For a reasonable price, the Acer Aspire 5 offers a terrific feature set, good performance, and long battery life. Our full review is found here.
The newest Acer Aspire 5 comes with excessive expectations, as its predecessor become the fine price range computer at the market, incomes a niche on our listing of the fine laptops. With all people operating from domestic and children relegated to a nook with the laptop in the course of faculty hours, there is a determined want for good, low-cost laptops, and your hopes can be raised whilst you see it comes with both tenth Generation Intel CPUs or modern-day AMD Ryzen chips.
While the Acer Aspire 5 is a respectable deal in case you want a brand new computer proper away, numerous of its flaws, mainly its negative battery life, are perhaps tough to overlook. That so, it fulfills all your primary computing requirements, consisting of steady overall performance and a huge variety of ports.
You can also check out our reviews of the Acer Predator H300, Acer Chromebook Spin 311, and Acer Swift 3.
Acer Aspire 5: Price and Configurations
The Acer Aspire 5 comes in a variety of configurations, including 10th-generation Intel processors as well as AMD’s latest Ryzen architecture. We tested an Intel-based device with an Intel Core i5-1035G1 processor, 8GB of RAM, integrated Intel UHD graphics, and a 256GB SSD that starts at roughly $550.
Other options are the Core i3 model, which starts at $400 and comes with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, or the Core i7 variant, which starts at $700 and comes with up to 12GB of RAM, a dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX250 graphics card, and up to 512GB of storage. A 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 pixel display and a 48Wh battery are standard on all variants.
Acer Aspire 5: Design
The Acer Aspire 5 has a look that you’d expect from a half-range laptop: it’s not as flashy as ultrabooks like the Dell XPS 13 or the Asus ZenBook 3, and it’s not as slim as ultrabooks like the Dell XPS 13 or the Asus ZenBook 3. That isn’t to say it’s a bulky, unattractive laptop. With dimensions of 2.16 x 38.16 x 26.3cm and a weight of over 2.20 kilograms, the Acer Aspire 5 is a massive laptop (4.85 pounds), yet it’s not too heavy or unwieldy to carry around. However, you may find it difficult to get out and work on a crowded train.
It’s a quite attractive, modest machine with a few aesthetic embellishments. The majority of the chassis is constructed of plastic, with a textured surface on the lid and a reflective Acer logo.
When you open the laptop, you’ll see a decent-sized screen surrounded by thick bezels, which some may consider a waste of space. It does, however, allow for a huge keyboard on the laptop’s bottom half, which we’ll discuss later.
Because of the huge bezels, the webcam may be placed in the center of the top bezel, which we believe is the best location for a webcam.
Another Acer logo can be seen on the bottom bezel, and below that is the well-designed laptop hinge with the word ‘Aspire’ carved on it – a great touch, in our opinion. Although the hinge allows for some screen adjustment at various angles, this isn’t a laptop that can be flipped 360 degrees backward into a tablet-like posture – for that, you’ll need a convertible laptop like Acer’s own Spin 7 series.
Acer Aspire 5: Ports
Because of its numerous connectors, the Acer Aspire 5 is a good laptop for semi-permanent docking to a bigger workstation. For peripherals, it includes three USB-A and one USB-C port. A standard headphone jack is also included, as well as an Ethernet port for hardwiring into the internet, an HDMI port for a display, a Kensington Lock connector for tethering the laptop to a table, and an Ethernet port for hardwiring into the internet.
Because the power adapter is proprietary, charging is a matter of having the proper cable at all times. On a laptop that’s intended to be budget-friendly, the lack of a microSD card reader feels like an omission.
More: The Best Laptops of 2022
Acer Aspire 5: Display
The 15.6-inch 1080p display of the Acer Aspire 5 is great for getting work done, albeit the matte screen can attract glare from outside light. The display is dim, averaging 258 nits, but it is brighter than rival models like the Asus VivoBook and Lenovo Yoga C740, which measure 248 nits and 250 nits, respectively.
The screen is adequate for nighttime use, although it can be difficult to view in brighter light. The Aspire’s color saturation is higher, which helps to bring more vibrancy to scenes that would otherwise be drab, such as earth tones in a ’90s soap opera. Nature documentaries and melancholy videos, on the other hand, look beautiful and are easily discernible.
