This is Acer Aspire 5, a $750 laptop that offers impressive performance, a long battery life,
and a user-upgradeable design that lets you add more RAM and SSD with ease. I have been using this
laptop for over 100 days, and in today's video this laptop gets the Techno Panda VIP Review.
I will put Acer Aspire 5 through 10 rounds of grueling tests, and by the end of the video,
you will know exactly whether to buy or skip this laptop. So without further ado, let's get started
The build quality of Acer Aspire 5 remains unchanged from last year's model.
Although it's made from polycarbonate, it feels reasonably solid in hands. This is because Acer
has reinforced the top lid with an aluminum sheet. The chassis is built using an aluminum frame
which gives ample rigidity to this laptop. It keeps the weight down and gives Acer Aspire 5
a sleek and modern look. I love it's tapered wedge shaped design which makes the laptop
a lot thinner near the edges. Acer Aspire 5’s hinge runs through the entire length
of the screen and it tilts all the way back 180 degrees. This allows one to comfortably
use this laptop in your laps while you are comfortable chilling in your couch or bed.
Let's talk about the CPU performance of this laptop. You are getting an
8 core 16 thread AMD Ryzen 7 5700U processor. This is the best CPU in the market right now,
at least until budget laptops based on Intel's Alderlake CPU start showing up. Here is a chart
comparing this CPU with Intel’s 11th generation Tiger-Lake processors. As you can see, Ryzen has
more cores and threads and is built on a superior TSMC process technology. This superiority gets
reflected in synthetic benchmarks. So here is the result of Cinebench R23 Benchmark. In multi-core
workloads, Ryzen absolutely demolishes Intel with a whopping 57.4% performance lead. But it loses
the single core benchmark finishing behind intel by about 18%. So long story short, AMD
configuration of Acer Aspire 5 is a no brainer. It delivers amazing performance at a very reasonable
price. Whether it's internet surfing, casual gaming, productivity work like word processing,
spreadsheet or running intense applications like video editing & photoshop, Acer Aspire 5
breezes through tasks without issues. Obviously I expect the competitive landscape to change
when laptops powered by the 12th generation Intel Alderlake CPUs start showing up. As
and when Acer launches an Alderlake version of Aspire 5, I will definitely get my hands on it
and do a comprehensive review. So please make sure that you are subscribed to this channel
Let's quickly talk about the graphics. So Acer Aspire 5 is using an integrated Radeon RX Vega
8 GPU based on Renoir architecture. It's built on TSMC 7nm process technology and
comprises of 8 execution units, 512 shaders and a base clk speed of 1.9 Ghz. It fully supports h264,
h265 and vp9 codecs, so you will have no issues playing 4K videos.
I was able to run GPU intensive applications like Davinci Resolve video editing software
and Auto-CAD without any hiccups even though these applications typically prefer discrete GPUs.
Gaming performance on Acer Aspire 5 was also pretty good and I had no trouble playing Fortnite
at default settings. I got an average frame rate ranging from 45 to 60 fps which is pretty good for
a smooth gaming session. To extract best gaming performance from this laptop, I would recommend
upgrading the RAM. And that's a nice segue to talk about the ease of upgrades on this laptop
Acer Aspire 5, unlike most modern laptops, is very easy to upgrade. All you have to do is
remove about a dozen screws from the back of the laptop and pry open the back cover to access the
motherboard. My laptop came with 1 stick of 8 GB DDR4 RAM, but you can easily add another 8GB stick
because there are 2 user accessible memory DIMM slots. Adding symmetrical RAM sticks
will enable dual channel memory configuration which boosts gaming performance by about 20%
because Ryzen architecture loves dual channel memory. I have linked compatible RAM sticks
in the video description below. Regarding storage, this laptop comes with 512GB of
blazing fast PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD. If you want to expand storage, there is a SATA 3 slot available.
Acer even includes the SSD harness and cables, which makes it very easy to add another SSD
drive. I have also linked compatible SATA3 and Nvme SSDs in the video description below.
Honestly, I am very impressed with Acer’s willingness to allow it's customers to fully
upgrade their laptops. Most other companies don't do this anymore, and that's a shame.
