Acer Aspire 7 (A715-73G) review – the proto-ConceptD 5 is revealed

You need a sleek and powerful device, but you don’t want to pay a ton of money to get it? Yep, you are part of one of the biggest target groups of the new generation. As such, you might be interested in the device we have for you today. It comes from Acer and its name is Aspire 7 (A715-73G). Since we have reviewed a previous version of this model, we are going to compare both devices on numerous occasions throughout the review.

Interestingly, this device is suspiciously familiar to another one we already had. You guessed it right – it is the Acer ConceptD 5 (CN515-51). If you know something about Acer’s latest content creator-oriented series, it must be that all of them are based on existing models. For example, the ConceptD 9 is based on the Predator Triton 900, then the ConceptD 7 is built using the same chassis as the Predator Triton 500. Now – it is the Aspire 7 (A715-73G), that needed to share its design features. Additionally, the laptop is powered by the same Core i7-8705G that doesn’t have an ordinary integrated graphics card.

Instead, the engineers from Intel and AMD have made historical cooperation in merging the Radeon RX Vega M GL with this processor.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-7-a715-73g/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Acer Aspire 7 A715-73G - Specs

  • Panda LM156LF9L02 (NCP002F)
  • Color accuracy  3.3  1.7
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 512GB SSD + up to 1000GB HDD
  • RAM
  • up to 16GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Home, No OS, Linux
  • Battery
  • 48Wh, 3-cell
  • Dimensions
  • 358 x 248 x 16.9 mm (14.09" x 9.76" x 0.67")
  • Weight
  • 1.50 kg (3.3 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 2.0
  • HDMI
  • Card reader
  • SD, SDHC, SDXC
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ac
  • Audio jack
  • combo audio / microphone jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

What’s in the box?

When we opened the packaging of this laptop we saw nothing more than the laptop itself, a 90W power adapter and some paper manuals and guides.


Design and construction

Let’s start by saying that this laptop is extremely lightweight. It tops the scales at 1.50 kg and has a 16.9 mm profile. As the numbers never lie, we can conclude that the Aspire 7 (A715-73G) is both thinner and lighter than the ASUS ZenBook 15 UX534. It achieves that weight with a combination of aluminum and magnesium alloy.

On the downside, this notebook doesn’t feel like the strongest out there. The main areas that this notebook lacks strength in are the lid, which bends quite easily, as well as the base of the device. Despite the toughness when twisted, the laptop’s base bends quite much. Especially at the area around the touchpad and below the keyboard. Thankfully, though, you would be able to open the lid with a single hand, should you have a cup of coffee or a beer in the other one.

While the keyboard itself has a good enough layout, it lacks a NumberPad, which can be your best friend if you work with… numbers. Furthermore, the keyboard needs getting used to as we made a good amount of typos when we tried using it for work. With that said, it has good travel and clicky feedback, which leaves the spacing between the keys as the only issue.

Then, there is the touchpad, which has a decent useful area. It is not as wide as the one on the MSI PS63 Modern and features nothing revolutionary like the ZenBook 15 UX534, but it certainly does the job.

In terms of ventilation, the Aspire 7 (A715-73G) has its intake grills on the bottom and exhausts the air from the back of the laptop. This ensures that the heat is drawn away from the device, rather than being clumped in between the base and the display, as is the case with the PS63 Modern.

Ports

On the left, there is the tiny power plug, followed by an HDMI connector, two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports, a USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 1) port and an audio jack, while on the right you can see a USB Type-A port and an SD card reader.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

The Aspire 7 (A715-73G) requires the removal of the entire bottom panel to get inside of it. This, of course, happens without a lot of effort. You just need to take away 11 Torx-head screws and pop the bottom panel with a plastic tool.

Once you are inside, you are going to see a very familiar picture. This is for the fact, that Acer Aspire 7 (A715-73G) and the ConceptD 5 (CN515-51) are based on the same chassis. This laptop features the quite unusual Core i7-8705G processor, which houses the Radeon RX Vega M GL. Hence, there is a cooling that is beefier than what processor with integrated graphics usually gets. It consists of two heat pipes, a rather long heat sink, and two fans.

In terms of upgradability, the Aspire 7 (A715-73G) is a little disappointing. All of its memory is soldered to the motherboard and there aren’t any RAM DIMMs, whatsoever. On the bright side, there are two M.2 slots that support NVMe drives.

Lastly, we have a 48Wh battery pack, which is not really on par with some of its competition.


Display quality

Acer Aspire 7 (A715-73G) comes with a Full HD IPS panel, model number Panda LM156LF9L02 (NCP002F). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 142 ppi, 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.

The maximum measured brightness is 312 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 290 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 12%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 7320K (average) – colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 7210K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 40% Brightness (White level = 142 cd/m2, Black level = 0.12 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 excellent – 1180:1 (1170:1 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 7 (A715-73G)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display is limited just to 94% 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 7 (A715-73G) 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 = 28 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 7 (A715-73G)’s backlight uses PWM up until 82 nits. Although the frequency is rather harmful, you won’t really notice it in day-to-day usage, because it fades away quite early.

