hey guys how's it going welcome back to
my channel so this is my laptop that I
have been using for about a month this
is the Acer Aspire 5 slim series and
this is the one which comes with a risin
processor and the AMD Vega graphics so
in this video I want to give you my
thoughts on how I feel about this laptop
after I have used it for about a month
so this laptop by the way this is the
fastest selling and you know the number
one bestseller laptop on Amazon and it
goes for about $300 $309 to $315 the
price fluctuates so I have put a link in
the description where you can check the
current price so what I think is that
for about $300 this is a very good
purchase but the interesting thing that
I found about this laptop is that you
know with couple of hacks
you can convert this laptop from a good
purchase to an absolutely awesome
purchase and I am going to share these
two simple hacks with you so please
continue watching the video and I need
to give some detail about the laptop
before I can actually share the hacks
with you because it will make more sense
so the first thing I want to talk about
this laptop is its build quality so this
laptop it's it's made of polycarbonate
plastic in simple English and it's
actually pretty
it feels pretty solid in hands it's
pretty you know sturdy now this is not
like a unibody aluminium design or like
a carbon-fiber design but it has this
brushed metal fake brushed metal finish
which I think looks really nice and it
definitely looks very more premium than
you know what the price you are paying
but what I find really interesting is
that this is a very light laptop so if
you are a student or if you are somebody
who carries the laptop with you in a you
know backpack or something you will
really like the design so let's talk
about the screen quality this is a 15.6
inch laptop and it has full HD display
so this is 1920 by 1080 and I think this
is a really good resolution because for
this price point lot of the other
manufacturers they cut Carmel's and they
give you like a 720p panel this laptop
the screen is IPS display and it's also
LED backlit so that makes this a really
good screen also the brightness
the laptop is around 200 minutes which
is pretty decent brightness for you know
for the price point and so for any kind
of indoor use whether you are using this
laptop in your home or whether you take
it to your school or office and you are
working in a brightly lit office
environment or in your classroom you
will not have any problem with the
screen it's plenty bright so the other
thing that I like about this laptop are
these very thin bezels on the side and
so this makes this laptop will look very
premium even though the screen is 15.6
inch because the bezels are so tiny and
they have definitely shaved few
millimeters from all the four corners so
this makes the laptop very comfortable
to hold okay so moving on to the
keyboard this laptop actually has a very
good keyboard this is a backlit keyboard
and it is full size keyboard so you also
get the numerical pads the backlit
keyboard is really awesome and I have
seen very few laptops in this price
point which give you a full backlit
keyboard the keyboard also has very good
tactile feedback and the key press is
really very comfortable the resistance
that the key offers was very good in my
opinion and overall it did not give that
mushy feeling which you get with some of
the cheaper laptops so I think a cell
did a really good job with the keyboard
the laptop also comes with a fairly
large trackpad and the trackpad is fully
multi-touch support and it has Windows
10 precision drivers so you get like
three finger gestures and all those
things are supported okay now let's move
on to the hardware specs of this laptop
so like I mentioned earlier in the video
this is using an AMD Rison processor
specifically this is a Rison 3 3200 u
processor and this is a dual core
processor 2 cores 4 thread and it has a
thermal dissipation of around 15 watts
so the base clock frequency of this
processor is 2.6 gigahertz and it is
capable of automatically overclocking to
3.5 gigahertz the average CPU mark is
4839 and if you look at comparison of
its performance with the top 10 common
laptop CPUs you will find that it is
somewhere in the middle it's comparable
to a core i5 M series laptops so I would
say for the price point of around 3 and
this is a pretty good performance this
is definitely better performance than
the low and Core i3 processors which you
will find in some of the other
configuration and so again kudos to ASA
for picking this
Rison processor because for the bank
four bucks the you know the value that
you are getting for the money you are
paying I think this is a very good CPU
so this laptop comes with an AMD Radeon
rx beta3 GPU this is definitely better
than the Intel integrated graphics that
you get with the core i3 processors
performance wise it is comparable to an
NVIDIA GeForce 910 M mobile processor so
this is a fairly good performance and if
you are into casual gaming or any kind
of video streaming whether it's YouTube
or Netflix you want to play 4k videos
this will be able to handle all those
without any problem the GPU has hardware
acceleration for all the you know
popular codecs like h.265 vp9 these are
the codecs which Netflix and YouTube use
so you will have a smooth you know
starter free video playback and also
gaming performance is going to be pretty
good ok now let's talk about the system
Ram this laptop comes with only 4
gigabyte of system ram and this is the
first negative that I would say on this
laptop that you know the system Ram is
not sufficient in 2019 for any Windows
laptop 4 gigabyte is definitely not
sufficient memory to run a full fledged
Windows operating system but this is a
very interesting case because here what
they have done is that instead of
putting a full fledged version of
Windows 10 they have put something
called Windows 10 s mode now if you're
not familiar with s mode what I will say
is that S mode is basically shake mode
it's actually a gift version of Windows
and what they are offering you is a
neutered version of Windows the biggest
problem with s mode is that it does not
allow you to install any software that
you want windows s mode actually
enforces this is strict rule that the
only software that you can run on a
Windows s laptop is the software that is
available on Microsoft App Store now
Microsoft app store we all know it's
