Acer Aspire E 15 Review: The Best Budget Laptop?

Acer Aspire E 15: At First Glance

Acer has been manufacturing mid-range, budget-friendly laptops called “Aspire” since 1999. They seem to have made quite an impression on gadget lovers and the Acer Aspire E 15 is one of those innovations.

As expected, Acer Aspire E 15 E5-576G-58RV which was released in 2015 is an upgrade of its previous model – the Aspire E 15 E5-575. Most importantly, Acer made it clear that the Aspire series will majorly function for essential, household, and small business use.

This is a desktop alternative kind of laptop that also considers your budget – at a starting price of $315 is a great bargain. Unfortunately, Acer had to sacrifice certain specifications of the laptop such as display, weight, and graphics to suit the price.

Can some of these price-driven sacrifices be a deal-breaker for some users? Let’s find out…

Acer Aspire E 15: Design, Dimensions, and Weight

The Acer Aspire E 15 comes with an aluminum-magnesium chassis in a plastic body. Despite having a plastic body, there is a sophisticated look and feel to the laptop’s design – it doesn’t scream “cheap and dull”.

Acer gave it a stylish metal finishing look that completely makes you doubt that the laptop’s made with plastic. This finishing touch is also not susceptible to scratch; so it does not leave unnecessary marks while carrying it around.

The laptop has zero air gap; this means there is no difference between the lid and the body when closed. Furthermore, with strong hinges, the durability of the device is promising.

On the left side at the top of the laptop is the “Acer” logo is finely embellished in metal. The same embellished “Acer” logo is located at the lower part of the bezel when the laptop’s lid is opened.

The Acer Aspire E 15 comes in five color variants. You can get the laptop in midnight black, sapphire blue, tiger eye brown, titanium silver – and garnet red.

Each color variant looks so good, you’ll be proud to flaunt it.

Acer Aspire E 15 is a 15-inch laptop with dimensions 381.6 x 259 x 23.9mm and weighs 2230g. When compared with another low-budget laptop like the ASUS Vivobook F510 that weighs 1619g – Acer Aspire E 15 is a heavy laptop.

Furthermore, Acer Aspire E 15 is also heavier than the Dell XPS 13 7390 – another low-budget laptop – that weighs 1230g. Apparently, the major drawback of the Acer Aspire E 15 is its weight.

Users that travel with a laptop may find its weight a little inconvenient.

On the left corner, just above the keyboard is the power button. Unfortunately, there is no touchscreen and fingerprint sensor feature on the Acer Aspire E15.

Also, the Laptop’s bezels are fair for the price but could be unsatisfying for today’s trends. Acer Aspire E 15 features a 1920 x 1080 full-HD resolution display.

This laptop’s display resolution features an LCD Screen type and LED backlight with a matte finish display screen.

Interestingly, this laptop also comes with Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) of up to 60 cd/m2. This means that the light emitting from the laptop will not damage your eyes.

Additionally, Acer has its very own eye care technology called ComfyView which has been included in the Acer Aspire E 15. I find this very thoughtful of Acer since the blue light emitted from laptops can lead to digital eyestrain.

The laptop’s display comes with an sRGB coverage of 50% for the TN display panel version. Such a low sRGB coverage means you should not expect a spectacular color range or saturation from its display.

I would have preferred that Acer used an IPS display panel instead of the TN display. This would have provided a more promising display to this laptop.

Additionally, the viewing angles on this laptop are not so impressive. Fortunately, the viewing angles and sRGB coverage can be improved with an IPS panel configuration which will cost you extra.

This 15-inch laptop has a comfortable, full-size keyboard with a number pad and steady keys. The keypad has a 1.5mm depth press; which is how deep the keypad goes when you press a key.

However, if you are used to ultrabooks with 0.5mm depth press, you may not find Acer Aspire E 15’s 1.5mm depth press very impressive.

On a positive note, below the keyboard layout is a super responsive touchpad.

Sadly, this touchpad does not have an impressive look. There is some kind of depth between the touchpad and the laptop’s chassis, meaning they don’t share the same dimension.

On the left front side are two light indicators. One of these lights indicates when the laptop is turned on, the other indicates when the hard drive is working.

Acer Aspire E 15’s smooth, noiseless cooling fan and dual speakers are also located at the laptop’s base. The speakers have an average audio output which I expected for such an affordable laptop.

