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日本Acer Aspire 5 (A515-48M) review – good performer with Zen 3 CPUs and long battery life
In most cases, the Acer Aspire laptops impress buyers with pleasant prices while the performance and the goodies of these machines are around average levels. It looks like the manufacturer wants to change that because the new Acer Aspire 5 (A515-48M) is trying to be a bit more premium compared to its older “cousins”. This time, we can spot some implemented clever tricks to boost the overall power of the machine.
The design is typical for an Aspire device but yet modern at the same time. There are some IPS display options and it seems that there is no sign of 720P TN variants which is great news for people who need something on a budget. Expectedly, this machine isn’t equipped with top-of-the-line hardware but Acer is clever enough to choose the refreshed efficient AMD 7000 Zen 3 CPUs (Barcelo-U Refresh). These chips are still powerful enough for home and office usage and given our previous experience with them and with their close-in-specs predecessors, the battery life should be at least good.
This also means that the still powerful AMD Radeon RX Vega 6 / 7 / 8 (R4000/5000, 15W) iGPUs are part of the package. Based on our testing, these fellas are potent enough for popular and light games such as CS:GO and Dota 2.
Alright, specs-wise new Acer Aspire 5 (A515-48M) shows signs of being a serious competitor in the budget category. Let’s check if that is true.
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-5-a515-48m/
Contents
- Specs, Drivers, What’s in the box
- Design and construction
- Display quality, Health impact (PWM), Sound
- Buy our profiles
- Performance: CPU, GPU, Gaming Tests
- [eBook Guide + Tools] How to MAX OUT your Laptop
- Temperatures and comfort, Battery Life
- Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance
- Storage performance
- Verdict
Specs, Drivers, What’s in the box
Acer Aspire 5 (A515-48M) - Specs
- HDD/SSD
- up to 2000GB SSD
- M.2 Slot
- 1x 2280 PCIe NVMe 4.0 x4 See photo
- RAM
- up to 16GB
- OS
- Windows 11 Home, No OS, Windows 11 Pro
- Battery
- 54.6Wh, 3-cell, 54.6Wh, 50Wh, 3-cell
- Body material
- Plastic / Polycarbonate, Aluminum
- Dimensions
- 362.9 x 239.6 x 17.9 mm (14.29" x 9.43" x 0.70")
- Weight
- 1.60 kg (3.5 lbs)
- Ports and connectivity
- 1x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
- 1x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
- 1x USB Type-C
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
- HDMI
- Card reader
- Ethernet LAN
- Wi-Fi
- 802.11ax
- Bluetooth
- 5.1
- Audio jack
- 3.5mm Combo Jack
- Features
- Fingerprint reader
- optional
- Web camera
- FHD with Temporal Noise Reduction
- Backlit keyboard
- optional
- Microphone
- Microphone with Acer Purified Voice and AI Noise Reduction
- Speakers
- Speakers with Acer TrueHarmony
- Optical drive
- Security Lock slot
- Kensington Lock
All Acer Aspire 5 (A515-48M) configurations
Drivers
All drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.acer.com/us-en/support?search=A515-48M&filter=global_download&suggest=A515-48M;0
What’s in the box?
Inside the normal-sized box, you’ll find the laptop itself, some manuals, and a 65W charger.
My experience with this model (the 7730U processor variant) is completely different. It’s very noisy, with an intense and sharp whining, the noisiest laptop I have ever seen, awful in that regard. If you have moderate to intense computational activities it’s unusable because of the noise.