Shopping for a budget midrange productivity laptop is all about finding one with the most useful suite of features, solid components at the lowest price possible. Right now, the Acer Aspire E5-575G-75MD hits that sweet spot, flaunting a full HD display, speedy SSD storage, a dedicated graphics card and a long battery life. If you’re hunting for a bargain, there’re less costly options like the Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-57D4, outfitted with a Core i5-7200U processor. A newer and faster processor is welcome, though the difference in performance isn’t huge, unless you want to do serious multitasking. For that, it’s a justified inclusion, making the 575G-75MD among our top picks for low-cost desktop-replacement laptops.
Design
Like the Acer E5-575G-57D4, the Aspire E5-575G-75MD measures 1.2 by 15 by 10.2 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.3 pounds. Both sport the same textured-plastic exterior, when looked at, it mimics brushed aluminum. The base is made of black plastic, with a white trim around the area between the hinges and the keyboard. Overall, the design looks flashy, but the same isn’t that sturdy to the touch.
The non-touch 15.6-inch display has a Full HD (1,920-by-1,080) resolution, the same resolution you’d find on the ASUS P-Series P2540UA-AB51, our top pick for budget business laptops, a step ahead of the 1,366-by-768 resolution on the HP Pavilion 15-cc510nr.
It produces good quality pictures, ideal for watching videos and general use, but text appears somewhat blurred, common with Twisted-Nematic (TN) panels. In contrast, an In-Plane Switching (IPS) screen appears sharper and has wider viewing angles, only found in more expensive systems like the ASUS ZenBook Flip UX360CA-DBM2T.
Features
The expected good-not-good build quality extends to the keyboard and touchpad, which is expected of a value notebook. The backlit keyboard feels OK, though the deck is flexy, key travel and physical response are encouraging. For the touchpad, its responsive and accurate thanks to Acer Precision technology.
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. Included is a 1280×720 pixels webcam, with HDR support making it a good idea for skype chats.
Connectivity
There is a strong degree of port variety, which is a bonus for a budget system. 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. Acer includes a DVD drive for your movies and documents. Wireless connectivity comes via 802.1ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1.
Storage
There’s a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) for storage. While it isn’t a lot for all your downloads and media files, it is speedy enough to make your system boot fast and smoothly. An SSD is a better inclusion as opposed to mechanical hard drives that offer massive storage, but result in sluggish general performance. If you need more storage, you can either swap it with a higher capacity, or use an external drive for your files.
Performance
This Aspire E 15 model is powered by a 3.5GHz Intel Core i7-7500U processor, 8GB of memory, and an Nvidia GeForce 940MX discrete graphics processor with 2GB of video memory. For a midrange productivity system, these are fairly powerful components, which translates to impressive scores on benchmark tests. It produces a score of 2,816 on the PCMark 8 Home test, which is better than its predecessor, that scored 2,614 points on the same test.
Though less powerful, systems with lower-resolution 1,366-by-768 displays may score highly on the same test, as they require less processing power than the full HD resolution screen. It’s something you need to compromise, especially when you need stronger performance over graphical clarity. You won’t make it your centerpiece for multimedia projects, but for video watching, browsing the web, word and spreadsheet processing and such tasks, it will get the job done.
A dedicated graphics card means ability to play games, though the NVIDIA GeForce 940MX won’t be able to play most modern titles. You’ll get away with less-demanding games, at 720p and medium-quality settings without straining the system. The system is less capable in HD and Ultra-quality settings, which won’t offer much on most modern games, even when played at lower resolution and graphics settings. The point here is to use the graphics card for media projects like photo and video editing among others, and basic gaming.
Battery Life
Where the E15 does excel is battery life, which is excellent in the category. The system lasted 10 hours 17 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 1,9206-by-1,080-resolution screen.
Good Laptop, Great Value
The Acer Aspire E5-575G-75MD represents top-value for a system offering a useful set of features and good hardware for much less. It adds a better processor over its predecessor, thus performs better, has the same good display, and excellent battery life. There are some even cheaper options, though with a few compromises, like the Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM. But if you’re looking for something that combines value and feature set, the Aspire E5-575G-75MD is worth a long look. It is among our top picks for the category.
