The
Acer Aspire V3 is a good midrange 15.6 inch multimedia laptop with decent specs
for the price.
Specs
of the review model:
1080p FHD 15.6'' non-touch matte display
Broadwell i7-5500U processor
Intel Integrated HD Graphics
8GB RAM
1TB 5400RPM Hard-drive
The Hardware
The chassis of the Acer Aspire V3 is good-looking compared
to some competitors in this space. While it does have a lot of plastic
elements, they aren’t overly glossed or obvious and the lid of the laptop had a
metallic textured black surface. There is even a pattern in the metal that
gives the laptop a little character amongst a field of business-like laptops
with decent specs, including HP Pavilion and Toshiba Satellite L-series
laptops. Like these laptops, it has a full size number pad with the keyboard
and touchpad shifted to the left. The keyboard is decent, though it isn’t
clicky, and the touchpad is surprisingly good with no issues. The Acer is
around 5lbs and doesn’t feel too heavy for a laptop of its size.
One thing holding back the laptop from being a top performer
is the 1TB 5400RPM HDD. While the drive is fairly snappy, the difference
between even the fastest hard drive and a low-spec solid-state drive is
immense. If you need a lot of local storage for games, photos and videos you’ll
appreciate the spacious hard drive. However, boot times were good and the hard
drive didn’t slow things down to an unacceptable level.
The laptop has a good selection of ports along with a DVD
drive. It has two USB 3.0 ports on the left side of the laptop, with one of
them being an Acer Sleep & Charge port, charging your phones and tablets
very quickly even when the laptop is asleep. It also has an HDMI and VGA port
beside the two USB 3.0 ports, as well as one USB 2.0 port on the right hand
side for mice and other accessories compatible with USB 2.0. The charging port
is also on the right hand side, as opposed to the left hand side as it is on
most other laptops, which could either be helpful or annoying based on your
home and office setup.
The i7-5500U processor and 8GB of RAM allow the Acer Aspire
V3 to perform mid-range tasks admirably. Having multiple tabs open while
streaming a video and editing Word documents are not a problem for this device.
It can even handle some light video editing and mid-range gaming, with Rocket
League, Civilization V and other games performing well with reduced settings at
720p resolution. Don’t expect to play Rise of the Tomb Raider or edit 4K video
on here though.
The audio from this laptop is good, but not great. The Dolby
Home Theater branded speakers are facing the bottom, which is unfortunate, and
they don’t get quite as loud as you’d expect. The audio quality is good, with
good bass. Other 15.6 inch midrange laptops, such as the Toshiba Satellite
L-series with Skullcandy speakers, have better audio.
THE SOFTWARE
If you buy the Acer Aspire V3 from the Microsoft Store, you
get a package of downloads from Intel, including photo and video editing
software from Cyberlink and some games. It’s a nice edition and if this laptop
was a gift for a high-school or college student, they would appreciate these
additions. Since Microsoft sells “Signature Edition” machines, there won’t be
any bloatware preinstalled other than Acers applications for updating device
drivers. You will want to do this immediately.
We did experience an issue with the screen where it would
turn green and flicker heavily for no apparent reason. It would sometimes fix
itself with a restart, but the issue persisted until we uninstalled and
reinstalled the Intel graphics driver. Since then, the laptop has had no driver
issues.
The Acer Aspire V3 is a decent mid-range laptop that will
perform well for students and others who don’t need to do graphics intensive
work or play heavy-duty games. It’s good at multitasking, has a decent screen
and keyboard, acceptable audio, and is light enough to carry around if
necessary. At this price point you can get similar laptops from other
manufacturers, and the one that’s right for you depends on your needs.
Verdict:
RECOMMENDED
You can find the Acer Aspire V3 we looked at here in this
configuration, or with 6GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD with a touchscreen:
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