Acer Aspire 5 (A515-51G) review – one of the best budget media-centric laptops out there

Acer just released its new Aspire 5 and 7 lineup but the market responded shortly due to the great value these notebooks offer. And despite some obvious drawbacks, the 17-inch version of the Aspire 5 quickly became our favorite choice in the budget 17-inch segment thanks to its excellent price/performance ratio, ideal screen and fairly robust design. But for a little less, you can get the 15-inch Aspire 5 that we are reviewing here so we expect similar if not the exact same user experience.

Clearly, the Acer Aspire 5 (515-51G) is carrying a capable hardware for the asking price – Intel Core i7-8550U, NVIDIA GeForce MX150, 8GB of DDR4-2400 memory, support for M.2 SSD and a Full HD IPS panel for your viewing pleasure. However, we would like to see if the battery life and the quality of the IPS panel are just as good as the 17-inch version and which one would suit you better. Let’s dig in.

Contents


Retail package

The laptop comes in the usual box containing the user manuals, AC adapter and power cord – nothing out of the ordinary.


Design and construction

The notebook comes with an identical to the 17-inch model chassis but obviously, a little bit smaller. Plastic is the main order of the day with a splash of brushed aluminum for the interior. It’s also fairly light tipping the scale at 2.1 kg and measures just 21.6 mm in thickness while also carrying some of the shortcomings from the 17-inch variant – wobbly touchpad and slightly flexible lid.

Speaking of which, it’s made of plastic that’s fairly resistant to pressure with the familiar texture on top. Unfortunately, we can’t say the same when attempting to twist the screen but it really isn’t something you have to worry about. The hinges are once again placed apart but on the contrary to the 17-inch model, this one holds up pretty well when pressing the bottom bezel. In addition, they provide fairly smooth and stable movement but opening the device with one hand isn’t possible.

The sides feature chamfered edges around the interior plate, measure 21.6 mm at its thickest point and provide all the usual connectors you’d expect. The left side comes with RJ-45 for LAN, USB-C 3.1 (Gen 1), HDMI, USB 3.0 and an SD card reader. On the right, you will find the DC charging port, two more USB 2.0 connectors and a 3.5 mm audio jack.

And as we already stated, the interior features brushed aluminum sheet that’s fairly stable – no visible flex around the keyboard and the touchpad – but it’s a strong fingerprint magnet. Anyway, the input devices are identical to the ones on the 17-inch variant – a bit shallow keyboard with satisfying, clicky tactile feedback and standard layout while the clickpad is a little jumpy and stiff in some areas. We’ve definitely seen better even at this price.

So the bottom line is that due to the smaller form factor, the 15-inch Aspire 5 feels a bit more solid in the hand compared to the 17-incher and obviously, it’s more compact and lightweight – features that are usually intrinsic to the smaller screen size. In any case, some of the issues we had with the 17-inch model are here as well – the interior is a fingerprint magnet while the touchpad offers subpar user experience.

Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options

The disassembly process is the same as on the 17-inch model. Some of the upgrades require to dig deeper but most can be done by removing the dedicated service lids on the bottom. This way you can access the memory slot and the 2.5-inch drive.

Storage upgrades – 2.5-inch HDD/SSD, M.2 SSD

As expected, the bottom cover has to be removed to access the M.2 PCIe NVMe-enabled SSD slot. The 2.5-inch drive under the service hatch, however, is a Toshiba 1TB HDD.

SlotUnitUpgrade price
M.2 SSD 2280 slot 1FreeBuy from Amazon.cn (#CommissionsEarned)
2.5-inch HDD/SSD slot1TB Toshiba HDDBuy from Amazon.cn (#CommissionsEarned)

RAM

The device comes with 4GB of soldered DDR4-2400 memory and in our case, with additional 4GB chip from ADATA, which can be further upgraded up to 16GB.

SlotUnitUpgrade price
Slot 14GB ADATA DDR4-2400Buy from Amazon.cn (#CommissionsEarned)

Other components

The Wi-Fi card is right next to the cooling fan and it’s Intel 3165NGW.

The battery is located under the wrist rest area and it’s rated at 48Wh.

Cooling system

The cooling design isn’t any different than the one used in the 17-inch variant. It consists of just one big heatpipe connecting both heatsinks and the cooling fan itself.


Display quality

The 15-inch Aspire 5 comes with Full HD (1920×1080) IPS panel from Panda with model number LM156LF1L03 (NCP001C). The pixel density is 142 ppi while the pixel pitch is 0.18 x 0.18 mm. It can be considered as “Retina” from at least 60 cm.

Viewing angles are good.

