Acer Aspire 1 (A114-32) review – an ultra-budget laptop for media consumption

Today, we have one of the most affordable 14-inch laptops one can buy. Brace yourself for compromises, cost-cutting, and great value, which helps Acer get a little bit of profit on this ultra-budget notebook. It is called the Aspire 1 (A114-32) and comes with the baffling power, provided by the Intel Pentium Silver N5000, soldered 4GB of DDR4 memory and 64GB of eMMC flash memory.

Does this laptop compare to the Lenovo Ideapad S145 or the HP 250 G7? We can’t tell yet. All we know is that it is essential to some regions of the world, where connectivity is an issue, and a laptop would provide a lot more versatility than not having one. With that said, we frankly are not going to be as harsh on it as on the ASUS ROG Zephyrus GA502 for example. But that certainly doesn’t mean you shouldn’t expect an honest review!

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-1-a114-31/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Acer Aspire 1 (A114-31/32) - Specs

  • Innolux N140BGA-EB3 (CMN14C4)
  • Color accuracy  13  3.7
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 160GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 4GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 S, No OS
  • Battery
  • 4810 mAh, 2-cell, 37Wh, 2-cell, 4810mAh, 2-cell
  • Body material
  • Plastic / Polycarbonate
  • Dimensions
  • 343 x 245 x 18 mm (13.50" x 9.65" x 0.71")
  • Weight
  • 1.70 kg (3.7 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 2.0
  • HDMI
  • VGA
  • Card reader
  • SD, SDHC, SDXC
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Gigabit Ethernet
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth
  • Audio jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • VGA
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

All Acer Aspire 1 (A114-31/32) configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

Inside the box, there are only the essentials – a 45W power brick, the laptop itself and some paper manuals.


Design and construction

Expectedly, the entire chassis of this notebook is made out of plastic. It looks similar to what we saw on the Aspire 5 (A515-52) with the finish resembling brushed aluminum. This makes it harder for fingerprints to attach to it. Well, it’s needless to say that the quality of build has not been the priority here. Everything is flimsy and squeaks when you try to bend it.

One of the most suffering parts of this is the lid. Not only it doesn’t open with a single hand but is also extremely flexible… not in a good way. When you try to flex it, there are a lot of color and brightness shifts going on. Additionally, you should be very careful with what you put on top of the device, as it bends like crazy. The display has a glossy finish, which makes reflections really annoying when the sun is behind you.

Next – the keyboard deck. Sadly, the keyboard bends when you type on it and this gives it a mushy feel. However, on the bright side, the keycaps are actually decently-sized, and the key travel is not too short. Despite the bendiness around the deck, the palm rest area is surprisingly rigid and the touchpad is a lot better than what we’ve seen on some of the other budget devices out there.

On the bottom side, you are going to see only the speaker cut-outs. Why? You will see in a minute.

Ports

Looking on the left, you will see an RJ-45 port, an HDMI connector, a USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) port and an SD card reader, while on the right, there are two USB Type-A 2.0 ports and an Audio jack – not bad.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

For a budget-oriented device, this one has quite a lot of screws. The exact number on the bottom plate is 15 and they are of a Phillips type. After you unscrew them, you just need to pop the side of the laptop with a plastic pry tool and the panel will come off extremely easy.

Since there are no moving parts in this notebook, it is safe to say that it stays completely silent at any time given. Ultimately, this means that the CPU is passively cooled by what looks like a rather big copper plate.

Sadly, there is nothing upgradable inside. Its memory, as well as storage, are soldered to the motherboard.

Battery-wise there is a 37Wh unit.


Display quality

Acer Aspire (A114-32) sports a 768p TN screen, model number Innolux N140BGA-EB3 (CMN14C4). Its diagonal is 14″ (35.56 cm), and the resolution – 1366 x 768. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 112 ppi, their pitch – 0.227 x 0.227 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 80 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Viewing angles are uncomfortable. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.

The maximum measured brightness is 244 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 220 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 20%, which is inappropriate. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 7660K (average) – colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 16000K (corrected by our profiles).
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 52% Brightness (White level = 139 cd/m2, Black level = 0.39 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is mediocre – 360:1 (340:1 after profiling).

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to 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.

The yellow dotted line shows Acer Aspire (A114-32)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers only 50% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

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.

Below you can compare the scores of Acer Aspire (A114-32) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

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 (Gaming capabilities)

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

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 13 ms.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

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.

