Acer Aspire 5 Review
Currently the bestseller at Amazon, Acer Aspire 5 is known as a budget king packing some great features inside it. Acer Aspire E 15 was a way to go for many people but in 2020 Aspire 5 has dominated the market with its classy slim design and signature performance.
Is this laptop an option for you in 2021? Find out...
First, let's talk about the specs, we are reviewing the variant which has an AMD Ryzen 3 3200U dual-core processor, 4GB of DDR4 RAM, and 128GB PCIe NVMe SSD.
Features a 15.6 Full HD (1920x1080) widescreen IPS display with Acer's coral intelligence feature.
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All of our reviews are based on honest real-time testing and market research. We only recommend products that are worth buying for the prices.
Acer Aspire 5 Review
Hours Tested = 18 hours | Market Researched = 8 hours
External Review
DESIGN:
The build quality of Aspire 5 is sturdy, It's made of polycarbonate plastic that feels pretty solid in hands.
The design definitely looks premium and lightweight, so if you are a student and carry your laptop everywhere, then Aspire 5 can be your perfect partner.
The hinges are silent, and you can open the lid with one hand easily.
We saw minimal screen flex but overall the design is decent and solid.
WEIGHT:
The weight of the Aspire 5 is 3.97 pounds or 1.8 kilograms, and with the power brick and cable, the net weight was under 2kgs.
Which is good as compared to other laptops at the same price. If you are a student, you can easily toss this laptop in your backpack and carry it around.
KEYBOARD:
Acer Aspire 5 actually has a very good keyboard, good news is that the keyboard is backlit which is rarely found at this price point.
You will also get a numerical pad due to the keyboard's full size.
The keypress is very comfortable and tactile.
We saw a minor keyboard press but overall the keyboard is responsive and user-friendly.
TRACKPAD:
Aspire 5 features a fairly large trackpad, We really love its simple design and classy finish.
The trackpad is very very responsive to touch and it has Windows 10 precision drivers so special gestures like three-finger, pinch and zoom, etc are supported.
PORTS:
On the left side of Acer aspire 5 there is a power port, then you have a gigabit ethernet port so you can plug your full-size network cable, HDMI output is also present.
There's only one USB 3 port and in last we have got a USB 2 port.
On the right side, you have a USB 2 port and a Kensington lock for security-minded users.
One thing that we don't like about this laptop is that it only has one USB 3.0 port.
Overall the build quality of Acer Aspire 5 is above average, it is lightweight and easy-to-carry with a backlit keyboard.
Internal Review
DISPLAY:
Acer Aspire 5 features a 15.6-inch screen with a full HD display.
In our opinion (1920 x1080) is a decent resolution, because a lot of manufacturers give us a 720p panel at the same price.
The laptop features an IPS display and it's also LED-backlit.
We measured the screen brightness, it was around 200 nits which is impressive for this low price point,
Whether you are using this laptop in your home, school, office, or in a brightly lit environment you will not have any problem with the screen it's very bright.
One more thing that we like about this laptop's display is its very thin bezels on the side, the bezels further help in making Aspire 5 look premium.
Now the tests, We tested the color quality of Acer Aspire 5 with the bumblebee movie.
To our surprise, this budget laptop managed to show the dark brown colors of the inside of the robot (Autobot) easily.
The explosion scenes were quite bright with quality orange and yellow mix.
Overall the display quality is above average and more than expected.
RAM, ROM INTERNAL HARD DRIVE:
The Acer Aspire 5 has 4GB of DDR3 RAM and 128GB of PCIe NVMe SSD
One of the best things about Acer Aspire 5 is that it is easily upgradable in both RAM and memory which is extremely rare to see in a budget laptop like this.
It has 2 RAM slots inside, one is prefilled with 4GB RAM and the other one is empty. We would highly recommend you to add one more 4GB or 16GB DDR4 RAM for the best performance.
The 128GB storage drive can be replaced with any NVMe x4 storage stick up to 2TB in size for very fast storage.
If you don't want to replace the built-in drive, you can add another one on the empty 2.5 SATA drive bay that can support up to 2TB of SATA storage.
Upgrading the Acer Aspire 5 is a piece of cake, just unscrew 10 Philip screws from the bottom and insert your new memory or RAM easily.
WEB PERFORMANCE:
To test its strength we ran a 1080p 60FPS video on youtube and it worked perfectly fine, there were no dropped frames or stutters.
