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When you look at Acer’s website, you might think that the Acer Aspire 5 is a high-end, expensive laptop with a 12th generation i7 processor and a powerful GeForce graphics card. But, as we’ve found with Acer in the past, the company’s website tends to focus on its top-of-the-line models and leaves you to find out about other options that might be available.
In this case, it turns out that the Acer Aspire 5 comes in a wide variety of models and specs. In fact, Acer’s US website lists more than 60 configurations, such as 17.3-inch and 15.6-inch displays with both Intel and AMD processors. And if you look long enough, you might be able to find the 14-inch entry-level version of the Aspire 5 that we review here.
It has an older 11th generation i5 processor, costing less than $600. Acer says that’s a powerful laptop “for accelerated photo and video editing performance,” but if you look at the Aspire 5 on its own, it’s clear that it’s one of the best cheap laptops for browsing the web and getting work done.
Acer Aspire 5 (2022) review: Design and Display
The design of the Acer Aspire 5 won’t win any awards, but this isn’t a laptop for people who want something flashy. Even though this isn’t as expensive as a MacBook, it’s still a cheap laptop, and it doesn’t look too bad. The color scheme of silver and black is simple, but it works well.
But the body is made of plastic instead of metal, which keeps the weight down and shows that this laptop is cheap. Even though it’s not very thin, Acer was able to fit in a good number of ports, such as full-size standard USB ports, HDMI, Ethernet, and a single USB-C port.
This means you won’t need an adaptor to plug in many of your devices. With the HDMI port, you can easily connect it to a monitor or projector, which is very useful. There’s no place to put a memory card, which is a shame. The Acer Aspire 5 doesn’t charge like many modern laptops do via USB-C.
Instead, there is a small port where you can plug the charger that came with the phone. It seems like an old way to do things, and you can’t charge the laptop easily if you forget the charger. Other laptops, on the other hand, can use any USB-C port to charge. The charger has a thin connector that looks and feels like it could bend easily, which is scary. You can buy this laptop from its official website.
Acer Aspire 5 (2022) review: Ports
The computer has a USB-C slot and three USB-A ports (one USB 2.0 and two USB 3.2 Gen 1) (USB 3.2 Gen 1). The latter doesn’t support DisplayPort or Power Delivery over USB-C. That means the HDMI connection can only be used for one video output. There is also no memory card reader.
When measured under ideal conditions (no other WLAN-enabled devices nearby and a short distance between the laptop and the server PC), the WLAN transfer rates are good, but they don’t fully match what the WiFi chip can do (MediaTek MT7921; 802.11ax).
Acer Aspire 5 (2022) review: Keyboard and touchpad
The keyboard on the Acer Aspire 5 is, thankfully, solid and easy to use. When we press the matte-textured keys, they feel a little mushier than I’d like—I’d rather something with a smoother, tactile response—but there’s enough travel to feel comfortable.
Note that the keyboard doesn’t have a backlight, so don’t expect it to help you type at night or in dimly lit rooms. The touchpad works fine, but at just over 4 inches wide and 2.5 inches tall, it doesn’t have a lot of room for gestures that involve more than a couple of fingers.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
When it came to gaming, things were different. The Aspire 5 only got a score of 1,285 on the 3DMark Time Spy test, which is much lower than the average for the Intel Iris Xe. It also only got 11 frames per second (fps) in Fortnite, even though it was 1080p and had epic graphics.
Don’t count on the Aspire 5 for anything other than very casual gaming. Even though it’s not on Acer’s website yet, there will be a version with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2050 that should make gaming much better. However, even that version uses a budget graphics card from the last generation.
Acer Aspire 5 (2022) review: Performance
which is most definitely the show. The new 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U CPU is a big step up from its predecessor, which had a Core i5-1135G7. First of all, it has a hybrid design with two performance cores with hyperthreading and eight efficiency cores, for a total of ten cores.
The i5-1135G7, on the other hand, only has 4 cores and 8 threads. And as you can see from these Cinebench scores, the difference in performance between generations is like night and day. Cinebench R23 has a 22% higher single-core score and a 77% higher multi-core score.
Even in the single-core test, it does better than the new M2-powered MacBook Air. The Acer Aspire 5 doesn’t just do well on benchmarks but also in real life. On this thing, like writing and editing scripts while having multiple Chrome tabs open simultaneously. Even when we added Photoshop for some light editing, we never had any kind of stuttering or slowing down.
Battery Life and Heat
This Aspire 5 model from Acer has a maximum battery life of 10 hours, but that’s longer than we saw in our web surfing rundown test, let alone in normal daily use. In our web surfing test, where the screen brightness was set to 150 nits and we kept surfing the web over Wi-Fi.
The Acer Aspire 5 lasted 8:02 before it shut down. That’s not bad, and it’s better than what its predecessor, the Acer Aspire 5 (2020), did in the same test, which was over 6 hours. But it’s not nearly as good as the Asus Zenbook OLED’s 15 hours. When we used my laptop at full brightness, watch YouTube videos, and type up documents for about six hours before the screen went dark. That’s good enough, but it doesn’t make the Aspire 5 a productivity warrior that will last for a long time.
Price and availability
Most of the time, these big Acers are the best-sellers on Amazon, and we’ve seen in the past that the 15.6-inch models usually take the top spot. We don’t blame people for buying this size of screen. It’s great for side-by-side windows and has a great HD resolution for playing or editing video.
Plus, the space to the right of the QWERTY keyboard is just big enough for a small number pad. Even though the model we tried was well-equipped with a lot of RAM and a large SSD (for a higher price of $699 to $799), it had some real problems.
Acer Aspire 5 (2022) review: Final Words
The Acer Aspire 5 15-inch includes a great variety of contemporary features, such as a quick Intel processor from the 12th generation, enough of RAM, and a spacious solid-state drive (SSD). These Acer laptops all use flash storage, thus there is no option for a slow internal hard drive like there was in previous generations of mid-range laptops.
FAQs
Is Acer Aspire 5 any good?
Conclusions Reached by Us. The Acer Aspire 5 can be used satisfactorily in the classroom. It’s a lightweight laptop that works for nearly seven hours on a charge. It has a lightning-fast start-up and programme load time, and it can handle simple productivity tasks like taking notes.
Are Acer laptops good 2022?
The Acer Swift 5 of 2022 is a stunning laptop with excellent performance and a gorgeous screen. We have no hesitation in saying this is one of the finest Acer laptop computers currently available.
Which laptop is better than Acer Aspire 5?
When it comes to internal memory, the Acer Swift 3 (2022) is also a cut above the competition. The Aspire 5 only goes up to a 512GB PCIe SSD, while the new Swift 3 goes all the way up to 2TB. The Aspire 5 does not come with as much storage space as the Swift 3, but an optional HDD can be installed to increase this number.
Acer Aspire 5 (2022) Ratings