Acer Aspire 3 (A315-59) review – affordable but slightly impractical

Design and construction

As expected, the Aspire 3 (A315-59) has a plastic body. It has a pleasant texture, but the overall rigidity of the device is not great. Both the lid and the base flex when twisted, with the situation being a little scary the more force you use.

On the other hand, we are happy with the portability. It has a very familiar Acer design, with a profile of 19.9mm and a weight of 1.78 kg. This makes it ever so slightly heavier than its competitors – the ASUS Vivobook 15 (X1502) [1.70 kg], and Lenovo IdeaPad 3 (15″, 2022) [1.63 kg].

Interestingly, the lid can be opened with a single hand. The bezels around the matte display are not very thin, but the top one features an HD Web camera. Furthermore, the lid features a couple of rubber feet, which help it lift the backside from the base a couple of millimeters from the ground.

Moving to the base, we find a very flexy surface. Thankfully, the keyboard is pretty comfortable for typing, thanks to its decent key travel and clicky feedback. Furthermore, you get a number pad, which is great for people working with … numbers. Unfortunately, the model lacks a backlight.

Despite that, you get a quite large touchpad. Its tracking is okay, the gliding is relatively smooth, and the response rate is pretty fast. As you can tell, this is not the best unit out there, but it really fits the overall vibe of the laptop.

Lastly, let’s check out the bottom panel. It houses the two speaker cutouts and the ventilation grill. The hot air vent is located on the back of the base, which means it will fire towards the bottom part of the display.

Ports

On the left side, there is the charging plug, a LAN port, an HDMI connector, and two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports. Then, on the right, you get a Kensington lock slot, another USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and an Audio jack. Unfortunately, the device lacks a USB Type-C port, and an SD card reader.

Author: Alex Iliev

Author: eng. Kroum NikolovHead of Engineering at LaptopMedia.com, inventor and innovator with 40+ years of experience in electronics and high technology.

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Fabricio

3 years ago

Buenos dias, tardes o noche. Tengo una duda, se puede colocar HDD en el espacio libre? Con un adaptador o esta bloqueada la opcion devido al doble m.2, y tambien si version con la nvidea mx 550 (a315 – 59 514E )usa la misma placa madre.

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