Acer Aspire 5 Laptop
USD
Pros
- Portable
- Perfect in Looks
- Mic is high quality
- Color & Brightness
- Wide Selection of ports
Cons
- Not good for high end games
- No Backlit keyboard
- Slow with internet
- Defective hardware issues
- Not Ubuntu friendly
In This Article
Verdict
The design as well as super-fast 8th Gen chipset packed in the Aspire 5 notebook is undeniably the amazing attribute for the price. But such powerful features are not supported by long-lasting battery life and you will have to compromise with the short battery life while working on the laptop.
The notebook may include several features with disappointing quality, but overall it is wisely designed to motivate you to move ahead in your profession successfully. For low end gamers, the Aspire 5 can be a great option to satisfy their limited budget.
Acer Aspire 5 & Variant Laptops Price
Introduction
Today we have chosen a specific variant belonging to the Aspire 5 series – Acer Aspire 5 A515-51G, which is a lucrative choice for you and for all who love gaming and various multimedia activities.
More excitingly, it arrives at a budgeted cost just to break your assumption of its expensiveness.
The laptop is a well-furnished all-rounder to define it in one word. This 15.6-inch Acer model is slim, light and compact enough to compete with others in its class. In terms of hardware and internal components, you will find it a monster.
The laptop houses a 8th Gen quad-core chipset, a matte Full HD IPS display and a GeForce MX150 graphics card, having excellence in every detail.
This Aspire multimedia notebook holds a very stylish design to steal your heart easily because you are an art-loving individual and you can feel its ability to create an impression everywhere you carry it.
In this blog, we have explained every feature of the laptop in detail and tried to present an unbiased review in order to enlighten you about this Acer notebook.
Buy for: Good mic and affordable price.
Beware of: No backlit keyboard, not for high end gaming.
Best uses for: Blogging, elderly parents and seniors, electrical engineering students, working from home, podcasting, QuickBooks, working on excel, homeschooling, accounting students, watching movies, real estate agents, data science and data analysis, construction site supervisors, supply chain management, veterinary students, running penetration testing simulations, finance students, office work, Journalists, Football Manager and other purposes.
The alternatives:
Specs Details:
- Brand: Acer
- Hard Drive: 256 GB
- Hard Drive Type: Flash Memory SSD
- RAM: 8 GB
- RAM Type: DDR4
- Processor: Intel Core i5-8250U
- Processor Speed: 3.4GHz
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce MX150
- Screen Size: 15.6 in
- Processor Brand: Intel
- Product Dimensions: 15 x 10.3 x 0.8 inches
- Weight: 4.41 lb
- Operating System: Windows 10
Reliability
Acer is today an awe-inspiring name in the industry of computer & its peripherals. Check out top laptop brands.
The company has launched their signature laptops or notebooks belonging to different categories, in order to meet the requirements of different users and fulfil their expectations as well.
Upgraded CPU & spectacular design are something that set the Acer laptops apart from their competitors.
Performance
The Aspire 5 is packed with immense processing power to support your heavy multimedia related activities and favourite gaming titles at times.
The 8th Generation Intel Core i5-8250U chipset is there at the core of its hardware. The processor works at the speed up to 3.4GHz.
Such advanced Intel processor based on the brand’s own Whiskey Lake architecture performs smoothly & effectively to create no occasional lag when the notebook gets burdened with heavy workloads.
Since the Aspire 5 is a multimedia specialist, the relevance of graphics processor automatically comes as one of the key features to consider.
The laptop houses NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics card which has 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM.
In terms of power, the graphics processor is capable of competing with other models in its class. It can handle several graphically rich gaming titles and multimedia activities without any hassle.
Benchmarks
CPU
1. Using CPU Benchmarks, we are able to get the perfect results of the Passmark score that we are looking for. The Intel Core i5-8250U’s ‘Average CPU Mark’ is 5931 on this benchmarking site. There is a 1928 rating for this chip when it comes to single-thread performance.
In terms of overall rank, this processor is ranked 1103. After taking into account 6365 samples the experts have said that there is a low margin of error in the Intel Core i5-8250U.
There are more powerful and updated processors available in the market than this one, although it is a good processor. Due to the above reasons, this laptop is not capable of taking any significant position in the category ‘CPU Mark Relative to Top 10 Common Laptop CPUs’.
According to our comparison of the single-thread performance of the Intel Core i5-8250 and the AMD Ryzen 5 3500U, we can see that the AMD processor is superior to the Intel processor as this AMD processor can achieve a higher score of 1979 on the single-thread performance test.