basically a deserted platform there are
hardly any apps available on Microsoft
App Store so take the example of
a popular browser say Google Chrome
browser or Mozilla Firefox browser these
are not available on Microsoft App Store
which means if you buy this laptop and
if you want to use it as it is you will
be relegated to an Internet Explorer or
a Microsoft edge browser so that's
completely unacceptable and I think
Microsoft knows that this is a shit mode
so that's why what they have done is
that they do let users exit the S mode
and for free of charge without paying a
dime you can upgrade from s mode to a
full-fledged Windows 10 Home Edition so
in order to do that what you need to do
is that you have to go to your Start
menu and from there go to the update and
security setting and you will see an
activation option so click on the
activation so here you will see that
your laptop is currently in s mode and
just below that s mode information you
will see an option to switch out of S
mode so just click on that option it
says go to store so just click on go to
store and follow the instructions from
that point onward and you will be able
to upgrade to a full-fledged Windows 10
Home Edition without paying a dime so I
highly encourage everybody watching this
video to do this hack because it's like
a 5 minute thing and you will be able to
upgrade from Windows 10 s mode to a
full-fledged
Windows Home Edition and then you will
be able to install any software any game
any app that you want so this was the
first hack that I mentioned the second
hack is basically upgrading the hardware
so since this laptop comes with only 4
gig of system RAM that's really not
going to cut it for a full fledged
version of Windows so we will have to
upgrade the system RAM now luckily this
is very easy because accessing the
memory modules is very easy acer has not
done one of those douchebag things which
companies like Apple do well they solder
everything so here you have very easy
access to the memory module so all you
have to do is the back of the laptop you
see about one dozen screws and you just
need to unscrew these you just need a
Phillips
head screwdriver so after you have
unscrewed all the screws you use a
plastic knife or maybe a you know a
plastic credit card to start prying out
the bottom and the whole bottom plate is
going to come out once your partum plate
is out then you will have access to all
the hardware of the laptop as you can
see here I took the backplate out and
you have access to both the memory
modules as you see here so you have two
memory slots and one of the slots is
already occupied with a four gigabyte of
RAM and the other slot is empty so at
this point you have multiple options so
if you want top performance then my
recommendation is to buy a 16 gigabyte
memory kit 16 gigabyte memory kit will
basically be two sticks of eight
gigabyte and you will have to basically
remove the existing four gigabyte memory
and put the eight keycap I'd stick in
both the slots now if you are on a
budget and you don't want to spend money
for a 16 GB memory then you can either
buy a 8 gigabyte or a 4 gigabyte ddr4
module and by the way I am going to link
all the compatible memory modules that
you can purchase from Amazon so if you
want to add only 8 or 4 gigabyte of
memory on top of the existing 4 gigabyte
then that's very easy because you don't
have to touch the first memory slot just
take the new memory stick whether it's 8
or 4 gigabyte and put it in the second
slot now all you need to do is take the
memory stick and make sure that it is
aligned correctly and then you insert it
at an angle and it should gently slide
in once it's inside then you basically
force it down and it's going to latch
and it's going to make a very satisfying
click and that's it that's all you need
to do your memory is now upgraded now in
addition to system memory since you
already have the laptop back open you
can also upgrade the storage if you want
so this laptop comes with actually two
slots for SSD there is one MDOT two slot
which is already occupied because the
laptop has a 128 gigabyte of SSD so you
can upgrade that if you want but then
you will have to clone the existing
Windows operating system to the new SSD
the other easier option is that instead
of messing around with
MDOT tusla SSD you can buy a SATA SSD
and as you can see here there is an
empty slot for the SATA SSD and you can
just keep the original SSD in its place
get a you know supplemental SSD and put
it here so that way you will not have to
clone the operating system you can keep
the original SSD in its place and you
can put the new SATA 3 SSD in the SATA
slot so again I'm going to link both the
SSDs the MDOT to SSD and also the SATA
SSD and you can check out the price and
if you you know if you want more storage
then this is one of the optional things
that you can do so like I said before I
have been using this laptop for about a
month and I upgraded the memory to 16
gigabyte and I also put a SSD in it to
increase the storage and with this I
have used this laptop not just for the
casual use like Netflix and YouTube
I actually am running the video editing
software on this so I have done 4k video
editing on this I also do some
programming some of some app development
so I have Android studio and the
Microsoft Visual Studio for C++
programming so I am running some serious
you know some heavy lifting applications
and this laptop has really not stuttered
for me it's giving me very good
performance so for the price that I paid
which is was $310 for the laptop and
then I did a memory upgrade and SSD I am
very satisfied with the performance that
I am getting from this laptop and I
highly recommend this laptop to anybody
whether you are a student or whether you
are looking for a laptop for your home
purchase I think this is a really great
value for money you just need to do the
two hacks that I spoke about and after
those two hacks you will be very
satisfied with this laptop so guys if
you have any questions about how to
upgrade the memory SSD or if you have
any other question feel free to leave
your question in the comment section
below and I will help you guys and I
hope you found this video useful if you
think this video helped you then please
like this video and if you want to see
more content like this then please
subscribe to my channel because I make
you know content like this and I will
see you guys in my next video bye
[Music]