In the realm of budget-friendly laptops, many options sacrifice quality for affordability. However, the Acer Aspire 3 stands out in this crowded market segment. With its understated layout, spacious keyboard together with a numeric keypad, and beneficent display screen size, it affords a compelling preference, particularly for video calls. Despite the inevitable compromises at its low price point of around 0, Acer has made thoughtful decisions to deliver a device that offers impressive value for money.
The Acer Aspire 3 boasts a big display, a rapid Core i5 processor, and enough storage ability, making it a pinnacle contender among price range laptops.
Acer Aspire 3: Design
While the Aspire 3 may not be the lightest acer laptop available, its slightly heavier build allows for a spacious 15.8-inch display, ideal for users who prioritize screen real estate. The inclusion of a full-width keyboard with a dedicated number pad is particularly appealing for those who frequently work with spreadsheets, offering a sturdy and responsive typing experience without any noticeable flex or bounce, common issues in budget laptops.
The computer features a generously sized touchpad positioned in front of the keyboard, which feels stable and easy to the touch, offering particular and quiet clicks in reaction to both single and multi-touch gestures. Despite its really bulky layout, measuring approximately three/four of an inch in thickness, the Aspire three manages to offer a variety of ports, ensuring versatility in connectivity alternatives.
However, one minor drawback is that the screen tends to wobble slightly when adjusted, which may lead to instability during webcam use.
Display
The Acer Aspire 3 comes with a popular 1080p display, a function that has grown to be an increasing number of commonplaces amongst finances laptops within the marketplace. While this resolution used to set Acer’s budget laptops apart, it is now more of an industry standard, as other competitors have also adopted it for their budget offerings.
In today’s tech landscape, purchasing a laptop with a 1080p display is considered essential, as lower resolutions like 768p may not adequately accommodate modern web pages. With responsive web design becoming prevalent, browsing on a screen with insufficient resolution could result in a compromised user experience.
While the Aspire 3 meets the minimum resolution requirement for contemporary devices, it does not particularly stand out in this aspect. The show offers extremely good color extraordinary and brightness, making it suitable for watching movies and movies, even in well-lit environments. However, it does not supply awesome performance in phrases of visible readability or vibrancy.
Webcam, Audio and Microphone
During our video conferencing evaluations, the Acer Aspire 3 surpassed our expectations for an affordable laptop. Its HD webcam delivered sharp and clear video quality, while the microphone effectively isolated and filtered out background noise.
When compared directly to a MacBook Pro, we were particularly impressed by the Aspire 3’s performance in low-light conditions. Featuring Temporal Noise Reduction generation, the excessive-definition webcam notably improved video clarity in dim environments, producing bright and crisp pix that passed the first-class of many integrated webcams found in higher-priced laptops.
Likewise, the microphone established exquisite overall performance in taking pictures and improving in-room audio the usage of Acer’s Purified Voice software. This resulted in clean and crisp sound transmission to the recipient, that is pretty great for a computer in this charge range. Overall, the Aspire 3 excels in each picture and voice capture brilliant, making it a desired preference for digital conferences over a few appreciably more steeply priced options.
The laptop is prepared with small downward-pointing speakers that deliver exceptionally loud audio output, appropriate for responsibilities like video conferencing and looking YouTube videos. However, the sound excellent can also lack depth for music genres that depend closely on bass.
Connectivity
The Acer Aspire 3 offers a beneficiate array of connectivity options, benefitting from its larger form factor. Positioned along the left side are the DC input, a single USB-C port, a full-size HDMI port, and a USB-A port. Meanwhile, on the right side, users have access to a Kensington lock port, another USB-A port, and a headphone jack. Notably absent from this lineup are a second USB-C port, which is becoming increasingly common in higher-end laptops, and a built-in card reader slot.
While the absence of these features may be noted, especially given current trends, the included ports cover most users’ needs. The presence of both a USB-C and a full HDMI port on a budget laptop priced at 0 is commendable. For users requiring an SD card reader, the option to utilize an adapter with one of the available USB ports provides a feasible solution.
Battery Life
The Aspire 3 advertises an estimated battery life of 8 hours. However, in our testing, which involves continuously playing a 720p movie at a brightness level of 120cd/m2 (50% brightness), the laptop lasted around 6 hours.
It’s important to note that if you prefer using the screen at maximum brightness, the battery life will likely be even shorter than the observed 6 hours.
Performance
Efficient performance for its price Slow to wake from sleep mode Gaming capabilities fall short compared to recent Ryzen models Despite some drawbacks mentioned in this review, the core specifications of the Acer Aspire 3 offer solid performance.
Equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 5500U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, the Aspire 3 delivers notably better performance than other budget laptops featuring Intel Pentium processors. While intensive tasks like professional image and video editing are not ideal on this low-power system, they are feasible on the Aspire 3.
The AMD Ryzen 5500U processor also includes Vega 7 graphics, enabling the Aspire 3 to handle older games reasonably well. However, it falls brief in comparison to more recent Ryzen models and committed gaming laptops with extra effective portraits playing cards.
One notable downside is the slow wake-up time from sleep mode, attributed to the laptop’s configuration despite the responsive SSD storage.
In terms of connectivity, the Aspire 3 lacks a USB-C port, which feels outdated considering current trends. Instead, it gives two fairly fast USB-A ports, one USB 2.0 port, an Ethernet connector, a big HDMI port, and a headphone jack. While the style of ports is nice, the absence of USB-C is a tremendous omission.
Pros:
- Offers commendable performance for its weight and size.
- Capable of managing annoying responsibilities effectively.
- Provides a satisfactory amount of storage space with its SSD.
Cons:
- Display quality is lacking.
- Absence of a USB-C port, which is becoming increasingly common.