In spite of the fact that the margin is not that high, it is still enough to consider the AMD chip as a better alternative to the Intel processor. So we can say OEM Lenovo ThinkPad E495 which is equipped with this AMD processor can deliver better and smoother processing than this Acer laptop.
2. There is a 62.1% benchmark score for the Intel Core i5-8250U at UserBenchmark, proving that this processor performs very well. This benchmarking site ranks the processor as 511 out of 1357 based on its performance.
3. A single core score for the Intel Core i5-8250U is 711, while a multicore score is 1971. These are the scores for the single-core and multi-core tests of Geekbench 5. It is superior to Intel Pentium Gold 4417U and inferior to Intel Core i7-8550U in terms of performance.
4. There is also a tool called 3DMark that is very popular among various benchmarking tools. A 3DMark rank of 198 was obtained for the Intel Core i5-8250U. This processor received a score of 2652 on the 3DMark Time Spy Physics test.
GPU
1. Another important aspect that should be taken into consideration when it comes to understanding the capabilities of the Acer Aspire 5 is the GPU benchmarks. In videocardbenchmark.net is the average G3D Mark score for the NVIDIA GeForce MX150, which is 2309.
There’s an average G2D Mark of 217. A total of 2950 samples have been scanned by the website in order to come up with these scores. 473 is the overall rank of this dedicated GPU.
This graphics card has been ranked second last on the list of the ‘G3D Mark Relative to the Top 10 Common Laptop Video Cards. Therefore, it should be noted that this is not a very efficient GPU, but it does the job well for casual users.
2. On UserBenchmark, the NVIDIA GeForce MX150 ranked 219 out of 681 GPUs. As far as its ranking is concerned, it is ranked 219 out of 681. The GPU cannot be regarded as a high-end GPU, but for casual gaming, it’s a good choice.
3. As far as the 3DMak graphics score is concerned, the NVIDIA GeForce MX150 scored 990 on the 3DMark Time Spy Graphics Benchmark. Moreover, it has a rank of 171 in 3DMark.
Design
The Aspire 5 appears slimmer, more lightweight and compact than that of its predecessors.
With the casing uniquely designed, the laptop is available in obsidian black colour to look bold and stylish from every direction.
With its display cover made of brushed metal, it also feels great to touch while ensuring a sturdy build quality as well.
The device measures 15 x 10.3 x 0.8 inches and weighs about 4.41 pounds, being one of the lightest multimedia notebooks to surpass its competitors in the market.
The system is easy to carry everywhere you go as well as it fits in any of your backpack with little space to add to your ultimate convenience.
You can also find silver accents around the rim of its interior chassis that is the keyboard and the touchpad and such design makes the appearance of the device more elegant and exciting to blow your mind.
However, there is nothing any special to garb one’s attention in the section where the display is sandwiched between the lid and the keyboard.
In terms of connectivity, the notebook is a home to all the necessary ports that you expect to be present therein.
Display
The 15.6 inch matte IPS display of the Aspire 5 holds the native resolution of 1920×1080 pixels.
This is a Full HD ComfyView widescreen display with LED-backlit feature. While taking a look at the technical specs of the notebook screen, it may apparently seem to be highly efficient to you.
But several benchmark tests have proved that it has some noticeable limitations to dissatisfy you at times of gaming or video streaming.
The brightness of the display is just average for the price while its contrast ratio can be considered somewhat decent.
The notebook can lower its dimness by enhancing the colour brightness to some extent but does not improve the brightness level to meet your expectations.
On the contrary, the screen provides crisp visuals to highlight the details in the image. Since it is the IPS panel, it offers steady viewing angles indicating that you can read the monitor from any position you want.
The notebook is highly suitable for both indoor and outdoor usage for all these reasons.
Storage
The Intel Core i5 CPU in the device is coupled with 8GB of DDR4 Dual Channel Memory to ensure top notch performance and multitasking convenience every time.
The size of RAM is bigger than enough for the price range and such immense RAM offers fluid multitasking facility and helps the user work on the device with a number of browsers or software open without any noticeable hang or interruption.
The Aspire 5 comes with ample space to store your favourite games, movies or high resolution media files.
It features 256GB SSD or Solid State Drive which has an appreciable transfer rate. Most of its storage is occupied by Windows 10 Home operating system as well as the recovery partition.
