Sometimes shopping for a ‘doi-it-all’ laptop requires that you find one, where the most suitable feature suite and components intersect with the lowest price. Right now, the Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-57D4 hits that sweet spot, with a combination of solid performance, a full HD screen, a dedicated graphics card, and useful connectivity options, including a USB-C port.
Last year’s Acer Aspire E15 was among the first reasonable priced, large-screen laptops we ever tested, and this year’s model gets even better. It has been upgraded with a set of new features and components that uh it from average to top of the class.
The design remains the same, but it does get a performance boost with a newer seventh generation processor, almost all-day battery life and improved multitasking. There are less expensive options, but for a medium-heavy user, this looks like a fantastic choice that will be hard to beat on both pricing and processing power. It easily gets a spot among our Top Picks for budget desktop-replacement laptops.
Design and Build
The Acer design isn’t fancy, but it is solidly built with an obsidian black color, plastic finish and a nice texture that ensure it is not magnetic to fingerprints. The entire body is plastic, with a brushed finish on the lid and keyboard deck, to add glamour to an otherwise plain aesthetic. It measures 15 x 10.2 x 1.2 inches and weighs 5.3 pounds, moderately portable and with the dimensional range for the category. It is portable enough to tote around to school/office and back easily. Other laptops like the ASUS ZenBook UX330UA-AH54 (0.5 inches, 2.6 pounds) are fairly thin and lighter, if you’re concerned with lugging this system daily, but the difference isn’t much.
The 15.6-inch Full HD comes with a resolution of 1920-by-1080 and a 16:9 image aspect ratio that has a Comfy-view LED backlit LCD display which features Acer BluelightShield that minimizes the blue light emissions from the screen to reduce the straining of the eyes and any other problems associated with staying in-front of the screen for long. It however lacks the IPS display for wide viewing angles but then it still has a sharp picture quality just like its counterparts such as the Lenovo Edge 15 that costs more.
Display and Keyboard
The laptop comes with a backlit keyboard which will allow you to work even in dim-lit areas. The keyboard is spacious for easy navigation and the touchpad is great with the help of Acer precision that makes the touchpad accurate. Navigation through your photos and web pages is possible by swirling, flicking and pinching the touchpad. It also features dual stereo speakers that produce a good audio quality with good bass and a high volume that can be heard around the room. The webcam included in this laptop is of high definition with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels and supports High Dynamic Range thus making it ideal for Skype chats with friends and family.
As expected, the Full HD screen isn’t touch enabled, but is bright enough for comfortable prolonged use. Not having touch capability isn’t a deal breaker as it would simply increase on the pricing, which Acer attempted to keep as low as possible. Still, the installed Windows 10 Operating System makes it possible to navigate through the system easily without the need for a touchscreen unlike in windows 8 that majorly worked well with a touchscreen. You may want to consider the cheaper Acer Aspire F 15 F5-571T-569T if you are so much into a touchscreen but be ready to sacrifice the fast SSD and a powerful processor.
Connectivity and Storage
Connectivity is excellent. The system includes one USB 2.0 port, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB Type-C (USB 3.1) port an HDMI port for extending the display to larger screens like HDTVs, projectors and monitors a headset jack, an SD card Reader, and an Ethernet port. The Acer goes against the grain and includes a built-in DVD drive for fast read and write speeds of your CDs and DVDs.
For internet connectivity, the Acer is equipped with 802.1ac wireless that features MU-MIMO technology that is fast compared to the previous versions as well as Bluetooth 4.1. Storage comes in way of a 256GB SSD, which is quite standard nowadays. Unlike mechanical hard drives, SSDs suffice for snappy booting, faster read and write times among other advantages. The storage space is enough for you to keep all your favorite photos, music, videos, movies, files and other documents.
Performance
Under the hood, the Acer Aspire E15 houses a seventh-generation (code-named Kaby Lake) Intel Core i5-7200U processor clocked at 2.5GHz that can run up to 3.1GHz with Turbo Boost Technology. Add to this, 8GB DDR4 system memory and you get a system that delivers a speedy performance and is power efficient. The system yields enough power to run software such as video and image editing applications, Adobe Photoshop, play modern games although at enthusiast levels, stream videos online, browse the internet and enjoy media content in Full HD.
The system features a dedicated Nvidia GeForce 940MX 2GB DDR5 graphics that offers up to 4x performance when gaming, streaming videos and movies. The system runs well with moderately demanding games at medium quality and produces playable frames per second. This is one of the few laptops we’ve reviewed recently with good upgradability.
An easily accessible panel at the bottom gives you access to an unused 2.5” SATA port where you can easily add in another SSD like the 500GB Samsung 850 EVO, or a cheaper drive with plenty storage. There are also 2 DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, meaning that the 8GB memory can be upgraded to 32GB. Finally, here is a laptop that offers “workstation-like” upgradability, without breaking the ceiling price for midrange laptops.
Battery Life
Battery life was excellent. The system lasted 10 hours 37 minutes in our rundown test, which is almost an hour longer than the HP Spectre x360 (8:45). Last year’s Acer Aspire E15 lasted 9 hours 35 minutes, due to the extra drain from the Intel Core i5 processor balancing the power savings from the 1,920-by-1,080-resolution screen.
The Bottom Line
The latest Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-57D4 is a reasonably priced desktop-replacement laptop with a lot going for it. This iteration gets a boost in features over its predecessor including, a powerful Intel Core i5 processor, better connectivity, and strong battery life, all at a really good price for a midrange laptop. Yes, it can’t play the latest tittles at high setting, but it does suffice as an affordable option that’s several dollars less compared to specialized gaming laptops.
That’s value for money right there, if the detailed crisp display and generous speeds are anything to go by. For the value hunters in the market for a laptop capable of multitasking and running most demanding applications without stuttering, then the Aspire 15 is something we can comfortably call ‘a step in the right direction’–worth having at the top of your list.