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

Acer Aspire 7 (A715-73G)’s IPS display has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, good contrast ratio and covers almost all of the colors in sRGB. Additionally, when our Gaming and Web design profile is applied, the Average dE drops below 2.0, which makes it usable for Web design work. Although we detected PWM with a low frequency (which is harmful), it is only applied up to 82 nits. However, if you use your device often during night times (thus with low brightness setting), you might find our Health-Guard profile useful, as it completely removes the PWM issue.

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 7 (A715-73G) configurations with 15.6″ Panda LM156LF9L02 (NCP002F) (FHD, 1920 × 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


Sound

Acer Aspire 7 (A715-73G) produces decent quality audio. Its low and highs have some deviations, while the mids 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/7958?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. This device is equipped with a 48Wh battery pack.

This was able to deliver more than 9 hours of Web browsing and around 8 hours of video playback, which should be fine for an entire workday only on battery power.

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

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.


CPU options

This device comes with either the Core i5-8305G or the Core i7-8705G.


GPU options

Thankfully, both of them are equipped with the AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL integrated graphics card. You may also find it by the name Vega 870, and it features 4GB of HBM2 memory.


Gaming tests

Far Cry 5Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Average42 fps38 fps36 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average82 fps57 fps27 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)
Average64 fps37 fps34 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average39 fps36 fps32 fps

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 Core i7-8705G (65W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer Aspire 7 (A715-73G)3.49 GHz @ 91°C3.41 GHz @ 95°C3.05 GHz @ 95°C
Acer ConceptD 5 (CN515-51)2.76 GHz @ 95°C2.70 GHz @ 95°C2.57 GHz @ 95°C

Well, well, well. Another Acer mystery has been observed. We have two identical laptops, with absolutely the same processors and cooling solutions and yet, one of them managed to work at 500-600 MHz more, at the same temperature. Yes, the Aspire 7 (A715-73G) was a little louder, but most of the efficiency must come from different thermal compound or voltage.

Real-life gaming

AMD Radeon RX Vega M GLGPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
Acer Aspire 7 (A715-73G)908 MHz @ 64°C903 MHz @ 65°C
Acer ConceptD 5 (CN515-51)910 MHz @ 58°C907 MHz @ 58°C

On the other side, the temperatures in the GPU test were higher with the Aspire 7 (A715-73G). Interesting…

Verdict

This laptop is a great device for people that enjoy light gaming from time to time, or need powerful hardware for work, but need it to be in an ultrabook disguise. It can be directly compared to the ASUS ZenBook 14 UX534 and the MSI PS63 Modern, although, the Aspire 7 lacks the innovation of the former, but has more powerful hardware than the latter.

Starting with the downsides of this notebook, we must note that while it is one of the lightest and thinnest 15-incher for the performance it offers, the Aspire 7 (A715-73G) is perhaps too thin. Its body is not the strongest on the market and is susceptible to bends – both on the top and at the base. Additionally, you won’t be able to upgrade the memory on this device, as all of the RAM is soldered, and there is no Thunderbolt port anywhere to find.

Given the fact that it has no RAM upgrades possible, there should be something that shies it away, shouldn’t it? This feature is the dual M.2 drive support. Moreover, we were happy with the battery life, although the 48Wh battery capacity is not the greatest on the market. We were able to get around 9 hours of Web browsing and 8 hours of video playback, which is great stuff for work.

Acer Aspire 7 (A715-73G)’s IPS panel (Panda LM156LF9L02 (NCP002F)) has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, good contrast ratio and covers almost all of the colors in sRGB. Additionally, when our Gaming and Web design profile is applied, the Average dE drops below 2.0, which makes it usable for Web design work. Although we detected PWM with a low frequency (which is harmful), it is only applied up to 82 nits. However, if you use your device often during night times (thus with low brightness setting), you might find our Health-Guard profile useful, as it completely removes the PWM issue.

Now, performance-wise, the notebook has its pros and cons. CPU-wise the Core i7-8705G performs more like the Core i5-8300H and 9300H, rather than e full-blown Core i7-8750H/9750H. This is because of the quad-core set-up in comparison to the hexa-core one on the Core i7 H-series. In terms of the GPU power, the Radeon RX Vega M GL is somewhere in the ballpark of a GTX 1050, which itself is less productive than the GTX 1650 Max-Q on the ZenBook 15 UX534.

Nevertheless, these devices have a lot in common, especially in the entire quest of battling tight spaces and placing efficient enough cooling solutions without making the overall weight too big.

Pros

  • Super thin and light body
  • Good performance for the size
  • Dual M.2 PCIe SSD support
  • Decent battery life
  • IPS display offers wide viewing angles and good contrast ratio (LM156LF9L02)
  • It covers 94% of sRGB and our Gaming and Web design profile improves color accuracy to an Average dE of <2.0 (LM156LF9L02)


Cons

  • There is some noticeable flex in the body
  • No RAM upgrade is possible
  • Lacks Thunderbolt connection
  • Uses harmful PWM, although up to only 82 nits (our Health-Guard profile deals with that) (LM156LF9L02)

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-7-a715-73g/

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Bodo
Bodo
4 years ago

How would you compare it to Asus UX533?
I would like to find a anti-glare notebook, and I can not find an UX534 without glare display 🙁

What about the fan noise? Will the acer aspire 7 be quiet when just surfing on the web?