Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P) review – affordable daily driver

Today, we are going to tell you all you need to know about a laptop, which will shatter the entry-level mobile market. Or will it? This question arises with every machine bold enough to make such claims, that’s for sure.

But there is one particular reason we think this one might fail in its quest (which may be the very reason it succeeds eventually). Precisely, we’re talking about the processors of choice. They are the Ryzen 3 7320U, and the Ryzen 5 7520U. Finally, one would say, a Ryzen 7000U CPU to hit the market.

As you will learn later on, this is not exactly the case. To make use of modern technology possible inside laptops at this end of the market, AMD created these two CPUs. They combine older Zen 2 architecture CPU cores with LPDDR5 RAM and RDNA2 integrated graphics. Unfortunately, the iGPU only sports two graphics cores, which won’t do the architecture much justice.

On the bright side, we expect to see great efficiency. And what we are really happy about is the fact there is only one display option – a 1080p IPS unit. This kills almost every competition in its price range.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-3-a315-24p/

Contents


Specs, Drivers, What’s in the box

Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P) - Specs

  • BOE NV156FHM-N48
  • Color accuracy  4.2  3.9
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 20GB
  • OS
  • Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro, No OS
  • Battery
  • 43Wh, 3-cell
  • Body material
  • Plastic / Polycarbonate
  • Dimensions
  • 362.9 x 237.5 x 18.9 mm (14.29" x 9.35" x 0.74")
  • Weight
  • 1.60 kg (3.5 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • 2.1
  • Card reader
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • Backlit keyboard
  • optional
  • Microphone
  • Speakers
  • 2x Stereo Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot
  • Kensington Lock

All Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P) configurations

#CommissionsEarned

Drivers

All drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.acer.com/us-en/support?search=A315-24P&filter=global_download&suggest=aspire%203%20a315-24p;2

What’s in the box?

Inside the package, you will find the mandatory paperwork, combined with a 45W charger.


Design and construction

After our countless mentions that this is an affordable laptop, now we have to tell you how did Acer achieve this feat. It uses plastic for the base, and at first, we thought the lid is plastic too, but Acer’s official Web page said otherwise – indicating it is made out of metal.

Take that with a pinch of salt, though, because neither of the two structural pieces doesn’t have a very strong rigidity. It flexes like cheese in the microwave. By the way, the laptop weighs only 1.60 kg and has a profile of 18.9mm.

Furthermore, it can be found in different colors, including Blue, Silver, and “Pure Silver”. Plus, the plastic material doesn’t feel cheap when you lay your hands on it, which is great.

Surprisingly, the lid can be opened with a single hand. It hides medium-sized bezels and what looks like an HD Web camera with Temporal Noise Reduction.

Moving to the base, we find the keyboard. It lacks a backlight but features a NumberPad section and somewhat clicky feedback. Again, the key travel is a bit too shallow, which robs us of what could have been a good typing experience.

The touchpad here is pretty big and comes with a smooth surface. Also, it is fairly responsive, but the tracking is not always too accurate.

And on the bottom panel, there are the two speaker cutouts and the huge ventilation grill. To assist the airflow, the backside of the base lifts, when you open the lid past about 95°. Hot air, respectively, is being blown out through a vent in the back of the base.

Ports

On the left side, there is the charging plug, a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port with Power Delivery and DisplayPort functions, followed by an HDMI 2.1 connector, and a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port. Switch to the right, and you will see the Kensington lock slot, a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and an Audio jack.


Display quality, Health impact (PWM), Sound

Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P) is equipped with a Full HD IPS panel, model number BOE NV156FHM-N48 (BOE0A56). It comes with a 60Hz refresh rate. Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.6 cm), and the resolution – 1920 x 1080p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 141 ppi, and their pitch – 0.18 x 0.18 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 60 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Viewing angles are good. We offer images at different angles to evaluate the quality.

Also, a video with locked focus and exposure.

The maximum measured brightness is 258 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 242 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 11%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6830K (average) – slightly colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB.
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 55% Brightness (White level = 139 cd/m2, Black level = 0.1 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 good – 1350:1.

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 on 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 3 (A315-24P)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 51% 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 the Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P) 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 = 34 ms.

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.

Health Impact: 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 3 (A315-24P)’s display doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. This makes the screen pretty comfortable for long periods of use.

Health Impact: 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.

Health Impact: Gloss-level measurement

Glossy-coated displays are sometimes inconvenient in high ambient light conditions. We show the level of reflection on the screen for the respective laptop when the display is turned off and the measurement angle is 60° (in this case, the result is 51.4 GU).

Sound

Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P)’s speakers produce a sound of okay quality. Its low, mid, and high tones all have some deviations from clarity. Plus, the maximum volume is a bit too low.


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 3 (A315-24P) configurations with 15.6″ BOE NV156FHM-N48 (BOE0A56) (1920 x 1080) IPS.