The Aspire 5 performed 63 percent at the sRGB shadeation gamut in lab testing, setting it on par with the Asus VivoBook, which expenses the same (63 percent). With its 111 percent shadeation gamut, the Lenovo Yoga C740 is an excellent deal. On the Aspire five, you will love viewing movies and surfing the web, however, picture graph enhancing and video paintings will necessitate an extra display with advanced sedation reproduction.
Acer Aspire 5: Audio and webcam
The Acer Aspire 5 is a great laptop for keeping up with the latest news and information. It has stereo speakers that are down-facing and have a good amount of bass. Low tones came through while rotating between soothing beats, and I could clearly hear comedy banter across the room. Because cradling a laptop in your lap might impede the sound, I preferred to listen to music with the laptop sitting on top of a table.
The 720p webcam on the Aspire 5 is mounted on top of the screen. It’s fine for checking in with your employer or saying hi to a pal over Skype, but it’s uninteresting otherwise. For anything professional-looking, an external webcam is required.
Acer Aspire 5: Performance
Our Aspire 5 comes with an Intel Core i5 processor running at 1GHz, 8GB of RAM, and an Intel UHD Graphics card. Its interior settings are very middle-of-the-road, but you’ll undoubtedly get a lot of use out of it. Steam, Chrome, Spotify, and Firefox can all be open at the same time on the Core i5.
Because of the integrated graphics card, you can only play low-resolution or old-school games to pass the time, but I was still able to get around 40 frames per second in Elder Scrolls Online. During an action-packed sequence, the frame rate drops to as low as 10 fps while the game is set to high-definition graphics. It’s a clear demonstration of the integrated graphics card’s limits.
In lab tests, the Aspire 5 fell short, despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Geekbench 5.0 gave the laptop a score of 2,744, much below the 3,452 average for a Core i5 device in this price range.
The Asus VivoBook and Lenovo Yoga C740, both Core i5 laptops, scored 3,560 and 3,878 points in their tests, respectively. The VivoBook and Yoga C740 both required less than 20 minutes to transcode, but the Acer Aspire took 21 minutes and 55 seconds.
Acer Aspire 5: Keyboard and touchpad
The sleek keyboard of the Aspire 5 is full-size, with a number pad on the right side for precise data typing. I found the keyboard to be sufficiently comfortable for typing that I completed this review entirely on the laptop. However, due to the laptop’s large size, little hands may find it easier to multitask while docked with their preferred keyboard and mouse.
The trackpad has the same aluminum finish as the chassis, attempting to achieve a streamlined look. Your palm, on the other hand, will have a hard time distinguishing between the spaces. I managed to bump it several times and move away from the program I was using. You’ll probably want to disable multitouch gestures on the trackpad anyhow, as the touch-and-drag technique can be finicky.
The trackpad became much more bearable after I turned it off, and its responsiveness was on pace with some of my favorite Chromebooks. When you’re doing serious writing, you may also use the Function key to switch off the trackpad.
Acer Aspire 5: Battery life
The Aspire 5 lasted nearly 7 hours in lab tests, which is around an hour much less than Acer’s preliminary rating. For a pc of this size, the common battery existence is set at 9 and a 1/2 hours.Â
When in comparison to laptops just like the Lenovo Yoga C740, which has comparable internals and lasts over 10 hours, the Aspire five has a considerably shorter battery existence. I located the Aspire five in extreme want of a rate some instances over the week after leaving it on standby. This is a pc that needs to be docked and tethered to a workstation.
The Acer Aspire 5 is not a laptop to take with you when you’re not near a power outlet. For 40 minutes, the Aspire 5 used roughly 40% of its battery when streaming video through Google Chrome. This was done in the “improved battery” setting of Windows 10. After around two hours, the Acer Aspire 5 was down to about 30 % battery life. The Aspire 5’s battery life is rated at eight hours by Acer, although it appears to drain faster when the video is being played.
Acer Aspire 5: Outlook
If you are trying to find a low-price pc that can live linked all of the time, the Acer Aspire 5 is a first-rate choice. The powerful, middle-of-the-line Core i5 processor and incorporated photographs are as much as the task. While the trackpad takes a little being used to, the sizeable keyboard is cushy and makes typing those many phrases a pleasure.
The battery lifestyle at the Acer Aspire 5 will disappoint mother and father in search of a pc for or her child, in particular with a present-day new way of remote-learning-wherever-it-is-cushty. Along with the Acer Aspire 5’s less expensive pricing, that is something to suppose about.