My new Acer Aspire 5 arrived yesterday. I immediately added an extra 8G DDR4 Ram chip to it, for a total of 12G.; you simply unscrew the 10 tiny screws on the backplate with a small Phillips head; slip the backplate off and pop your new DDR4 chip into the little socket provided. Total time? About 12 minutes.
Really, the unit is now amazingly fast... I haven't seen it hiccup or lag yet. I had opted for the Intel chip version of the Aspire, as it does have a slightly faster CPU speed. I immediately opted-out of the Windows 10 "S" mode... which literally took a few seconds to do. I connected my high-speed internet to the unit via the Ethernet socket, and proceeded to upgrade all the drivers and firmware for the unit. I gave the unit a good Defrag and a Registry cleanse, and I'm good-to-go.
I mainly bought this laptop as a way to entertain myself on long airplane flights. The unit is very light and handsome... I am mystified by those who point out that the chassis is not more hip 'n' chic looking, because it looks great to me. I've also read several pro reviews online which allege that the unit is deeply flawed by a bad-looking monitor display; I absolutely don't know what they're talking about-- the display looks amazing to me: super-sharp and clear 1080p, with natural-looking colors, perfect brightness and contrast. Fonts look sharp yet nicely antialiased. A 15.6" monitor is perfect real estate to view movies on while traveling, neither too big nor too small.
I will agree with the naysayers who say that the onboard speakers are not very loud, and the sound quality is not as good as one might wish. Yep, those things are true, but hey, who expects a laptop to sound like Studio 54? Usually one will be using headphones anyway, right? When watching videos on the VLC Player, one can tweak their included graphic equalizer in order to get the optimum sound response possible.
I will soon be purchasing a mouse for this unit, as, at age 56, I never have gotten the hang of using a touchpad. I am not a gamer at all, so am not worried about the power needed to play GTA, etc. Although I will take a stab at doing 2D and 3D artwork in Photoshop and Cinema 4D and see how it goes.
All-in-all, I am very pleased with this new laptop and hope to get lots of good use out of it. At this price-point, I don't see that you can do much better. Highly recommended.
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 |
| Processor | 3.9 GHz apple_ci3 |
| RAM | 4 GB DDR4 |
| Memory Speed | 3.9 GHz |
| Hard Drive | 128 GB SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel UHD Graphics 620 |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
