Acer Aspire 5: Review

The Acer Aspire 5 is a good budget option for most people because it is cheap, performs well, and is well-made. Even though the colors are a little boring, the design is surprisingly tough. The “solid, durable feel” surprised our tester. Also, the keyboard is nice. It has a large layout, which is great for typing for long periods of time.

Performance is fast enough for everyday tasks like writing emails and browsing the web, but that’s about it. The Aspire 5 is worth a look if you’re looking for a good everyday laptop that won’t break the bank. For the most up-to-date version of this laptop, you can also read our review of the Acer Aspire 5 (2022 edition). But we didn’t think that the upgrades and price increase were enough to make us change our best budget pick from before.

 Acer Aspire 5 Specifications

Pros of Acer Aspire 5

• A reasonable price
• Rugged build
• There are a lot of ports and the keyboard is great.

Cons of Acer Aspire 5

• Subpar webcam
• Bloatware that is annoying comes already installed.

Price

Prices and sales information from Acer Aspire 5 can also be hard to understand. Some of the models on its website can be bought directly from Acer, while others can be bought from online retailers or stores on the high street. The 14-inch Aspire 5 model comes with Windows 10 Home, a 2.4GHz quad-core i5-1135G7 processor that can go up to 4.2GHz with TurboBoost, 8GB of memory, and a 512GB solid-state drive. In the UK, you can’t buy that model directly from Acer, but you can get it from a number of online stores for about £450. Australia, for some reason, only gets one Acer Aspire 5 model, which has a bigger 15.6-inch screen and an i7 processor and costs AU$ 1399.

Design

The Acer Aspire 5 is pretty simple. Its design is very practical, and it reminds me of the kind of laptop you can get from an IT storage rack. The Aspire 5’s aluminum shell feels thin, and pressing on the soft chassis confirmed what I already thought: there isn’t much between the frame and the motherboard.

Ports

The Acer Aspire 5 has a lot of ports, so it can be docked to a larger workstation in a semi-permanent way. It has one USB-C port and three USB-A ports for connecting devices. There is also a standard headphone jack, an Ethernet port for a hard-wired connection to the internet, an HDMI port for a display, a Kensington Lock connector for securing the laptop to a table, and an HDMI port for a display. Since the power adapter is unique, you must always use the right cable to charge it. The lack of a microSD card reader seems like a mistake for a cheap laptop that is meant to be useful.

Display

The 15.6-inch, 1080p screen on the Acer Aspire 5 is great for getting work done, but the matte screen sometimes reflects light from the outside. The screen is a bit dim, with an average of 258 nits, but it is brighter than competing models like the Asus VivoBook and Lenovo Yoga C740, which measure 248 and 250 nits, respectively. The screen is fine for working at night, but it can be hard to see on the Aspire 5 in brighter light. The Aspire has stronger color saturation, which makes dull scenes, like the earth tones in a 90s soap, look more lively.

Webcam and Mic

The Acer Aspire 5 comes with a simple 720p webcam and also has a single microphone. Both work well enough for most Zoom calls, but neither really stands out. The top bezel of the Aspire 5 is thick, so most external webcams can sit on it without getting in the way. Even with a heavy webcam like the Dell Ultrasharp 4K attached, the laptop won’t fall over.

Conclusion

The Acer Aspire 5 doesn’t make the mistakes that most cheap laptops do. Most Windows laptops that cost this much or less make a lot of cuts. They might have a dual-core processor, only 4 GB of RAM, or a small hard drive with 128 GB of space. None of these are done on this laptop. It gives you the bare minimum you need to enjoy Windows 11, and it does so for just a few tens of dollars more than less capable options (including other Aspire models). For $499, it’s hard to find a better deal.

FAQs

Battery life of the laptop?

HP Envy x2 The Acer website, in the usual fashion, exaggerates the Aspire 5’s battery life to up to 10 hours. In fact, both watching movies and the applications-based PCMark test suite yielded extremely comparable results in our tests: slightly over 6.5 hours.

Ports of the laptop?

Thankfully, the Acer Aspire 5 has a wide variety of connections; however, you may be disappointed by the prevalence of smaller USB-A ports if you already own a number of USB-C peripherals.