Acer Aspire E 15, 15.6 Full HD, Intel Core i5

After a lot of researching, I chose this Acer Aspire laptop and am very happy with the purchase. Received it yesterday, and I’ve put this laptop to a whole lot of scrutiny and have barely managed to find flaws. This is most likely going to be a lengthy review, although it should hopefully cover all the important things.

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ACER ASPIRE E 15, 15.6 FULL HD, INTEL CORE I5

So after some searching, I narrowed down my options to the following 3 new releases –

1. 1. HP 15-ay013nr – HP 15-ay013nr 15.6″ Full-HD Laptop (6th Generation Core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) with Windows 10
   2. ASUS F556UA-AS54 ASUS F556UA-AS54 15.6-inch Full-HD Laptop (Core i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) with Windows 10, Icicle Gold
   3. This guy

While the HP option is cheaper, 128GB could fill up pretty soon, especially considering I plan to dual-boot Ubuntu and have lot of software I need for work. So I ruled that one out.

Plus I was interested in learning some parallel computing with CUDA considering all the buzz around deep learning. And thus, Acer won!
Hopefully this was useful information if you were wondering how much extra this dedicated graphics card brings to the table.

Now, a quick rundown on different features below –

Build – This is not aluminium like the Mac, nor is this Dell XPS or Lenovo Thinkpad sturdy. It is black plastic but at the same time, it does not feel like a cheap build either. For the price, it is really good, I like the grip. Not too heavy and it’s thinner than it appears in the photos. A customer review for the ASUS laptop mentioned that the plastic felt fragile, this reinforced my decision to go with the Acer model.

RAM – 1x8GB DDR4 is fit in this model while the other slot is empty, so you can fit in another 8GB card, make it 16 if you want. Although, for everyday computing 8GB is plentiful. Plus it has 2GB of GDDR5 memory for graphics

Storage – 256GB SSD is so worth it. SSD makes a whole lot of difference to speed, app load times and boot times. Your PC feels so fast, you’d never want to go back to the regular hard drive again. Also, I found out recently that the SSD in this is an M.2 SSD (Samsung MZNLN256HCHP) and the other hard disk slot is empty. So basically you could buy a 1TB hard drive for like less than $75 and bump up the storage while still having Windows and all your software run from the SSD << This feature makes me like the laptop all the more.

Processor – 6200U is a dual core, 4 thread CPU. This is less powerful than the 6300HQ i5s found in the more expensive gaming laptops but totally good enough for everyday computing and it consumes much lesser power (<15W) which makes it good for the battery. A single core Geekbench mark of about 2.7k and multi-core benchmark of 5.8k (attached image) is of-course not awesome or anything but more than enough for regular use. I’m also sharing the octane benchmark score – 28k.

GPU – As mentioned above, GTX 940MX offers between 1.5 and 2x improvement in graphics horsepower and is a low power card, so it wouldn’t drain your battery. Definitely a nice to have (benchmarks comparing it with integrated graphics attached). Also, if you own an Nvidia Sheild device, please note that 940MX does NOT support Gamestream.

Screen – Pretty good I’d say, 15.6 inch is perfect for working on the couch. It’s not IPS, so viewing angles might not be too high but pretty good nevertheless plus it’s got the anti-glare finish. I like it, works for me.

Keyboard and touchpad – I was a little unsure how comfortable this will be, I never liked the extra number pad in laptops which shifts the center towards the left making it all weird to type. But surprisingly, it doesn’t seem much of a problem in this laptop. Typing is quite comfortable, contrary to what I expected. Backlit keyboard is a bonus. The touchpad works fine, however sweaty hands make it a little un-smooth.

Battery – Excellent battery life. Acer claims 12 hours, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on it. Expect about 8-10 hours of battery life, perhaps 6-8 if you constantly stream 1080p videos. But 6-8 hours of youtube is not bad at all, it’s awesome in-fact. However, note that the battery cannot be plucked out and replaced (this is a con, though I wouldn’t remove a star for just this)

Sound – Now, with everything so good about the laptop, you’d think there has to be a flaw in at-least the sound right. But Nope!, Acer’s got this one as well. Don’t expect Bose or Beats, but for a laptop, it is quite loud and clear.

I started looking at Macbooks for setting up a work desk at home, but after seeing the plethora of Windows options with much better configs for lesser prices, decided to go with Windows for work and a maybe a chromebook for carrying around (Acer Chromebook 14 – eyes on you).
Very well done by Acer, kudos.

Update –
Ports – has got them all – USB 3.0, USB 2.0, USB Type C, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, SD card reader and DVD drive (always a bonus)

Heating – haven’t had any heating issues so far, can barely hear the fan.

Adding a couple of photos to the review, one of them shows the thickness of the laptop.