Acer Aspire 5 (A515-54-51DJ) Review
One of the mainstays of Acer’s extensive budget laptop lineup, the Aspire 5 receives frequent tweaks and updates. The 2019 version reviewed here (model A515-54-51DJ) is a sleek, light 15-inch notebook that’s a big improvement over the one PCMag reviewed last fall. At $529, the new Aspire 5 skirts the upper limit of the budget laptop market. The cheapest Aspire 5 is just $349, but the extra $180 for our tester unit nets you an improved display, better performance on everyday computing tasks, and remarkable battery life. Mind you, expect a few drawbacks, like a wealth of pesky bloatware and only so-so build quality, which means that like nearly every budget laptop, this Aspire 5 is a study in compromises. But it walks the line better than many.
Mục Lục
Light, for an Inexpensive 15-Incher
At just 4 pounds, the Aspire 5 is quite light for a budget-priced 15-inch laptop. Most such machines are defined by cheap, heavy materials like molded plastic. The exterior of the Aspire 5, by contrast, is made of silver aluminum, which means it is not only light, but it sports a sleek, modern look as well. It’s nowhere near as light as Acer’s own Swift 5, which comes in at a feather-like 2.2 pounds, but neither will it be a brick in your backpack.
You’ll note some black plastic around the edges of the display, but the keyboard deck and the rest of the interior surfaces largely match the silver aluminum on the exterior. The laptop measures 0.71 by 14.3 by 9.9 inches (HWD), making it significantly slimmer than the 0.85 by 15 by 10.4 inches of its predecessor, which was styled in generic black plastic.
Despite the improved dimensions and better materials, I noticed some disappointing physical aspects of the Aspire 5 over the few days I spent with it. The most noticeable problem is that the base of the unit I tested is slightly wobbly, even when it’s resting on a flat tabletop. One of the two lower rubber skids refused to rest squarely on the surface, instead remaining slightly airborne. There’s significant flex in the base, too, which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the Aspire 5’s longevity if the body is banged around much. Acer includes a one-year warranty, with extensions and accidental-damage coverage available for additional charges.
A more minor problem is the lack of an indentation for your fingers to help open the display lid, which is secured with magnets. There is a gap between the display and the base even when the Aspire is closed, so I found myself pawing at it a few times before eventually prying the laptop open.
Once you do manage to get this Aspire 5’s lid open, you’re greeted with a 15.6-inch full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) display, with the now mostly standard LED backlight and in-plane switching (IPS) technology. Screen quality is excellent, with crisp text and vivid colors, when the backlight is set to its maximum level. Even better, the Aspire 5’s screen achieves this quality using a matte finish that reduces glare from ambient lights. Unfortunately, Acer does not offer a touchscreen option, but it’s still a marked improvement over the last Aspire 5’s display, which suffered from muddy colors and weak contrast, and did not use an IPS panel, reducing the offsides viewing angles.
Above the display, there’s a 720p webcam with decent—if slightly grainy—video quality, though it lacks IR sensors to allow you to log in to your Windows 10 account using face recognition. I wouldn’t expect such a feature on a budget laptop, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Aspire 5 includes a fingerprint reader built into the touchpad, so you can still log in without typing a password. It’s an uncommon bonus feature on a $500 laptop, and it registered my prints with no errors during several days of use.
Keyboard, Touchpad, and I/O Galore
While the touchpad does boast a built-in fingerprint reader, it does not feature dedicated left- and right-click buttons beneath it. Instead, the entire surface of the pad is clickable, but it’s unfortunately flexible and results in a noticeably mushy feel whenever you click. The pad suffers from a lack of tracking precision, too, making it difficult to drag around onscreen elements. Increasing the sensitivity level in the Windows Precision Touchpad settings helps a bit.
The backlit keyboard above the touchpad is a bit more comfortable. It’s remarkably sturdy given the flexibility of the rest of the chassis, with little give even when I strike the keys forcefully. A dedicated number pad resides on the right side, although unlike the main part of the board, its keys are not full-size.
The Aspire 5 is an especially good choice if you hate buying dongles and adapters but have a lot of peripherals and cables to plug in to your laptop. On the left edge are the power connector, full-size Gigabit Ethernet and HDMI ports, two USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports (one of which can charge a plugged-in device even when the laptop is switched off), and a USB Type-C port. On the other edge, you’ll find a Kensington-style cable-lock slot, a USB 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm audio output. Wireless connectivity includes Bluetooth 4.2 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO support.
This is an extensive I/O complement that will serve people who need wired networking or external displays exceptionally well. The only downsides are the lack of an SD card reader and no Thunderbolt 3 or Wi-Fi 6 support, the latter of which I don’t expect to see on a laptop at this price.
Downward-firing stereo speakers located on the front left and right corners offer robust bass, but the overall sound is muddy, alas, with movie dialogue occasionally difficult to make out at lower volume levels.
