, although it works stably.

The CrystalDiskMark benchmark showed a read speed of 473 MB / s and a write speed of 244 MB / s. The most affordable Microsoft Surface Laptop has a slower drive and doubles the price.

The system boots quickly on the Aspire 5, programs open without delay, and most users will be satisfied.

Some games can be played

The MX150 is a discrete mobile graphics card from Nvidia designed to replace the GTX 940 and deliver better gaming and graphics performance than an integrated GPU.

In most benchmark tests, the MX150significantly faster than the 940MX. When testing the most popular games, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided gave an error and could not start. In Civilization VI, the Aspire 5 under test averaged 29 frames per second (fps) at 1080p at medium settings and 23 fps at ultra. The HP Specter x360 15, equipped with a 940MX, scored 34 and 17 fps, respectively.

In a budget gaming laptop Dell Inspiron 151700 with a GTX 1050 Ti, the game ran at 43 fps and 38 fps on medium and ultra settings. Computers with Intel HD 620 demonstrated 14 fps at medium - it is impossible to play with such a frequency.

In Battlefield 1, the Acer Aspire 5 scored 34 fps in1080p resolution with medium settings and 21 fps at ultra, Specter x360 15 - 24 and 17 fps, Dell Inspiron 15 1700 - 52 and 44 fps. Finally, in For Honor, our laptop achieved 31 fps at medium and 21 fps at extreme settings, which is far from the Origin EON15-S with GTX 1050 Ti, which scored 71 and 48 fps, respectively.

Frequency drop in single-player gameframes are not so important, however, in multiplayer it should be at least 30 fps, the Aspire 5 barely crosses this threshold and is not suitable for enthusiastic gamers, although it is possible to play on it. The case heats up slightly during gaming and the coolers get louder.

Laptop portability

At 2.2 kg and 2.2 cm thick, the Acer Aspire 5 is not the thinnest or lightest notebook, but it is compact enough for its weight and price.

The battery with a capacity of 47.5 watt-hours lasted 3hours and 2 minutes in the Basemark test with a looped load of processor-heavy web pages - only the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 2, which costs much more, showed the best result.

When playing 1080p video, Aspire5 was discharged in 8 hours and 52 minutes - this is the average. In the same test, the Asus Zenbook UX330UA lasted 13 hours and 3 minutes. In the iMacro test, which opened several popular web pages, the Acer Aspire's battery ran out in 5 hours and 44 minutes, the Acer Swift 3 lasted 6 hours and 14 minutes, and the Zenbook UX330UA lasted 10 hours and 25 minutes.

Our laptop is unlikely to work all day without recharging, but for a budget employee, the figures are good.

Warranty

Acer offers a standard 1 year warranty on the Aspire 5.

Extra software Acer Aspire 5

The Aspire 5's system is more crammed with excess software than any other budget laptop.

Here are preinstalled: Norton Internet Security Trial, Amazon Kindle, Priceline, Dashlane, as well as other utilities from Acer and third-party developers, and the keyboard panel is hung with stickers.

Total

The new Acer Aspire 5 is designed for users who want to buy a laptop with a large 15.6-inch screen, decent performance and the ability to play games at an affordable price.

Acer offers a fast dual-core CPU anda solid state drive at such a bargain price that it justifies even serious image quality issues. With a seventh-generation Core i5 processor and 8GB of RAM, the Aspire 5 will stay relevant for at least a few years. The RAM and storage are easily replaceable, and there is also a modern USB-Type C connector.

Are there alternatives?

For those looking for a 15.6-inch screen with1080p, the Aspire 5 won't be the only choice for the money. There are other laptops, such as the Dell Inspiron with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD for $ 574 (RUR 33,500), equipped with an HD display (1366 × 768).

The HP Pavilion 15 with 8GB of RAM, 1TB hard drive and HD display costs $ 587 (£ 34,000) - slightly cheaper than the Aspire 5, but without the fast SSD and Full HD.

If you're willing to spend $ 350 (£ 20,500) more, there's the Lenovo Yoga 720 15 with GTX 1050 graphics, 4-core Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor, and better display.

Benefits of the Acer Aspire 5