We’ve recorded a peak brightness of just 218 cd/m2 in the center of the screen and 206 cd/m2 as average across the surface with 17% maximum deviation. The correlated color temperature at maximum brightness is a bit colder than it should be – 6970K and remains the same as we go along the grayscale. You can see how these values change at 140 cd/m2 (63% brightness) in the image below.

The maximum color deviation dE2000 compared to the center of the screen should be no more than 4.0 and if you are planning to do color-sensitive work, it should be lower than 2.0. But in this case, since the laptop is going to be used mostly for office work, web browsing and multimedia, a deviation of 4.5 in the lower right corner is somehow acceptable. The contrast ratio is exceptionally high – 1470:1 before calibration and 1240:1 after calibration.

Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

Unfortunately, the panel covers just 53% of the sRGB color gamut.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 33 ms.


PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Fortunately, we’ve detected aggressive PWM only below 55 cd/m2 – everything over that is considered safe in this regard.

Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SPD) graph.

Conclusion

The display used here isn’t on par with what we saw on the 17-inch model because this one lacks almost half of the sRGB gamut but it still excels in other areas such as contrast. The absence of above 22% brightness PWM is also greatly appreciated.

Buy our display profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package is meant for Acer Aspire 5 configurations with 15.6″ Panda LM156LF1L03 (NCP001C) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS screen and the laptop can be found at Amazon: Buy from Amazon.cn (#CommissionsEarned)

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

除了获得高效和健康友好的配置文件,购买LaptopMedia的产品,您还可以支持我们实验室的发展,我们在实验室测试设备,以产生最客观的评论。

办公室工作

Office Work应该主要由那些花大部分时间看文本、表格或仅仅是浏览的用户使用。该配置文件旨在通过保持平坦的伽玛曲线(2.20)、本机色温和精确的色彩来提供更好的清晰度。

设计与游戏

本资料针对专业处理色彩的设计师,以及游戏和电影。设计与游戏》将显示面板发挥到了极致,使其在白点D65的网页和高清电视的sRGB IEC61966-2-1标准中尽可能准确。

卫生保健

Health-Guard消除了有害的脉宽调制(PWM),并减少了影响我们的眼睛和身体的负蓝光。 由于它是针对每个面板量身定制的,因此可以保持色彩在视觉上的准确性。 Health-Guard模拟纸张,因此大大减轻了眼睛的压力。

以33%的折扣获得所有3份资料


Sound

The sound quality is good – there are no noticeable distortions in the low, mid and high frequencies.


Specs sheet

The current specs sheet is for this particular model and configurations may differ depending on your region

Acer Aspire 5 (A515-51) 技术规格表

Acer
Not available
显示
15.6”, Full HD (1920 x 1080), IPS
HDD/SSD
1TB HDD, 5400 rpm
M.2 槽
1x 2280 PCIe NVMe M.2 slot 看照片
内存
8GB DDR4-2400
外形尺寸
382 x 263 x 22 mm (15.04" x 10.35" x 0.87")
重量
2.20 kg (4.9 lbs)
车身材料
Plastic / Polycarbonate
端口和连接性
  • 1x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 2x USB Type-A 2.0
  • HDMI
  • 读卡器 SD
  • 以太网LAN 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi 802.11ac
  • 蓝牙
  • 音频插孔 3.5 mm combo headphone/mic jack
特点
  • 指纹识别器
  • 网络摄像机 720p
  • 背光键盘
  • 麦克风
  • 扬声器
  • 光驱
  • 安全锁槽

Acer Aspire 5 configurations


Software

We used the pre-installed Windows 10 for the writing of this review but if you wish to perform a clean install of the OS, we suggest downloading all of the latest drivers from Acer’s official support page.

Battery

Just like its bigger sibling, the battery performance is more than impressive. Sporting a relatively low-capacity battery rated at just 48Wh, the notebook surpasses a number of considerably more expensive laptops. The main reason for this is probably Intel’s new 8th Generation.

Of course, all tests were run using the same settings as always – Wi-Fi turned on, screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2 and Windows battery saving feature switched on.


CPU – Intel Core i7-8550U

The Intel Core i7-8550U is part of the new 8th Generation Kaby Lake Refresh and it’s a direct successor to the Intel Core i7-7500U from the Kaby Lake generation and the Intel Core i7-6500U from the 6th Skylake generation. With the latest alteration to the ULV (ultra-low voltage) processors, Intel doubles the core count from 2 to 4 and retaining the so-called Hyper-Threading technology, keeping the same 14nm manufacturing process and feature the same 15W TDP.

However, due to the core count change, the base frequency of the Core i7-8550U is lowered to only 1.8 GHz while Turbo Boost frequencies remain pretty high – somewhere between 3.7 – 4.0 GHz. This ensures considerably higher multi-core and single-core performance during short workloads before going back to more bearable frequencies considering the 15W TDP but most of the other specs and features remain the same.