SSD is a fantastic storage option available in this laptop for a budget-friendly cost as this type of storage drive positively affects the overall system performance.
Battery Life
Battery Life: the device is powered by 4-cell Li-Ion battery of 3220mAh capacity to provide up to 7 hours of steady working with regular to heavy activities. Download Acer Aspire 5 manual.
Additional Features
Ports & connectivity: the Aspire 5 has got a reliable number of ports. On its right side, you will find the power jack, a headphone/microphone jack and dual USB 2.0 ports.
The left side of the device accommodates majority of essential ports including one USB 3.1 Type C Gen 1 port, an RJ45 port, a Kensington lock slot, a single USB 3.0 port, an SD card slot and an HDMI port.
Keyboard & Touchpad: the Aspire 5 comes with a matte, slick keyboard which is truly comfortable to keep typing on. Moreover, it is a backlit keyboard which has flat, smooth keys to offer faster & convenient typing experience when you are on the way during travel.
You can control its backlighting by using a function key while the keyboard has just one brightness level. On the whole, the Aspire 5 packs a decent keyboard perfect for daily use.
At the same time, the notebook offers a large multi-touch ClickPad for convenient gesture control.
The touchpad is highly responsive even in the corners while its smooth surface enables your fingers to glide over comfortably as well.
Audio quality: the stereo speakers sit on the front panel of the system.
The speakers of Acer Aspire 5 are incredibly loud to cover an entire living room, though the sound produced by them lacks bass and you can miss the rich audio effect of your favourite songs.
In order to enjoy your gaming or watching movies with better audio experience, you should take resort to external speakers or headphones.
Webcam: the Aspire 5 features a 0.9-MP webcam that has a maximum resolution of 1280×720 pixels to capture prominent images.
However you may get to see the results otherwise. It often produces washed-out pictures with a blurry detail.
Still the webcam is useful to help you carry on chatting with your friends or colleagues through video conferencing, having a great experience all time.
Variants
It is having two variants of its own. You can take anyone depending on your choice of work. Both the variants are equally competitive and perfect to use.
Other than processor there is no such difference. Intel Core i5-8250U and Intel Core i7-8250U are the only difference you can think about it.
What Do Users Think?
Our experts talked to Acer Aspire 5 users and compiled their opinions here.
The laptop consists of compartment door to enable you to upgrade its memory and storage if you consider it necessary in future.
Most of the users have pointed this advantage of upgradability while some of them are discontent with the low brightness of display and below average battery life.
Our Testing & Analysis Report
We tested the Core i5 8250U CPU of the Acer Aspire 5 on different benchmarks and computing tasks such as basic Word and Excel jobs, email checking and web browsing, gaming, and different multimedia activities.
We found that its lag in performance is hard to tell when we limit our use to the basics.
As for high-end tasks, we found that the system is pretty slow. The operating system was found to be pretty slow and neither did the different menus in Windows open fast when the Chrome browser was left running.
When we tested the CPU on different benchmarks both for its multi-threaded and single-core performance, we found that it scored above 3000 points on PCMark 8 tests.
The GPU is good but nothing exceptional. It performs well when we play basic games in low or medium graphics settings, depending on the game.
For example, when we played Rise of the Tomb Raider at low settings, it attained an average frame rate of 15 fps and could hit a maximum of 20.
The GPU of our review unit attained a score in excess of 3000 in the 3DMark Firestrike and Video Card benchmark.
The display of the laptop was found to be just reasonably good with average brightness and color accuracy. According to the Delta E color accuracy tool, the color space coverage of the display was more than average but nothing exceptional.
We tested the keyboard and trackpad of the laptop by typing a few documents in Word and using Spreadsheet. The key travel is pretty good with adequate bounce and tactility which made them less noisy.
The generously large trackpad supported well in navigating through the page with reasonably good response and cursor movement.
Questions & Answers:
Can Acer Aspire 5 be considered a good laptop?
As a basic multitasking laptop, this device is a good option. There is a dedicated GPU too. And the battery backup of this device is also good. So as an entry-level PC, this laptop can be considered a good device; but it is unable to give a very satisfying performance to gamers and other high-end users.
What is the capacity of the GPU in the Acer Aspire 5?
There is a 2 GB NVIDIA GeForce MX150. This is not a very powerful GPU, but for casual usage, this is a good GPU.
Can Acer Aspire 5 handle 4K contents?
The configuration of this laptop is not so strong, to tackle the 4K videos or games. Up to 1080p videos can smoothly run on this device.