The Acer Aspire 5 is a decent business laptop.
It's portable and feels well built, with a decent port selection that should be enough
for most people.
The keyboard feels good to type on, and the plastic touchpad tracks well.
It's quick to boot and launch applications thanks to its amazingly fast NVMe SSD, and
it's more than powerful enough to perform productivity tasks.
But what other features does this budget laptop offer?
Let's dive right in.
Design Although it fits awkwardly in a backpack,
the Acer Aspire 5 is clearly a superior product than the Acer Aspire 1.
It weighs 3.9 pounds, so carrying it for hours before your arms start to suffer.
Acer doesn't give too much away in terms of design, with an aluminum shell hiding a primarily
plastic structure.
The chassis is thin, and it doesn't take long for fingerprints to emerge after handling
it.
In a nutshell, this laptop's design might be summarized as "no-frills."
The illuminated chiclet keyboard on the Aspire is a pleasant surprise.
With a number pad on the right side, it's really easy on the eyes.
Even though the keys don't make that pleasant click, we think it's a wonderful addition.
Typing on the keyboard, on the other hand, is a pleasurable experience.
The touchpad is slightly to the left of the keyboard, and there's a fingerprint sensor
for additional safety.
It has the same aluminum finish as the frame and is pleasant to the touch.
Ports and Connectivity The Aspire 5's ports are diversified and numerous
enough to please all but the most demanding customers.
Acer laptops crammed a power jack, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, two USB Type-A ports,
and one USB Type-C port into the space available on the laptop's left flank.
On the other hand, the ensemble is much less dense, consisting of a headphone jack, another
USB Type-A connector, and a Kensington port.
However, the lack of a microSD card slot is a small nuisance.
Display and Audio The Aspire 5's 15.6-inch 1080-pixel display
is excellent for both work and entertainment, and it outperforms competitors in its class.
Even though it isn't the worst, the display isn't particularly bright at 245 nits.
It does mean that under strong light, everything on your screen will be more difficult to see.
In lab testing, the Aspire 5 scored 63 percent on the sRGB color gamut, putting it on par
with the Asus VivoBook, which costs the same.
The Lenovo Yoga C740 is a wonderful deal, with a color gamut of 111 percent.
You'll like watching movies and surfing the web with the Aspire 5, but for image and video
editing, you'll need to upgrade to a monitor with better color reproduction.
Another of the Aspire 5's excellent characteristics is its audio.
It's loud enough to fill a room, and the bass from the speakers is actually quite good.
There can't be too many complaints here because the sound reproduction is nearly perfect.
Performance Although the Aspire 5 model we evaluated has
only 4GB of RAM, 128GB of SSD storage, an AMD Ryzen 3 CPU, and an AMD Radeon Vega GPU,
it has enough power in its frame to handle most day-to-day chores with ease.
We were able to cycle through up to 40 open tabs in Chrome at once, while also having
many other apps open and running in the background, and the laptop did not slow down in the least.
If you have more than a passing interest in gaming, the AMD Radeon Vega GPU can support
more than the basic games, which is a significant plus.
The majority of Esports games will run fine on a laptop, while triple "a" titles will
require some tweaking of the settings.
If you don't mind playing with reduced graphics, the Aspire 5 should be good for around 40
frames per second.
Heat and Noise Emission The Aspire 5 handles heat admirably.
It ran quietly during day-to-day activities, office work, and even some content production,
and the temperature stayed around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the 95-degree threshold.
However, with more difficult activities, the fans have a habit of getting a bit loud.
Perhaps as a result, the laptop never gets hot enough to be uncomfortable.
Battery Life The battery of the Acer Aspire is the laptop's
one major drawback.
It is terribly unsatisfying, falling 3 hours shy of the category average.
This laptop barely lasts approximately five hours between charges, and that's without
doing anything really strenuous.
M aking it inappropriate for individuals who are constantly on the road or who do not have
easy access to a power source.