The Acer Aspire 5 is the answer. This laptop is one of the most expensive in the Aspire line. It has an Intel Core i5 processor and 8GB of RAM. But that doesn’t mean that it costs a lot. It has a suggested MSRP of $499.99, but it can sometimes be bought for as little as $479.99. It might seem too good to be true to get a Windows laptop with a new Core i5 processor for less than $499.99. Acer gives up a lot to get what he wants. Still, the Aspire 5 is a good laptop that is fun to use.
The Acer Aspire 5 has a PCIe solid state drive and an Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor. If graphics performance is important to you, you should know that the Core i5-1135G7 has Intel’s Iris Xe graphics with 80 execution units and a maximum clock speed of 1.3GHz. This isn’t Intel’s fastest option for integrated graphics, but it’s a big step up from the Intel UHD graphics found in most 10th-generation Intel Core hardware.
Specifications
- CPU: Intel Core i5-1135G7
- Memory: 8GB
- Graphics/GPU: Intel Iris Xe
- Display: 14-inch 1080p LCD
- Storage: 256GB PCIe solid state drive
- Webcam: 720p
Where to get Acer Aspire 5?
On its website, Acer brags about its i7 processor and GeForce graphics, but this entry-level model has a more modest i5 processor and built-in Iris Xe graphics. Even so, it has a score of 1,417 for single-core performance and 4,440 for multi-core performance, which is good for a laptop in this price range.
The PCMark 10 test suite gives the Aspire 5 a score of 1280 for real-world tasks, which makes it a perfectly good “office laptop.” Even though that score puts it just below the halfway mark in the PCMark 10 tables, it’s not bad for an i5 laptop in this price range, and the Aspire 5 will be fine for web browsing and running productivity software like Microsoft Office.