Thin and light ultrabooks are some of the best contenders for the best laptop with i5 processor, the best laptop and the best SSD laptop throne, and the Acer Aspire 5 A515 shows that quite well. Coming in at a very enticing price of just $650, this laptop doesn’t slack on the performance at all in order to achieve its low price tag.
Why We Like It – Acer Aspire 5 A515
Even though the Acer Aspire 5 A515 is not a gaming laptop, it comes with a dedicated GPU with two gigs of GDDR5 VRAM. That is very rare to see in the thin and light ultrabook market. And at this price point, where most brands offer Core i3 CPUs inside their ultrabooks, Acer ups that a notch by providing a Core i5-1035G1 processor on this one.
- Built-in 512GB NVME SSD
- Excellent Intel Wi Fi module with Wi Fi 6 support
- Great 15.6 Inch Full HD (1920 x 1080p) IPS display
- The full-sized backlit keyboard is not up to par
Power & Performance
The performance of the Acer Aspire 5 A515 is going to be better than most ultrabooks at this price, mainly due to its quad core & eight threaded 10th Gen Core i5-1035G1 CPU. And the graphical performance is going to be better than most ultrabooks too, as it features a dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX350 GPU with two gigs of GDDR5 VRAM.
Battery
Because it comes with higher power-consuming hardware than a typical ultrabook, most buyers assume that the battery life is going to be terrible. However, that is not the case here. Acer advertises up to eight hours of battery life for this ultrabook, and very surprisingly, that is exactly what you get. It’s much better than something like the Dell G5 15 Gaming Laptop in this aspect.
Ports & Expandability
The I/O is decent enough. On the right side, you just get a full-sized USB Type A port and a combo jack. There is a USB C port on the left side. Besides the Type C port, you also get two USB 3.1 Gen 1 5 Gbps full-sized ports, HDMI, and a gigabit ethernet port. There is no MicroSD card slot on this 15.6 Inch laptop, unfortunately. For that, you need to get something like the ASUS VivoBook S14 S433 thin and light ultrabook instead.
Related: Check out our Acer Aspire 1 review
Related: See our Acer Aspire 7 review
Build Quality
The build quality is excellent here for a budget laptop. It is a slim laptop, but at the same time, it’s incredibly durable too. The 15.6-inch display has narrow bezels, and the whole notebook looks relatively modern and stylish. But, both the full-sized backlit keyboard and the trackpad aren’t good at all. Even the HP Pavilion Gaming 15 comes with a better keyboard and trackpad.
Value
Finding a good ultrabook like the Acer Aspire 5 A515, that comes with dedicated graphics and can chew through demanding tasks like video editing/rendering is pretty hard at this price, to say the least. An included hard drive would’ve been nice for extended storage purposes. But overall, at just $650, the Acer Aspire 5 A515 is a complete package.
Acer Aspire 5 A515 Wrap Up
The Acer Aspire 5 A515 is an excellent budget thin and light laptop that can handle light gaming. And it provides great battery life to boot.