The chip also incorporates a newer Intel Gen 9.5 integrated graphics called Intel UHD Graphics 620. The support for Google’s VP9 codec and H.265/HEVC Main 10 is still the most notable feature of the iGPU. Intel claims that the new UHD 620 chips improve the overall power consumption compared to the previous one.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i7-8550u/

Acer Aspire 5 (A515-51 / A515-51G) CPU的变体

在这里,你可以看到市场上[系列]机型的CPU之间的大致比较。这样你就可以自己决定哪一个[系列]型号是最划算的。

注:图表显示的是最便宜的不同CPU配置,所以你应该通过点击笔记本的名称/CPU来检查这些笔记本的其他规格是什么。


GPU – NVIDIA GeForce MX150 (2GB GDDR5)

The GeForce MX150 is an entry-level mobile card that is part of the latest NVIDIA Pascal lineup of GPUs, based on the GP108 chip paired with 2GB of GDDR5 memory via 64-bit interface. The GPU is the successor of GeForce 940MX and it was announced in Q2 of 2017.

The GeForce MX150 operates at a relatively high base frequency of 1469 MHz, while the Boost frequencies can go up to 1532 MHz. The GPU incorporates 384 shader units (CUDA cores) while the memory is clocked at 6008MHz (effective). These specs ensure a significant performance boost over the previous generation of Maxwell GPUs. The TDP of the GPU is lower than the last generation GTX 950M and even the GTX 1050 – 25W compared to 40W for the two models above. Performance-wise, the GeForce MX150 should be similar to the desktop GeForce GT 1030.

Along with all the power consumption and performance improvements, the GPU now supports essential features like Multi-Projection, VR Ready, G-SYNC, Vulkan and Multi-Monitor.

Check the prices of all notebooks equipped with NVIDIA GeForce MX150: Buy from Amazon.cn (#CommissionsEarned)

Acer Aspire 5 (A515-51 / A515-51G) GPU的变体

在这里,你可以看到市场上[系列]型号的GPU之间的大致比较。这样你就可以自己决定哪一个[系列]型号是最划算的。

注:图表显示的是最便宜的不同GPU配置,所以你应该通过点击笔记本的名称/GPU来检查这些笔记本的其他规格是什么。


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 768p, Low (Check settings)HD 768p, Medium (Check settings)HD 768p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS105 fps54 fps27 fps

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)HD, Low (Check settings)HD, Medium (Check settings)HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average FPS137 fps111 fps78 fps

Temperatures

Of course, the stress tests that we perform don’t represent real-life usage scenarios because even the most demanding games don’t require 100% CPU and 100% GPU load at the same time for long periods of time. However, the torture tests remain as the most reliable way to assess the overall stability and longevity of the cooling system.

At first, the system was able to utilize the full performance of the Core i7-8550U before falling back to around 2.2 GHz, which is still within the Turbo Boost range. Temperatures were acceptable.

Turning on the GPU stress test reduced the CPU clocks down to its basic 1.8 GHz while the GPU ran at whopping 1620 MHz during the whole test. The cost was high, though, as the MX150 reached 83 degrees Celsius.

Temperatures on the surface remained pretty low despite the hot GPU.

36.4°
38.1°
26.8°
37.4°
36.3°
26.8°
38.6°
27.4°
26.5°

Verdict

The 15-inch Aspire 5 delivers pretty much the same user experience as the 17-inch model with one big exception – the screen. Apparently, Acer has cut some corners regarding screen quality and instead of a high-end IPS panel, they’ve put a mid-range display with limited sRGB coverage and slightly above average maximum brightness. However, we can’t really complain because at this price range, this panel makes more sense. The display on the 17-inch model was a bonus. Still, the absence of PWM above 22% brightness and the exceptionally high contrast should be considered.

And as for the rest? As we already said, the 15-inch model carries all the traits from its bigger sibling. This means that the 15-inch Aspire 5 comes with a decent (a bit shallow) keyboard, unsatisfactory touchpad, fairly good build quality, has extra long battery life and tends to get a little bit hot under the hood when you run heavy workloads for longer. This won’t affect the user experience, though.

What did we get from this? If you want better image quality – opt for the 17-inch model. If portability is more important to you, then maybe the 15-inch model will suit you better.

Pros

  • Fairly good build quality
  • Decent keyboard
  • Generally good IPS display for the asking price
  • The display doesn’t use PWM for regulating brightness above 22%
  • Good price/performance ratio
  • Extra long battery life


Cons

  • Wobbly and stiff touchpad
  • No keyboard illumination
  • GPU gets a bit hot under heavy and extended workload

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