I’ve come across many Acer Aspire 5’s so far. Ranging from excellent to not-so-good and everything in between. So I was excited to test the latest 12th Gen Core i5 Aspire to see where it falls on that spectrum. From morning to night he spent his day using it for all kinds of tasks. And like many things, it eventually fell somewhere in between.
This year’s Aspire 5 comes with some welcome improvements over the previous product I tested, along with some bonus features you don’t usually see at this price point. There are also some notable compromises. Overall, the day was clearly…OK, but there were some issues.
One note before we start. My 15.6-inch test unit of his also comes with 16 GB of memory and 512 GB of storage, with an MSRP of $699. At the time of writing this article, they are sold out everywhere. I know they often drop down to $599 when in stock. again B&H now sells a similar model with a slightly upgraded Core i7 processor for $599. For the purposes of this review, I’ll consider the price of this model to be $699, as that’s the price Acer put me through. However, you can find some similar models for $599 right now.
I opened my fully charged laptop at 9am.The first thing I noticed was that the chassis It was nicer than I thought. Whereas previous Aspire 5 models had the boring look of a laptop-his-cart, this one features a sturdy magnesium-aluminum lid that’s a bit shiny. It’s a bit like what you’ll find in Acer’s more expensive Swift 5 series. The keyboard deck is also sleeker (though without the flashy accents found on the Swift). And there is also a numeric keypad. A slightly smaller numeric keypad, but still a numeric keypad.
We had a video call first thing in the morning and then listened to music. This was my second impression of this Aspire 5.Speakers that radiate downward bad. The sound quality itself was clear and undistorted, but the volume was so low that it was difficult for him to hear some of what people were saying even at 100% when he was on a call.
I usually dedicate myself to reviewing devices in their out-of-the-box settings, but here it was clear that the speakers were useless all day long. So I decided to download a software called FX Sound that allows me to adjust the EQ and apply other audio effects. This only took a few minutes and no sound came out of the speakers. wonderfulHowever, there was a notable improvement.
Most of the rest of the workday was spent doing different things that working people do in Chrome. I hopped between his 12 Chrome tabs to write, read, create spreadsheets, research. There was no slowdown on the Aspire 5 (with a Core i5-1235U, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage, it never slows down under web-based workloads). I really miss my old AMD-powered Aspire 5 because it was super fast, but this Intel configuration was certainly good enough. I could hear the noise of the fan turning on and off the whole time, but nothing to distract me.
The only caveat is that the fingerprint reader is a bit unreliable and often stumbled on the first attempt to authenticate me before getting past the second attempt. (The fact that it has a fingerprint reader is, of course, nice.)
The real issue I faced was battery life. I started my day at 9am, but my Aspire broke down around 12:45pm, 3 hours and 45 minutes after his. Needless to say, it’s not a favorite time for me. That’s an even shorter lifespan than I’ve seen on the last Aspire Vero I reviewed in 2022, and compared to the lifespan of some 11th Gen Intel budget laptops currently available for less than half this price. It doesn’t look small. Gateway 14, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. This means that if you use this laptop as your daily driver, you will have to keep this laptop plugged in for a significant amount of time each day. The charger is fairly small, so it’s not a problem to carry around, but if you’re using your computer on the go, you’ll need to keep it near a free outlet at all times, which is an added concern.
After work, I settled in to check out the latest season. Billions. (It’s not finished yet, so don’t spoil it.) A 16:9 display (my least favorite aspect ratio and the one that has really become obsolete in the last few years) is my favorite to work with. It’s a nice shape and feels cramped for multitasking than my preferred 16:10 or 3:2 panels, but its width makes it great, especially for watching TV.
Colors looked fine on my 1920 x 1080 screen (covering only 63 percent of the sRGB gamut and 47 percent of AdobeRGB), but they were pretty dim. I’ve used it at near maximum brightness while watching TV indoors in a dimly lit apartment, but never thought of using it outdoors. In our tests, the device reached up to 246 nits. This is one of the lowest levels of brightness I’ve seen in a laptop this year.
A dark screen disqualifies a $1,000 device. At his $700 price point for the Aspire, this is something to be very careful about. That goes for battery life as well, but I realize that’s not everyone’s priority.
Still, laptops aren’t inherently meant to sit on your desk indoors. And while these two factors—battery life and brightness—each alone might be enough to be overlooked at the sub-$1,000 price tag, they work together to make this computer portable and versatile. I’m afraid I’m slowing it down significantly. Especially when you can buy a laptop with a long life in this price range (or even cheaper).
That puts the Aspire 5 in an odd position: neither affordable enough to be a solid budget option nor good enough to compete with the best mid-range Windows machines. If you’re interested in this package, I recommend trying to see if you can find a model selling for around $500.
If you don’t want to play the game you’ve been waiting for, you can now find Aspire Vero models priced well under $500. These models offer a fairly similar package to this system, including the same processor. If you can handle a small screen, check out Gateway 14, a very blue, cow-spotted computer. I’ve recommended this computer to everyone I’ve listened to since I reviewed it. Even those who aren’t into Chrome OS can get a great 15-inch experience with the similarly priced Asus Chromebook CX5. It also has great battery life, great audio and a solid chassis. It also has a numeric keypad.