Acer Aspire 5 comes with a 15.6” LED backlit Full-HD IPS display that delivers 250 nits
of brightness. Since this is an IPS panel, the viewing angle is pretty good. Added bonus is the
anti-glare matte coating which greatly reduces reflections from ambient lighting.
For indoor use, this is a pretty good screen delivering bright images,
punchy colors and sharp text. But if you plan to use this laptop outdoors,
you will be disappointed because the screen isn't bright enough to combat bright daylight
conditions. Overall this display is not going to win any awards in color accuracy or brightness,
but it's more than good enough for its price point. You can always attach this laptop to a
more color accurate monitor, if you plan to do HDR video editing or advance photoshop work.
Let's talk about the keyboard. Acer Aspire 5 uses a silver-colored chassis housing a full size
keyboard with black keys and white backlighting. The backlighting can be turned ON & OFF, but the
intensity of backlighting is not user adjustable. This keyboard includes a 10-key numeric keypad for
spreadsheet warriors. The keyboard offers great tactile feedback making typing experience for
extended duration of time very comfortable. Moving on to the trackpad, it measures 4.2 by 3 inches
and is made from plastic. Obviously this trackpad cannot compete with higher quality
glass trackpads, but it's surface is pretty smooth and lets your fingers glide effortlessly.
The clicks are firm and I had no trouble executing various windows multi-finger gestures. Overall,
the keyboard and trackpad are fine. Not the best, but they will get the job done
Let's talk about battery life. I have been getting around 7-8 hours of battery life on this laptop
which is much less than the 11 hours promised by Acer. You get a 45 watt power brick which
charges the laptop via a barrel port. I would have preferred a USB type-c charger,
but it seems like Acer is still stuck in the last decade. Regarding thermal heat management,
this laptop runs relatively cool despite the fact that it is housing
an 8-core 16-thread processor. Acer has put a copper heat sink and pipe which does a pretty
good job dissipating the heat. I stress tested the laptop by running a prime number extraction
algorithm that put all cores and threads under 100% load. Under this sustained load,
the CPU temperature remained relatively low at around 60 degrees Celsius which is pretty good.
The CPU clock frequency remained over 3 GHz which means Ryzen 7 4700 was still operating over it's
base clock frequency even when under 100% load. That's pretty impressive and it tells me that
Acer has done a fantastic job with thermals. Of course the fans got loud under heavy load,
but the CPU never throttled and the keyboard and the trackpad area never got uncomfortably
warm. I would stress that under normal usage, the fans are very quiet and I barely hear them.
Let's talk about audio. Acer Aspire 5 comes with bottom firing stereo speakers. These are typical
budget laptop speakers, nothing spectacular. They will get the job done if you are watching casual
YouTube videos. But if you want good quality audio for gaming or movie night, be prepared to don a
pair of headphones. Regarding the quality of the webcam, you get a standard 720p webcam mounted
at the center of the top bezel. This creates the perfect angle for zoom video calls but the video
quality is average. It's adequate for typical video conference calls but if you want to step up
the video quality, I would recommend going with an external 1080p USB webcam. There are some really
good quality budget webcams available and I have linked my favorites in the video description below
The port selection on this laptop is fantastic. You are getting 1 USB 3.2 Type-C Gen 1 port,
2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, along with an HDMI and an ethernet port on one side of the laptop.
The other side has a USB 2.0 port and a headphone jack. You also get Intel Wireless Wi-Fi 6 which
supports dual-band 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band. The HDMI port supports 4K resolution at 60
Hz and the Radeon RX Vega 8 graphics has no trouble driving this resolution to an
external 4K monitor. Overall I am happy with the port choices offered by Acer Aspire 5
So here is the bottom line. For the prices, this laptop is punching way
above its weight. The performance is top notch and the cherry on the cake is Acer’s support of
“right to repair”. You can easily add more RAM and storage on this laptop,
something you cannot do on most competing laptops. I have put country specific purchase
links in the video description below, if you want to check out the price of this laptop in
your region. Now if you are interested in a 2-in-1 laptop that supports active pen,
checkout this video over here. In this video I share my top-5 best 2-in-1 laptops that you can
buy right now. So go ahead and click that video, and I will see you guys over. Bye!