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日本Acer Aspire 5 (A515-48M) review – good performer with Zen 3 CPUs and long battery life
Verdict
The Acer Aspire 5 (A515-48M) is a pleasant surprise in the budget category. The laptop comes with a modern non-intrusive design with rounded edges. The build quality is above average – during harsh typing the base remains stable. We observed some bends on the lid here and there but nothing too serious. Speaking of the lid, it houses an IPS 1080p display (at least in our case) and a 1080p Web camera. The panel has comfortable viewing angles and it’s also PWM-free which makes the laptop suitable for a daily driver.
The keyboard is comfortable for typing with its decent key travel and clicky feedback. The board has a NumPad and a backlight which is very useful for working in a dimmed environment. The touchpad has a smooth surface and it’s fast and accurate, plus it makes room for an optional fingerprint reader.
The performance of the laptop is good. The refreshed Zen 3 Barcelo-U processors are still quite fast for daily routine tasks such as Web browsing and watching videos, and the iGPU variants are potent enough for light games like CS:GO. The snappy performance is possible because of the capable cooling solution. First of all, the lid has a level mechanism that lifts up the backside of the device when you tilt the lid. This contributes to more fresh air that reaches the internals and this also affects positively the ergonomics while typing. At first sight, the cooling system looks quite modest with its two heat pipes and one fan, but it’s doing a good job because the efficient AMD CPUs don’t dissipate too much heat. The result is high CPU power limits during usage, as well as around 3.00GHz clock even when the AMD chip is stressed at 100%.
The comfort during load is adequate, you can hear the fan if you are benchmarking the CPU with Cinebench, but other than that, the noise levels are even lower. With the aid of Acer’s Quick Access app, you can choose between three modes – Performance, Normal, and Silent. The latter is the way to go if you don’t want to be distracted by the fan noise.
The port selection is okay for a device in this price point – one USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen.1) port that supports both charging and Display Port functionalities, an HDMI 2.1, and two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports – not bad! We liked the fact that the laptop is thin and light which can be appreciated by people who are often on the go. The same users should like the battery life – 11 hours and 7 minutes of Web browsing and 12 hours and 30 minutes of video playback is a respectable result for a 54.6Wh capacity.
The Acer Aspire 5 (A515-48M) doesn’t have a lot of cons but we can mention the upgrade options that are a bit disappointing. The memory is soldered to the motherboard (but it works in a dual-channel mode which affects the CPU and iGPU performance in a good way) and there is just one M.2 Gen 4 slot that is even downgraded to Gen 3 speed because of the AMD platform limitations. The sRGB coverage of the display is low but it’s not a serious issue for a machine like this one.
Aside from that, this Acer machine provides good performance for home and office tasks, a PWM-free IPS panel, a comfortable keyboard and touchpad combo, and long battery life. All this makes the notebook a serious contender in the very busy budget category.
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-5-a515-48m/
Pros
- Good battery life
- Good cooling and performance
- Comfortable viewing angles (Innolux N156HCA-EAB (CMN15E7))
- No PWM (Innolux N156HCA-EAB (CMN15E7))
- Light chassis
- Decent port selection + optional fingerprint reader
Cons
- Soldered memory and just one M.2 slot
- Low sRGB coverage (Innolux N156HCA-EAB (CMN15E7))
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.
Hey,
Do you still use the version 7730U? Is it still loud when using?
I am looking to buy, interested in your overall opinion so far with the usage of laptop.