Acer Aspire 5 laptop
I have here this is the 2023 model of the acer aspire 5. i stumbled upon it when looking for a cheap inexpensive 12 gen laptop for my nephew who just finished high school this one has the intel core i5 1235 u processor alongside 8gb ram and 512 gigs of ssd which cost 95 000 rupees here in nepal some 600 in the us and some 50 000 rupees in india if you want something even cheaper.
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| Acer Aspire 5 |
Design
When it comes to budget laptops a lot of brands tend to cut corners in this department and acer seems to be no exception it's a pretty basic design with plastic chassis and an aluminium lid compared to last year's model acer has changed a few things here and there like the placement of its branding and the exhaust bent
But that's about it i would have liked it if they had made it more robust as things stand like last gen aspire 5 this year too the build is a little clumsy even for a budget laptop i also found one alarming issue with this design as you can see there's this gap between the screen and the plastic bezel
Which is just weird so it's likely that in the long run dust and other similar debris might accumulate here which could cause some serious damage to the screen likewise its keyboard deck also has a lot more flex than i would have liked
However this is something that you should be able to overlook since the flex is hardly noticeable when typing in real life the keys feel a little mushy yes but it's nothing i can't live with sadly my unit does not offer back lighting while there are other models of the acer aspire 5 with a backlit keyboard
So if you're someone who works at night or in a dimly lit room a lot this is something that you should know but what i appreciate is that acer has given a dedicated numpad here which is getting harder to find even on 15 or 16 inch ultrabooks these days okay that aside i am pretty impressed with its trackpad too it's relatively large and it's responsive and i do not have any problems with gestures here.
Display
The display as expected the actual quality of this 15.6 inch screen is pretty average at best it's not the brightest or the most vibrant panel out there.
However if you're into graphic design and stuff then you'll want to look elsewhere because the acer aspire 5's color coverage is just too low also the low contrast ratio and four viewing angles of my unit make me believe that it's a tn panel so watch out for that as well
One more thing acer has still used a 16 is to 9 aspect ratio here at a time when 16 is to 10 displays are getting common even on budget laptops i am not suggesting that this is a deal breaker or anything but that tiny bit of extra vertical screen space makes quite a difference if you're a programmer.
Who does a lot of reading its bezels are also pretty thick and the one on the top houses an hd webcam whose quality is well fine for an entry-level laptop i'd say considering when you're in a well-lit room these downward firing speakers are also good enough for watching videos or casually listening to music but nothing too fancy i would have liked it even more if it got a little louder.
Performance
Let me now talk about the most exciting aspect of the aspire 5 2023 which is definitely the performance compared to the intel i5 11 gen cpu on its predecessor the new 12 gen cpu brings significant improvements first and foremost it introduces a hybrid architecture with two performance scores and eight efficiency cores taking the total core count to 10.
In contrast the i5 1135 g7 is just a 4 core 8 thread cpu and as you can see from these cinebench results the generational performance gap is night and day with around 22 percent higher single core and a massive 77 higher multi-core score on cinebench r23
It even outshines the new m2 powered macbook air in the single core test okay benchmarks aside the acer aspire 5 is no slouch in real life performance as well i had no problem carrying out my regular office chores on this thing which includes writing and editing documents alongside multiple chrome tabs open airplanes even
When adding photoshop into the mix for some light editing i never encountered stutters or any kinds of slowdowns i believe this can be a good option for itu students getting into the world of programming i was also pretty impressed with the fluidity of this laptop when running some small c sharp projects on visual studio 2023 but if you're serious about coding i will recommend using the extra sodium slot to upgrade the ram from 8 to 16 gb
Gaming
I tried playing some games but since this is not a gaming laptop it will heat up pretty badly if you game for a longer period of time that being said i was able to enjoy some lightweight games in the lowest setting and by using a laptop cooler on cs go i was able to get 84 fps on average with 36 fps one percent low i did notice a few starters here and there
But that did not impact the gameplay by a lot same thing on ballarat with the average and one percent low fps hitting 92 and 56 respectively i also played fifa 2023 here which ran at a consistent 60 fps on average but if you want an even better gaming experience in a similar price bracket there's also the more powerful aspire 5 gaming with the 12 gen intel pcd cpu and rtx 2050 gpu
Battery
This year's aspire 5 comes with a 50 watt hour cell which lasted me around 5 hours on average i mostly used it under the performance mode but you can get slightly longer screen on time under the silent or normal profiles for charging you get a traditional 65 watt round pin charger that comes inside the box
But you can avoid the hassle of carrying it around for a more compact 65 watt power delivery charger instead since the aspire 5 has a thunderbolt 4 port apart from this there are three usb 3.2 gen1 type a ports one hdmi and ethernet port and it can zinc unlock slot as for wireless connectivity it has the latest wi-fi 6e standard but of course you will need a wi-fi 6e compatible router to make the most out of it.
Today best deal of laptop according to my point of view Acer Aspire 5 is best laptop for students and office worker it's provide perfect battery timing upto 5 hours easily used for normal routine work and most the important thing is that Acer Aspire 5 is low budget anyone can easily afford such laptop.