Acer Aspire (A114-32)’s display uses PWM for all brightness levels.

Blue light emissions

Installing 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.

Conclusions

Let’s be honest – Acer Aspire (A114-32)’s 768p display is terrible. It has poor viewing angles, low resolution, mediocre contrast ratio and covers only half of the colors on the Internet. However, this is something distinctive to the TN panels. It also uses harmful PWM to adjust its brightness levels (don’t worry, our Health-Guard profile takes care of that). At least it has quick reaction times (not that you can actually benefit from this).

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Acer Aspire (A114-32) configurations with 14.0″ Innolux N140BGA-EB3 (CMN14C4) (FHD, 1366 × 768) TN.

*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


Sound

Acer Aspire (A114-32)’s speakers are quiet. The low they produce have some deviations from clarity, while the mids and highs are clear.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/7527?b=1

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with 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. For a 37Wh, this laptop’s battery provides decent autonomous times.

We got 8 hours and a half of Web browsing and 9 hours of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

Acer Aspire 1 4810 mAh, 2-cell

CPU options

The processor we were able to find this laptop with was the Intel Pentium Silver N5000. You might also be able to purchase it with the Celeron N4000, but we guess that as soon as the supplies diminish, everything left will be the former processor.


GPU options

As of the graphics card – there is only the unpretentious Intel UHD Graphics 605 that shares its memory with the system.


Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Pentium Silver N5000 (6W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer Aspire 1 (A114-32)2.60 GHz @ 68°C1.85 GHz @ 58°C1.84 GHz @ 64°C
Acer Aspire 3 (A315-34)2.60 GHz @ 80°C2.15 GHz @ 79°C1.69 GHz @ 76°C
HP 15 (15-da0000)2.60 GHz @ 55°C2.30 GHz @ 53°C2.10 GHz @ 55°C

So, if you ever happen to push this device to its limits, you can expect quite a cool performance. Although it has a passive cooling solution, it actually does better than the awkward abomination, placed on the more expensive Aspire 3 (A315-34). Obviously, you have the benefits of absolute silence, and although the bottom plate will warm up eventually, the heat is not unbearable.

Verdict

Subjectively, this laptop is as terrible as its specs sheet suggests. Yes, you will certainly have problems with the 4GB memory, especially in multitasking and the 64GB slow eMMC flash storage won’t be your best friend either. However, the notebook justifies its low price by remaining accessible to the vast majority of people and has a decent port selection.

Additionally, you can always pop in an SD card reader and use it as a second storage device, as it will not be as obstructive as an external hard drive for example. However, it is petty that you won’t be able to upgrade either the storage nor the memory internally.

You also have to deal with a flimsy build quality that is actually better than what we expected. Another thing that is definitely better than expected is the battery life. We were able to extract 8 hours and a half of Web browsing and more than 9 hours of video playback from the 37Wh unit. You can definitely go for movie marathons without needing to plug it into the wall.

Speaking of watching movies for a long time let’s be honest – Acer Aspire (A114-32)’s 768p display (Innolux N140BGA-EB3 (CMN14C4)) is terrible. It has poor viewing angles, low resolution, mediocre contrast ratio and covers only half of the colors on the Internet. However, this is something distinctive to the TN panels. It also uses harmful PWM to adjust its brightness levels (don’t worry, our Health-Guard profile takes care of that). At least it has quick reaction times (not that you can actually benefit from this).

So, if you are really in need of a laptop and you don’t have spare money to spend… and you are really okay with all of the compromises you have to make, sure go for it. However, consider the HP 250 G7 as a decent option and please, make sure you get our profiles, as they will make your viewing experience considerably better in the long run.

Pros

  • The price is your best friend
  • Decent touchpad
  • Relatively long battery life
  • Completely silent


Cons

  • Poor build quality
  • Covers only 50% of sRGB (Innolux N140BGA-EB3 (CMN14C4))
  • Uses PWM for all brightness levels (our Health-Guard profile takes care of this) (Innolux N140BGA-EB3 (CMN14C4))
  • Combination of low memory and storage + lack of upgradability
  • Glossy 768p TN panel with a ton of reflections and poor viewing angles (Innolux N140BGA-EB3 (CMN14C4))

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-1-a114-31/

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Dajahnay
Dajahnay
1 year ago

Sooooo…….its ok so far but i was hoping that the keyboard backlight will be enabled