In addition to Acer Aspire E15’s impressive design, the number of ports is also commendable. Ports on the laptop’s left side include 1 USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C, 2 USB 3.0, an HDMI, a VGA, and an RJ-45 Ethernet port.

Also, on the right are the charging port, a DVD RW drive, a USB 2.0 port, and an audio jack. Acer included a USB Type C port instead of a fast Thunderbolt USB Type on this laptop.

Acer Aspire E 15 is certified for Skype for Business which means a great webcam for a better video conference experience. The webcam is 720p HD and supports an HDR mode which improves camera view for more life-like images.

In conclusion, I find it very pleasing that Acer did not deliver inferior design even for a low-budget laptop. Therefore, I will be giving this laptop a score of 8 out of ten for its excellent design.

Acer Aspire E 15: Processor (CPU) Performance

The Acer Aspire E 15 E5-576G-58RV model comes with an Intel Core i5-8250U with 4 cores and 6MB cache. The processor has a standard clock speed of 1.60Ghz which is also its maximum clock speed (also known as its frequency).

In terms of performance, the Acer Aspire E 15 performs well for data entry, browsing, and video streaming, and for running basic tasks. Additionally, there is an in-built feature that lets you know when software is running on the GPU or the CPU.

This is great because you get to manage which software works for which processor – for example, you don’t want a Firefox browser running on the GPU. This feature also means faster performance and good battery maintenance.

To evaluate the temperature performance of this laptop, I conducted a CPU stress test using Prime95. This test lets you know how stable a laptop’s CPU can be even when stressed to its limits.

This test lasted for an hour and included the GPU, CPU, and memory at the same time. During the test, the CPU maintained a temperature of 149 Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius) at a 2.7GHz working frequency.

The test result was satisfactory for a laptop in this price range. Also, the cooling system did a good job during this test; the Acer Aspire E 15 had no extreme heat.

To further test the performance of the laptop’s CPU, I conducted a CineBench R15 benchmark test of multimedia use on this laptop. CineBench R15 benchmark test runs a hardware stress test on a laptop’s hardware to determine it performance.

On this benchmark test, Acer Aspire E 15 scored 577. This is more than twice the score of Dell Inspiron 15 3558 that had 218 in the same CineBench R15 benchmark test.

On the other hand, Acer Aspire E 15 scored less than ASUS Vivobook F510UA which had a score of 703 on the same test.

Acer Aspire E 15’s average CPU performance does not in any way make it the least of laptops. For that reason, I will be giving it a score of 8.

Acer Aspire E 15: Memory (RAM) Performance

The Acer Aspire E 15 features a 4 GB standard memory size with two DDR3L SDRAM memory slots. Also, this 4 GB RAM can be expanded to 16 GB; with 8 GB on each slot.

Despite its small RAM size, the memory performed well with some multitasking.

To test the multitasking capabilities of the laptop, I had seven browser tabs opened, video streaming, and some spreadsheet data entries. The laptop had a steady performance even with these apps running concurrently.

Additionally, I conducted a PCMark10 benchmark test on the Acer Aspire E 15 to measure its overall memory performance.

The PC Mark 10 benchmark aims to test a laptop’s essential, productivity, and digital content creation capabilities. PC Mark 10 test procedures such as application startup, video conferencing, and web browsing.

Additionally, basic administrative tasks like spreadsheets data entry and writing are also carried out on this test. That is not all, the benchmark test also performs Digital Content Creation tests on photo editing, rendering, visualization, and video editing.

Based on this PCMark10 test, Acer Aspire E 15 had a score of 3034. The ASUS Vivobook F510UA followed it closely with a score of 3126.

Comparatively, Acer Aspire E 15 outperformed Dell Inspiron 15 3558 which had a score of 2472 on the same test.

Finally, Acer Aspire E 15 is impressive, particularly because 3000 is the average memory performance benchmark for mid-range laptops. Acer Aspire E 15’s impressive performance compared to its competitors is why I will be scoring it a 9.

Acer Aspire E 15: Storage Options & Performance

This 15-inch beauty comes with 1TB SATA HDD storage. Acer Aspire E 15 has two storage slots which means it supports both SSD and HDD storage types.

There is also an SD card slot to expand your storage. Even though the laptop offers an HDD with up to 1 TB storage, the SD card option is great if you still need additional storage.

