Acer Aspire 5 (A514-55) review – good budget daily driver

Verdict

The Acer Aspire 5 (A514-55) is a good budget daily driver and you can use it as an office device too. The build quality is solid for the class – the lid is aluminum and the overall sturdiness is on point. The only downside here is that you can’t open the lid with a single hand. However, the unit has a lever hinge that lifts the back of the laptop and this positively affects the cooling capabilities of this machine.

Speaking of which, a single fan and one heat pipe seem enough for snappy performance. The CPU (which in our case is the Core i3-1215U) can maintain almost 3.20 GHz P core clock and ~2.50 GHz E core frequency in long loads – that is a respectable result for such a budget notebook. Keep in mind that this Core i3 chip isn’t a power-hungry beast, if you choose a P-series processor for your device, the result will be for sure different. The comfort during heavy CPU stress is normal – the fan is audible but it’s not as loud as a Jumbo Jet and the left side of the keyboard is warm but not hot to the touch.

The 16:9 IPS display (LP140WFH-SPD8 (LGD072C) suits the purpose of this Acer laptop. The panel has good viewing angles and contrast ratio. It’s also PWM-free so you can use it for long periods of work. The sRGB coverage is narrow but that’s something expected for a machine like this one. The keyboard has an optional backlight. The keycaps have long travel and clicky feedback. The touchpad is smooth but it could be loud during usage for some of you.

The upgradability isn’t bad at all for this kind of price tag. You get up to 8GB of soldered RAM but there is a SODIMM for dual-channel mode so the maximum possible amount of RAM is 24GB of DDR4-3200 MHz memory. Storage-wise, you can rely on a single M.2 Gen 4 slot and there is even a SATA slot. So you can install a big (and relatively cheap) HDD or regular SATA SSD. The I/O includes four USB ports and one of them is a Thunderbolt 4 connector – alright, we like it.

The battery life is okay but we were expecting more since the CPU is efficient and has just two performance cores. Still, 8 hours and 20 minutes of Web browsing or 6 hours and 40 minutes is a normal result for a 54.6WH capacity. Overall, the Acer Aspire 5 (A514-55) is a good budget offer – the CPU is well-cooled during heavy stress, the performance is always there when you need it, the IPS panel lacks PWM usage, and the upgradability options are just fine for the class.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-5-a514-55-2/

#CommissionsEarned

Acer Aspire 5

Processor

Intel Core i5-1235U

VideoCard

Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 (80EU)

RAM

20GB RAM

STORAGE

2000GB SSD

Detailed review

$839^.00

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Author: Nikolay Palaozov

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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