Aspire 5 Notebook A515 52g Test

Acer is a popular player in the laptop market with products at all levels, but it tends to be known more than for its budget offerings. This company has truly embraced the ultra-thin tendency and nosotros've seen several models in its Swift, Spin, Switch, and Aspire lines over the past few years that are extremely portable and attractive. The latest Acer device that nosotros're reviewing is the new Aspire 5 Slim A515-52G, which as you can encounter boasts of its core attribute right in its name. Not just is it quite surprisingly sparse for a 15-inch laptop, merely the Acer Aspire 5 Slim is also very light, which means if yous need a large screen to get piece of work done on while on the go, you're probably intrigued right now.

At first glance, it seems as though Acer has washed quite well with this laptop. Information technology's the followup to concluding twelvemonth's Aspire v A515-51G, with a few updated components and a completely redesigned body. It seems as though Acer has addressed many of the complaints we had with that model. Nosotros're going to find out how well this refreshed laptop is suited to life on the road, and whether the slimming process has had any unfortunate side effects.

Acer Aspire 5 Slim A515-52G design

Acer has gone with a metal hat for this laptop, which has a nice-looking brushed texture. The rest of it is all plastic, including the keyboard deck that has a similar brushed effect, which really looks quite good. The 15.6-inch panel has relatively narrow side borders and this helps the Aspire five Slim look modernistic. Yet, nosotros aren't fans of the five stickers on the panel'due south frame and on the wrist rest surface area, nearly of which were a little crooked and not aligned to anything on our review unit of measurement.

The chapeau feels surprisingly sturdy but at that place is a lot of warping on the panel if you lot try to curve or flex it fifty-fifty a petty. The hinge is a niggling also stiff and information technology wasn't possible for the states to open the lid of this laptop with one manus. On the plus side, the chapeau folds all the mode back to 180 degrees.

Weighing in at 1.9kg and just nether 18mm thick, the Aspire 5 Slim isn't besides heavy or bulky to carry around or commute with every 24-hour interval. Most xv.6-inch laptops are better left on a desk-bound, only this one can be moved around very hands.

We were disappointed to run across only a unmarried USB iii.0 Type-A port, though there's as well a Type-C port that works at the same speed. There are 2 more USB 2.0 ports but honestly that's not skilful enough for a laptop at this price level. Y'all also get Gigabit Ethernet, an HDMI video output, an SD menu slot, a 3.5mm combo audio socket, and a Kensington lock slot.

As with most laptops now, the battery is not removable. To get to the RAM or storage slots, you'll have to take the unabridged base off, destroying a "warranty void" sticker in the process. At that place are huge intake vents on the lesser through which you can see the motherboard, copper tubing for the CPU and GPU, and a unmarried fan. Hot air is expelled through a very exposed heatsink at the back. We're really surprised by how exposed the insides of this laptop are — information technology looks equally though dust buildup could become a problem.

The keyboard is one of the worst we've used in a very long fourth dimension. In terms of physical quality, it feels cheaper than the keyboards on even sub-Rs. xv,000 laptops such as the iBall Compbook series. The entire thing dipped equally we typed, and pressing keys in the middle caused not but the keyboard tray but besides neighbouring keys to sink. The action is not all that skillful either – the keys feel besides crisp and there's no cushioning at all before they actuate. They as well make a harsh metallic audio when pressed, which is loud enough to be distracting. We were quite frustrated by all of this.

Keyboard layout is also not platonic. Nearly all manufacturers at present cram the arrow keys into a single row, but Acer has gone a step further and shoved a number pad into just three columns. Nothing is really where you'd expect it to exist, and the paging keys (Page Up, Page Down, Home, and End) are only available equally secondary functions of the number pad keys. Almost fifteen-inch laptops with number pads still accept defended paging keys.

The lesser row is likewise close to the rim of the keyboard tray, making it difficult to hitting the infinite bar in a natural typing position. The power button is in the upper right corner, but at least it isn't probable to be hit past accident. One clever touch is that you have to concur information technology down for two seconds before it will put the laptop to sleep or shut information technology down.

The trackpad is large and has a good texture, but palm rejection was occasionally an issue for the states, causing the cursor to jump around randomly. Motion is smooth and multi-impact gestures are supported.

Acer Aspire 5 Slim A515-52G specifications and software

There are several variants of the Acer Aspire 5 Slim A515-52G, so make sure y'all know exactly what yous're getting. Our review unit has the designator NX.H57SI.002 and has the best specifications of the lineup. At its heart is an Intel Core i5-8265U processor, from Intel's recently refreshed Whiskey Lake family unit. Information technology has four cores with Hyper-Threading and runs at 1.6GHz with a maximum turbo speed of 3.9GHz. Along with this is the entry-level Nvidia GeForce MX150 detached GPU with 2GB of VRAM of its own.

There'due south 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive as well as a 16GB Intel Optane Memory module that acts every bit a small but very fast cache to advance reads and writes to the hard bulldoze. This isn't visible to users, it just works in the background. Acer has chosen to market this laptop equally having 24GB of memory (though that is qualified equally "16GB Intel Optane Memory + 8GB DDR4 Retentivity") correct on the huge sticker on the wrist rest.

Such potentially disruptive wording is thankfully missing from the clarification on Acer'southward website, but we can imagine that a lot of shoppers who see this laptop in a store alongside many others could be misled. For a full rundown of how Optane Memory works, you can read our full review of information technology. In short, information technology's better than nothing but not as good equally having an SSD.

The 15.6-inch screen thankfully has a resolution of 1920x1080, which is practiced plenty at this size, though non especially crisp. Windows was gear up to calibration to 125 percent by default merely we preferred the spaciousness of the standard 100 percent. Acer claims that the iv-jail cell battery can last for eight hours of Web surfing, which doesn't audio too impressive.