*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


Performance: CPU, GPU, Gaming Tests

CPU options

This laptop is offered with the Ryzen 3 7320U, and the Ryzen 5 7520U. They are weird abominations, which are built on the Zen 2 architecture but support LPDDR5 memory.

Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P) CPU variants

Here you can see an approximate comparison between the CPUs that can be found in the Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P) models on the market. This way you can decide for yourself which Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P) model is the best bang for your buck.

Note: The chart shows the cheapest different CPU configurations so you should check what the other specifications of these laptops are by clicking on the laptop’s name / CPU.

Results are from the Cinebench R23 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)

Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)

GPU options

Another interesting feature of the aforementioned Zen 2 CPUs, is that they come with the RDNA2 Radeon 610M.

Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS72 fps50 fps38 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS90 fps56 fps24 fps

Temperatures and comfort, Battery Life

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.

AMD Ryzen 3 7320U (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P)3.69 GHz @ 89°C @ 29W3.60 GHz @ 88°C @ 25W3.56 GHz @ 92°C @ 23W

As you can see, the Aspire 3 (A315-24P) has extremely potent cooling, which can chew through the Ryzen 3 7320U. Not that this is a big deal, considering the low TDP, but 3.56 GHz as an average of all cores is a pretty good result.

Comfort during full load

Well, the fan does produce some noise, but nothing too annoying. Keep in mind that this is an extreme scenario.

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests 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. This machine’s 43Wh battery pack lasts for 12 hours and 25 minutes of Web browsing, or 13 hours and 53 minutes of video playback.

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


Disassembly, Upgrade options, and Maintenance

To access this notebook’s internals, you need to undo 11 Phillips-head screws. Then, pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool, and lift it away from the chassis.

Inside, we find a 43Wh battery pack. To remove it, unplug the battery connector, and undo the two Phillips-head screws, keeping it in place.

Memory-wise, there are 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM, working at 5500 MHz in dual-channel mode. For storage, you get one M.2 PCIe x4 slot, limited to Gen 3.

The cooling inside comprises one heat pipe, a heat sink, and a large fan.


Verdict

Okay, let’s try to annalize what we just learned. For starters, the Ryzen 3 7320U is a really potent processor. Its Radeon 610M might look bad on paper, and when it comes to synthetic benchmarks, but playing light titles like CS:GO or DOTA2 is actually possible at medium settings and 1080p resolution.

But hey, you are probably getting this laptop for a daily driver, since it is a pretty affordable offering. Then, you will be happy to learn that its battery lasts more than 12 hours of Web browsing or nearly 14 hours of video playback.

The cooling is also on point, while the display of the device is just what you want! Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P)’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, a good contrast ratio, and a non-flickering backlight. It does cover only 51% of the sRGB color gamut, which is a disadvantage.

Unfortunately, the M.2 PCIe x4 slot is limited to Gen 3 speeds. However, it still supports Gen 4 SSDs, which is nice. Another interesting aspect of this notebook is the lack of memory expansion. It clearly has the space inside, but it is limited to 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM, working at 5500MHz. Let’s hope that Google Chrome doesn’t get any thirstier in the future.

To be completely frank, the keyboard is not super comfortable for typing. That’s due to its short key travel, making it harder to distinguish the otherwise clicky feedback. Acer is trying to compensate with a NumberPad and a large touchpad – not a bad strategy.

At the end of the day, you shouldn’t expect a very good build quality. But what is more important is that the Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P) definitely meets the expectations set by its price tag.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-3-a315-24p/

Pros

  • Great battery life
  • Comfortable viewing angles and good contrast ratio (BOE NV156FHM-N48 (BOE0A56))
  • No PWM (BOE NV156FHM-N48 (BOE0A56))
  • Decent performance
  • Wi-Fi 6E and fully functional USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port


Cons

  • Covers only 51% of sRGB (BOE NV156FHM-N48 (BOE0A56))
  • Soldered memory
  • No keyboard backlight
  • Lacks an SD card reader

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Rev_Pizzaguy
Rev_Pizzaguy
1 year ago

I have this laptop (A315-24P-R7VH). Some observations from my testing:

M.2 NVMe doesn’t run at full speed. I swapped out the Samsung PM991a for an SK Hynix Gold P31 and both top out around 1780MB/s read (SK Hynix was faster writes at 1715MB/s). CrystalDiskInfo shows transfer mode PCIe 3.0 x2, not PCIe 3.0 x4. Confirmed in HWInfo64 as well, only slots available are a PCIe 3.0 x1 (for WiFi card) and PCIe 3.0 x2 for the SSD.

Camilo
Camilo
4 months ago

One quiestion, it doesn’t specify it here but the usb-c 3.2 that has PowerDelivery, can it be used to charge the laptop? Or is it just to charge other devices?