Acer Aspire 5 tested: Successful all-round notebook
4.11.2019
Translation: machine translated
Acer advertises the Aspire 5 as a notebook for the "home office" and I believe that it is also suitable for surfing the Internet or watching videos outside of work and is also suitable as a "mobile office" thanks to its compact dimensions and good battery life. These are by no means all the possible applications, as the test shows - but it is not the right laptop for games or photo and video editing that require a lot of graphics power.
Many laptops with Intel chipsets of the current Comet Lake architecture have already been announced, but only a few models with the "10" in the processor designation are actually available. The Acer Aspire A514-52 is one of the first laptops in which Comet Lake proves itself in practice.
The technical data at a glance
- Chipset: Intel Core i5-10210U
- Graphics chip: Intel UHD Graphics 620
- Memory: 8 GB RAM (2x 4 GB SO-DIMM DDR4)
- Storage: 1000 GB SDD (Intel SSDPEKNW010T8, PCIe)
- Display: 14-inch Full HD display (IPS, anti-glare)
- Battery: lithium-ion, 48 Wh
- Keyboard with backlight
- Windows 10 Home
Aluminium housing and many connections
Simple elegance describes the exterior of the Acer Aspire 5 quite well. The aluminium casing is matt and has no patterns or reflections. Only the Acer lettering is emblazoned on the lid of the notebook, which has a thickness of 1.8 centimetres when closed and is therefore neither particularly thick nor particularly thin.
The aluminium casing not only makes the Aspire 5 look elegant, but also robust. Of course, the laptop should not fall down, but with a weight of 1.6 kilograms, it is ideal for packing and using on the go. It wouldn't hurt if it was a little more robust than a laptop that just sits on a desk.
The Acer Aspire 5 is well equipped with USB ports. In addition to a USB 2.0 port, two USB 3.0 sockets are available. You can recognise the faster USB 3.0 ports by the blue colour inside the socket. There is also a USB-C port. An HDMI port is available for an external monitor and headphones or a headset can be connected via a 3.5 mm plug. You can connect wirelessly with Bluetooth 5.0 and to the internet via Wi-Fi under the ac standard or via LAN cable, for which there is a dedicated RJ45 socket.
Movable display without reflections
The display of the Acer Aspire 5 measures 14 inches diagonally and has narrow edges at the sides. They are wider at the top and bottom. At this size, the Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels is sufficient for a razor-sharp image. The colours look natural and the brightness is high enough with one exception: the screen's luminosity is not sufficient for employees working in the sunshine. But as long as you don't plan to do that, the IPS panel gives you wide viewing angles and you don't have to worry about reflections as the screen is anti-glare.
Not always necessary, but sometimes quite practical: The Aspire 5's display can be opened 180 degrees. This allows you to align it with the rest of the laptop, turning it into a flat flounder. However, I can only think of a few usage scenarios in which this is necessary.
Keyboard and touchpad
The keyboard of the Acer Aspire 5 does not have a numeric keypad, but I still find it very comfortable to type on. The individual keys are sufficiently large and clearly separated from each other. The stroke is not too deep, but still high enough to be easily felt, just like the pressure point at the end.
The touchpad is large enough to move the mouse pointer across the entire screen without making it extremely sensitive - and still doesn't get in the way of the palm of the hand when typing. The pressure point can also be felt clearly and distinctly after a short distance, while the fingers move unhindered across the surface.
Stereo loudspeaker
Two speakers are located on the underside of the Aspire 5 in the front area, which provide stereo sound. Due to their position, the sound occasionally does not come directly from the direction of the screen, but with music this is less important and even with videos with spoken text I only noticed this with some and by no means all - but when it was, it was really annoying. Overall, the sound quality is average for a notebook and doesn't stand out either positively or negatively.
Battery
The lithium-ion battery of the Aspire 5 is not particularly large with a capacity of 48 Wh, but in practice you benefit from the hardware with low power consumption. Without any special power-saving settings and with the screen at full brightness, I was able to watch YouTube videos for just over six hours before the battery ran out. This is a decent figure, especially considering the battery power indicated, which you can increase with a few adjustments to the settings if necessary.
Enough power for everyday use
When it comes to performance, the Intel Core i5-10210U and the eight gigabytes of RAM clearly take centre stage. The integrated graphics chip, on the other hand, only plays a minor role.
Intel only presented the Core i5-10210U in August 2019. It has four computing cores and is designed as an economical chipset. In other words, the battery life of the notebook should be longer due to lower power consumption.
In figures, this means, for example, 1027 points in Geekbench 5 in single-core mode and 2570 points in multi-core mode in the CPU benchmark, which measures the processor. For example, it outperforms the AMD Ryzen 5 in the Acer Nitro 5, which is designed as a gaming notebook. In Cinebench R20, however, the Aspire 5 lags behind the Nitro 5 with 1014 points in the CPU benchmark.
Compared to the Nitro 5, the Aspire 5 lacks a dedicated graphics card. Its tasks are performed by the integrated graphics chip from Intel, which is part of the Core i5. Its benchmark values in Geekbench with 5750 points in OpenCL and 4830 points in Vulkan are clearly behind the Nitro 5.
However, the Acer Aspire 5 is not rendered unusable by the poor scores in the GPU benchmark. The performance is easily sufficient to start several programmes and write emails, listen to music, have several tabs open in the browser and view photos from the last family outing. The hardware reaches its limits when it comes to displaying graphically demanding current games, editing images on a larger scale or rendering videos. This is not possible without a dedicated graphics card.
Conclusion: A successful all-rounder
The Acer Aspire 5 offers a long battery life and impresses with good workmanship. All important connections are available and the anti-glare display looks good. The keyboard and touchpad are comfortable to use and the hardware is ready for many tasks - only if you need a lot of graphics power for games or photo, video and design programmes should you consider a different laptop. <p
When I was but a young student, I'd sit in my friend's living room with all my classmates and play on his SuperNES. Since then I've had the opportunity to test out all the newest technology for you. I've done reviews at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, and have now arrived at Galaxus.de.
