Hey, how's it going Dave 2d here. So this is the Acer Aspire 5 now? This is a laptop
That is surprisingly, not marketed as a gaming laptop
But it's very capable at playing most triple-a titles in 2017 now this thing goes for
$600 that's the retail price. I think occasionally it might hit 550 on Amazon
I'll drop a link below for just the most accurate pricing, but this thing has the new NVIdia Geforce MX 150
So this is their graphics cards that kind of replaces the 940 Mx
It's kind of like a mobile version of the gT 1030 and it's pretty good. Build quality on this thing is not bad
It's mostly plastic
Grooved finish up top the keyboard deck is aluminum with a bit of flex if you're putting a lot of pressure on it
But nothing abnormal. It's got a good hinge design kind of one hand openable if you go slowly enough
It's relatively thin and light for a 15-inch laptop and the overall build quality was better than I thought it would be for the price
The Port Selection is good
it has a standard array of USB 3
The standards to me are the usb c port doesn't support Thunderbolt 3 but that's expected
And there's also an ethernet port which isn't common at all for laptops in this price range
Accessing the internals is pretty easy for the two and a half inch drive and the memory you can use these hatches the configuration
I'm running comes with a total of 8 gigs of ram. If you've removed the whole bottom panel
You can change the Wi-Fi card and the SSD the included SSD uses a Sata interface
I don't think this laptop can handle pcie drives
I tried a couple and they didn't seem to work the battery down here is a 48 watt hour battery and I'm getting a little
Bit over five hours of battery life
Now, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that this is running new processors
These are just more energy efficient than a lot of the quad-core CPUs that we see in 15-inch laptops
But yeah battery life on this thing pretty good the screen is ok it's not amazing
It's an IPs panel with mediocre color Gamut brightness is not bad
I mean it could be better but for indoor use it's not an issue viewing Angles are pretty good
And there's no significant backlight bleed obviously this isn't the best screen out there, but for the money
It's pretty good. The speakers are located on the bottom and well
I got to be honest they sound below average for a 15-inch laptop despite this true Harmony branding on the sticker
They get reasonably loud, but the audio quality isn't great the keyboard is actually really nice for a $600 laptop
The screen falls all the way flat
Good to know. If you've never used a keyboard with a number-Pad
The positioning is a little bit weird the keys are responsive and the layout is comfortable
But it doesn't have backlighting. Now part of me is glad that it didn't stick red leds into this to make it into some gaming
Thing but for some people no backlighting will be a deal-breaker. Not a big deal for me
And if you're using it for school or for most work unless you work like it's in the batcave or something then it should be
Okay It has a windows precision trackpad which I like. Tracking is great
Gestures are responsive. The button clicks feel a little shallow and the surface is a smooth simple plastic. It's not textured
It's not glass, but the overall trackpad experience is good
And it's really nice to see inexpensive laptops like this using good trackpad software. Now if there's one gripe
I have about this whole system. It's the amount of bloatware they have installed
It's only a 5 minute job to nuke at all, but every time I see Norton pre-installed on a computer
I die a little bit on the inside.
Alright, let's talk about performance. The Mx 150 is a
25 Wide TDP
Chip that's similar in Power consumption to the 940 Mx from the previous generation
But this time the performance is significantly better. On some benchmarks,
We're looking at pretty much double the performance. You realize how crazy that is. In one year, this category of GPU has doubled in
Performance at the same Wattage. Like that's super impressive. 10 series GPUs, thumbs up!
It's not some crazy gPU pushing out 4K games, but this is the first
$600 laptop that I could comfortably play games on. Now the drivers are still relatively new but here are some frame rates from games
You're looking at performance that is better than the 950 m and really close to the 960 m from last year
Now this laptop uses a 2 core CPU so some games might feel a little choked if they're more CPU dependent and same with video
Editing even 1080p video edits won't do great on this just because of the CPU but in general
I think it's a very good pairing between the i5 and the Mx150
There's no heavy throttling when I was running stress tests and thermal management is also good the internal and external
Temperatures are comfortable. Fan noise is also quieter than normal. These new processors are pretty easy to cool
Ok so here's the deal the aspire 5 starts at $400, but the configuration I'm running comes in at $600.
For the money, you're getting a laptop with a plastic Chassis and mostly plastic paneling
But with a very respectable build quality. You get a 1080 screen that has reasonable brightness
But mediocre color gamut and color accuracy. The keyboard is comfortable, types well, and it's got an aluminum deck
But sadly has no backlighting. The trackpad works nicely. There's nothing
I really dislike about it
Inside the CPU and GPU are well matched with each other the combo is great for school or work
and it delivers good performance for light to moderately demanding games the ram and storage are easily replaced and
Lastly we have a 48 watt hour battery that can squeeze about five hours of battery life
So I think Acer did a really good job in the Aspire. I think for $600
This is a surprisingly good laptop
but the question some people might have is do you purchase this for 600 or do you get one of the
$800 gaming laptops and those have a GTX 1050. Obviously, there's a relatively big difference in price
But this thing is also a lot thinner and lighter than those so if weight is a consideration for you if you need to travel
Frequently with your gaming laptop. Take a look at this thing. I think this is really good for the money.