Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22) – Top 5 Pros and Cons

If you want a beater laptop, this is for you. The Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22) has been made with that purpose only. It is affordable, decently looking, and equipped with everything that a daily driver should have. It is also light enough to be carried around with you from the office to your home and vice versa.

On the hardware end, you have three CPU options all from AMD, with two integrated GPU offerings as well. Besides, the CPU and GPU, you get 8GB of RAM and a Full HD IPS display

With that said, here are LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22).

Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22): Full Specs / In-depth Review


3 reasons to BUY the Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22)

1. Upgradeability

While there are in fact 4GB of soldered memory, there is also a single SODIMM slot, which should be enough for the foreseeable future. In terms of storage, we get a single M.2 slot for NVMe drives.


Here is our detailed teardown video, which shows how to access the RAM and SSD slots, along with general maintenance for the cooling and battery.


2. Battery life

With a 37Wh battery unit and a power-efficient Ryzen 3 3250U, the laptop lasts for  7 hours and 9 minutes for both Web browsing and video playback. This was done with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.


3. Display quality

With a budget laptop, we set sort of different criteria when it comes to evaluation the display quality. For us at least, a laptop in the range of $300 should have a display that is comfortable for prolonged use. The 14-inch Full HD IPS panel that we tested had comfortable viewing angles, a max brightness of 266 nits in the middle of the screen, 250 nits average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 8%.  The contrast ratio is also quite good – 1470:1. The panel also doesn’t use PWM at all, which is great news for your eyes.

In terms of color coverage, the laptop covers only 52% of the sRGB color gamut, which is okay for the price, as you will hardly be using the laptop for professional color-sensitive work.

The color accuracy didn’t change much even when we applied our Design and Gaming profile. Here are the results with the stock settings (left) and with our profile applied (right).


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22) configurations with 14.0″ AUO B140HAN04.0 (AUO403D) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS panel.

*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.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


2 reasons NOT to buy the Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22)

1. I/O

The laptop does have decent coverage but lacks a USB Type-C port and an SD card reader of any kind. What you get are three USB Type-A ports, with one 2.0 port and two 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, an HDMI connector, an Ethernet connector, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.


2. Design and build quality

Due to the budget nature of the laptop, we get a plastic lid and chassis. This is expected, however, we still expect a sturdy device, as it is doable. In terms of appearance, the laptop looks good, with a silver exterior and a slim 19.9 mm chassis. With a weight of 1.90 kg, it is light enough for you to bring it anywhere you want. However, the lid and base are a tad flimsy. The lid can be opened with one hand, but it does wobble a lot. The base also has some bends to it, mostly when you’re typing more harshly.


All Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22) configurations:

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