Configuration Options and Performance Tests
You can’t build a custom-configured Aspire 5, but many different variants are available between the $349 low-end model and the top-of-the-line $849 one. At the high end, you get an Intel Core i7 U-series CPU, 12GB of memory, a 512GB SSD, and Nvidia GeForce MX graphics. At the low end, you’ll find AMD Ryzen 3 or Intel Core i5 processors with integrated graphics, 4GB of memory, and a 128GB SSD or a 1TB spinning hard disk drive (HDD).
Our review configuration lies between these two extremes, packing an 8th Generation Intel Core i5 U-series CPU, integrated graphics, 8GB of memory, and a 256GB SSD. On paper, it’s a capable combination for the web browsing, video streaming, and other similar basic tasks that budget laptop buyers need to perform on a daily basis. The storage and memory are also much better than the 4GB of memory and 1TB hard drive that the last Aspire 5 that PC Labs tested had aboard. Where possible, it’s always better to choose an SSD over a slower HDD as your boot drive.
If you’ve got $500 to spend and have flexible requirements, though, you can find many more powerful laptops available. So, for the purposes of performance comparison, I’ve selected three very different but similarly priced 15-inch laptops. The Acer Aspire 3 in the configuration here uses a CPU from AMD with robust on-chip graphics, while the Acer Nitro 5 is a pricier gaming laptop (though a budget model, as gaming machiens go) with a more powerful Nvidia GeForce GPU. Meanwhile, the Asus VivoBook S15 is a general-purpose 15-incher. Finally, I’ve included the previous Aspire 5 that PC Labs tested, as well. You can check out all of the configurations in the chart below.
The general-purpose performance tests resulted in a near dead heat between the Asus VivoBook S15, the new Aspire 5, and the Nitro 5. The best evidence of this is our PCMark 10 test, which simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, Web browsing, and videoconferencing. The Aspire 5 bested all comers here, though its score of 3,762 is not meaningfully different than the Nitro 5’s score.
PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a Storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the laptop’s storage subsystem. The Aspire 5 again came out on top, albeit by an equally small margin.
As a check on these synthetic benchmarks, I performed many of the same tasks that they simulate and found that the Aspire 5 was rarely sluggish, though it took longer to install complex apps like Adobe Photoshop than I would have liked. There was little fan noise, and no coil whine or other annoying sounds that sometimes plague budget laptops when placed under heavy computing demands.
When it comes to specialized tasks like multimedia editing and gaming, however, the Aspire 5 is no match for the more powerful Intel Core i5 H-series processor and the Nvidia discrete graphics chip in the Nitro 5. The Nitro 5 was better at rendering a 3D image using Maxon’s Cinebench tool…
…and it was faster to apply a series of filters and other effects to a JPG image using Adobe Photoshop CC.
It’s important to note here that the Aspire 5 wasn’t much slower than the Nitro 5 on our Photoshop test, and it was much faster than both the VivoBook S15 ($339.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) and its Acer predecessor, which couldn’t complete this test at all.
Meanwhile, the Nitro 5, purpose-built for gaming, trounced the other competitors on our 3DMark and Superposition game simulations. 3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting, while the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene, recording a score in frames per second. If you’re sticking to browser-based games like Candy Crush or Minecraft, though, the Aspire 5 will perform just fine.
The Aspire 5 also posted an excellent result of more than 14 hours on our battery rundown test, which involves playing a locally stored 720p video file at 50 percent screen brightness until the battery dies…
This result is due, in no small part, to the power-saving capabilities of the Intel CPU, which knows to consume less power for less-demanding tasks like video playback. Mixed use will likely result in a shorter time; Acer advertises approximately 9 hours of battery life.
A Fair Compromise
On a more expensive ultraportable laptop, a chassis with uninspiring build quality, a mediocre touchpad, and weak speakers would be dealbreakers. On the Aspire 5, however, the combination of a pleasing 1080p display, light travel weight, and a palatable price mean that the laptop’s main drawbacks are compromises to weigh instead of reasons not to buy.
Whether these compromises are right for you depends on your priorities. Performance-wise, it’s possible to do better in this price range, but you’ll likely have to switch to a machine that will weigh down your backpack significantly more. In the end, the most important considerations are how much you can spend and what you plan to use your laptop for. If you’re looking for a big-screen machine for basic tasks and have around $500 on the table, the Aspire 5 is a proper contender for your cash.
Acer Aspire 5 (A515-54-51DJ)
3.5
(Opens in a new window)
See It
$497.00
at Amazon
(Opens in a new window)
MSRP $349.00
Pros
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Cons
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The Bottom Line
This revamped Acer Aspire 5 configuration is a welcome improvement over its predecessor, and a decent, if compromise-laden, choice for shoppers eyeing a big-screen laptop on a budget.
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