Moving on, nosotros accept Bluetooth 5 and Gigabit-course 2x2 Wi-Fi 802.11ac which is one of the key features of Intel's Whiskey Lake platform. Of grade you'll accept to have a compatible router to take reward of this. The USB Type-C port works at USB 3.1 Gen 1 speed (5Gbps) and does non support video output just can be used to supply iv.5W of power to accuse external devices.

According to Acer, you tin upgrade this laptop with up to 32GB of RAM across two SODIMM slots. At that place's patently an G.2 slot for the Optane Retentivity module and a 2.5mm bay, so there is pregnant upgrade potential here if you're willing to pop off the entire bottom panel.

Our review unit came to united states of america running Windows x Home and a lot of third-party software was preloaded. Some users might capeesh Norton Security merely we plant its abiding popups and subscription prompts intrusive. Firefox and Amazon were pinned to the taskbar, and several of the apps and Web shortcuts pinned to the Beginning Menu, including Lazada, Ebay and Agoda aren't even relevant in India. Polarr Photo Editor, Cyberlink PowerDirector and CyberLink PhotoDirector are at to the lowest degree potentially useful. At that place'due south a WildTangent Games launcher and over 25 shortcuts to specific games in its store. That's all in addition to Acer'due south own Acer Collection S app shop, Product Registration, and Care apps.

Acer Aspire 5 Slim A515-52G performance

We had a by and large pleasant time using the Acer Aspire v Slim, with just a lilliputian lag now and then when loading apps or opening files, well-nigh probable thanks to the dull spinning hard bulldoze. The Optane Retentivity does speed upward small file copy operations merely 16GB is not a lot, and information technology speedily becomes apparent that you aren't getting SSD-grade speeds when moving lots of data around. Nevertheless, considering the cost of this laptop and everything else you get, it isn't besides bad.

The xv.vi-inch screen is pretty expansive and we liked being able to piece of work with multiple windows side past side. That said, the screen quality isn't all that great. Information technology's fine for reading, writing, and surfing the Web, but the viewing angles aren't bang-up and colours appeared a fleck blown out when we were watching videos. The bottom-firing speakers are quite good, and while the audio was a little shrill, there was very little baloney at high volumes and vocals were well-baked in videos and music.

Benchmark tests showed that the Intel Core i5 CPU performs decently. Cinebench R15 gave united states of america single-core and multi-core scores of 161 and 501 respectively, and POVRay finished its benchmark run in 3 minutes, 56 seconds. PCMark 10 Extended managed a result of 3,432 points. Our 7zip file pinch exam using a 3.24GB folder of assorted files took 5 minutes, 42 seconds. We used Handbrake to encode a ane.3GB AVI file to H.265 720p, and that took 2 minutes, four seconds.

The GeForce MX150 GPU is definitely amend than Intel'southward integrated offerings, but is non adept enough for serious gaming. You lot'll be able to run older titles at decent quality settings, simply don't wait too much. We got scores of i,162 and ane,630 in 3DMark's Time Spy and Fire Strike Extreme tests which are roughly twice as much as what we would expect with integrated graphics. The Unigine Valley test did not run on this laptop.

Ascent of the Tomb Raider ran at 1920x1080 at its Low preset and we got a score of 35.47fps using its internal benchmark, but textures were barely able to load and the pop-in consequence was very pronounced and distracting. Far Cry 5 simply ran at 1280x720 using the low preset, and we saw the same problem even though the frame rate was relatively polish at an boilerplate of 42fps. The principal issue is the paltry 2GB of VRAM bachelor to the GPU.

While playing games and running other heavy tasks, the Aspire 5 Slim's fan was aural but not distracting. The wrist remainder and keyboard never got too hot for comfort only strangely we could feel the fan pulling air in through the upper middle of the keyboard, which was very weird. Our left manus was warm and our right hand had cool air drawn across it. The fan besides occasionally kicked in when we were just running casual apps, and we institute that nosotros could experience the draft on our right hand fifty-fifty when it was spinning slowly. This was especially abrasive when typing. We've never encountered this kind of pattern issue before.

As for battery life, the Aspire v Slim did reasonably well. It ran for a very impressive two hours, 59 minutes in the Battery Eater Pro benchmark, and nosotros were only about able to get through 6 hours of casual usage including some video streaming and music, with the screen at 40 percent brightness throughout.

Verdict
The Acer Aspire v Slim A515-52G is a confusing laptop. It does some things very well but has a lot of issues that go beyond quirks. The hardware is capable and the package is portable, but this laptop just isn't e'er comfy to use. For people like u.s. whose main work involves typing, the keyboard layout and quality, not to mention the airflow issue, are absolute dealbreakers.

Bombardment life is a potent point and the display is decent enough. Even the speakers are surprisingly skillful. There's fifty-fifty a lot of upgrade potential, which we are happy to see. For the price, though, we would take liked more conveniences such as keyboard backlighting and more USB three.0 ports. Portability is as well nice, simply in this case information technology has come at the cost of sturdiness.

Every bit always, nosotros encourage potential buyers to try out a laptop at a retail location before ownership, so you lot know exactly what you lot're getting. Specifications are one matter, only comfort is merely as important.

Price (MRP):Rs. 63,999 (as reviewed)

Pros

Light and portable
Expert specifications
Good battery life
Lots of potential for upgrades

Cons

Poor keyboard layout and quality
Average display quality
Lots of bloatware

Ratings (out of five)

Design: 3
Display: 3
Performance: iv
Software: 4
Battery life: 4
Value for coin: 3
Overall: three