In addition to the ethernet, Acer Aspire 5 does have an 802 11 AC Wi-Fi adapter built in it.
The webpages load up and render pretty fast.
In our browser speedometer test, Acer Aspire 5 successfully managed to score 110 on version 1.0 of the test, and in version 2.0 of the test, it scored (70.5).
These benchmark scores are very interesting, Acer Aspire 5 outperformed almost every competitor in the same price range.
GAMING:
Gaming on Aspire 5 is a nice experience, we tested its gaming capacity by playing GTA 5, Far Cry 4, PUBG Mobile, and Fortnite.
Aspire 5 cannot run the latest games with high graphics but it ran most of them with low settings.
While playing GTA 5 on low settings there was no visible lag, it ran perfectly smooth without heating the laptop too much.
Who doesn't love Far Cry 4? Even Aspire 5 loves it so much that it successfully played the game with low settings, however you have to turn anti-aliasing off.
We would highly recommend you to play Far Cry 4 on Aspire 5, seriously you will be addicted to the lush greenery and the stunning Himalayas.
PUBG MOBILE was played via their emulator "game loop", the game ran on medium FPS, and the graphics quality was top notch.
Fortnite ran on about 30 to 40 Fps on 720p, you cannot take play in higher resolutions but still, the game is playable without lag on 720Fps.
The overall gaming experience was sublime! playing these CPU consuming games on a budget laptop felt amazing.
This is the benefit of having an AMD processor in your laptop.
BENCHMARK SCORES:
We tested the benchmarks with both, the built-in RAM and a second 8GB DDR4 RAM.
On the 3d mark cloud gate benchmark test, we got a score of five thousand nine seventy-four (5,974) with built-in RAM.
And by applying the second one we got an incredible score of seven thousand four hundred (7,400).
Frames per second on games and graphics tests were much better when an additional RAM was applied.
If you are planning to play heavy games we would recommend you to add more RAM for best performance.
We then ran the 3d Mark Stress test, and the Acer Aspire 5 returned a not so good score of 91.8 percent (91.8%), which means you might see the laptop throttling under heavy load or after hours of gaming.
BATTERY LIFE:
The battery life of Acer Aspire 5 is about six and a half hours (6.5 hours).
In other past experiences, these AMD budget laptops don't have good battery life, but still, it will help you get through a quarter of your working day.
On continuous gaming, this laptop will last about 3 hours and 15 mins (3hr:15m) which is not bad, again remember its price:)
On continuous battery saving mode, Acer Aspire 5 will run till 6 hours and 53 mins (6hr:53m),
So if you are willing to use the laptop continuously, use it with battery-saving mode or while charging.
The Intel Core i5 10th Gen Variant of Aspire 5 is very powerful and efficient.
COMPATIBILITY:
Acer Aspire 5 comes with windows 10 home edition
But some variants come with Windows 10 S mode, which is not good at all.
The biggest problem with windows 10 S mode is that it restricts users in software installation and user interface.
But don't worry we got a solution for you, to change from window 10 s mode to fully-fledged windows 10 home edition for free,
follow these steps
- Head over to the start menu and go to the update and security options
- There you will see an activation option
- Click on the activation button
- Here you will see that your laptop is in S mode, and below that, you will see an option to switch out from S mode
- It will direct you to store
- Follow the instruction on the store
After completing the instructions you will be able to switch out from Windows 10 S mode to Windows 10 home for free.
We also tested the Linux compatibility, and there was no problem with Linux, it seemed to be running very nice in the first boot.
Good to see Linux in this budget laptop.
BOTTOM LINE:
We think for the price point you're gonna get a really good laptop, we love having a 1080p IPS display, it also got a backlit keyboard in as well and of course, the graphics performance out of the Ryzen processor is appreciable.
It's a shame we don't see more of these laptops out there and they're not often heavily promoted, you have to hunt around and find one, that's why Acer Aspire 5 is a gem.
We were also impressed by the additional storage and RAM option of this laptop.
Overall Acer Aspire 5 is a laptop every student should go for instead of a Chromebook because of its display, graphics quality, and gaming performance
Shop From Your Country's Amazon Store
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Variant: AMD Ryzen 3 3200u | 4GB RAM | 128GB SSD 
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Variant: Intel Core i5 10th Gen | 8GB RAM | 256GB SSD
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