To determine the transfer speed of Acer Aspire E 15, a CrystalDiskMark test was carried out. The CrystalDiskMark test aims to measure the performance of a laptop’s storage.

Ideally, the test helps determine how fast or slow storage is. At end of the test, Acer Aspire E 15 had a minimum transfer rate of 43.4MB/s and a maximum of 110MB/s.

In comparison, HP EliteBook 8440p performed lower than the Aspire E15 with a transfer rate of 29.6MB/s. Additionally, Dell Latitude 6430 had a transfer rate of 169MB/s while Lenovo IdeaPad 320 performed a transfer at 105MB/s.

Both HP EliteBook 8440p and Aspire E15 run on HDD storage types while the other two run on SSD. The various test results further prove that SSD tends to be faster than HDD.

Moreover, a typical HDD’s transfer speed is around 200MB/s, while a typical SSD’s transfer speed is around 550MB/s. If you need faster performance, you should utilize the second storage slot by getting an SSD.

Despite the laptop’s low performance, I would be giving it an 8, mainly because this laptop offers the SSD option which should deliver better storage performance.

Acer Aspire E 15: Graphic Card Performance

Another good feature of the Acer Aspire E15 E5 is the dedicated GPU interface of 2GB GDDR5 VRAM. The base GPU frequency is 1469MHz, while the boost GPU frequency is 1532MHz.

The laptop features the NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphic card type. Unfortunately, this graphic card type is a fairly common low-level graphics card; so do not expect an over-the-top gaming performance.

Additionally, you cannot play high-end games of about 4K or full HD resolution on this laptop. To test the gaming performance of this laptop, I performed some gaming tests.

Generally, Acer Aspire E 15 provides good gaming at 30 frames per second (fps) at medium quality and 720p resolution. This means that to even play most games at 30 fps, you need to use the lowest settings.

Although, playing Civilization VI on this device survived at 35fps with good viewing. Also, games like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Overwatch played at 40fps.

In getting the above results, some settings had to be adjusted. One of the adjustments I made was to change the display resolution to 1080p. Secondly, I activated high-quality shaders and bloom for a 3D experience.

Furthermore, I also deactivated ambient occlusion, lens flares, and motion blur. It appears that games above 40fps will involve a lot of tweaks to the game settings.

In conclusion, these are impressive results for an average non-gaming laptop. Based on these results, I would be giving it an 8 out of ten for graphics performance.

Acer Aspire E 15: Battery Life & Performance

This budget-friendly laptop is equipped with a 4-cell 2800 mAh Li-Ion battery size. Acer advertises that the Acer Aspire E15 will deliver 12-hour battery life.

To test Acer’s claim, a video playback test was carried out on the laptop. The battery lasted for 9 hours 40 minutes on this video playback test.

Comparatively, the Dell XPS 7390 and Dell Inspiron 15 3558 lasted 8 hours for the same video playback test. Acer Aspire E 15 also outperformed the ASUS Vivobook F510UA which had an average of 7-hour battery life.

However, the Acer Aspire E 15 does not last that long for gaming. The laptop lasted a duration of 5 hours when playing games.

This is not surprising because generally, gaming on a laptop consumes more battery.

To further test the battery, I carried out a PCMark10 battery test. Based on this benchmark test, the laptop lasted 4 hours 40 minutes under strenuous testing.

Acer Aspire E15 has an excellent battery life for its price tag. So, I would be giving it a score of 9 in this category.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The Acer Aspire E 15 provides some great features for a low-budget laptop. Sophisticated design, great battery life, good performance, and a good number of ports are some great features the laptop has.

Unfortunately, as I have highlighted in this review, the laptop has some drawbacks. For example, it is slightly on the heavy side.

In addition to its slightly undesirable weight, it also has a comparatively poor display.

If you need a laptop for basic computing tasks, Acer Aspire E 15 will be great. However, it may not be suitable for graphics-demanding tasks.

For instance, high-resolution games and heavy video edits would not work great on this device. In general, it’s ideal for home-office work, small business functions, and students who can handle its weight.

Having said that, the laptop offers some surprising features. For example, I am surprised to see that the laptop has a DVD optical drive.

Although most recent laptops no longer feature a DVD drive, most users may still find it useful.

Finally, at a starting price of $315 – as of the time we published this review in August 2021, Acer Aspire E 15 is a great bargain.

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