Acer Aspire 7 - Full review

Acer Aspire 7 - Full Review with Pros and Cons

Acer’s Aspire 7 series had been available in the European and American markets for a long time now and Acer India has finally decided to bring the laptop to India. It comes as a more powerful version of the ever-so-popular Aspire 5. It combines Nvidia’s GTX series graphics with a Intel’s H series CPU while looking nothing like the flashy gaming laptops of the Nitro and Predator lineup. The main selling point of the device is its price point as it is extremely well-priced for its specifications as well its sleeper build and look.

Build and Quality

On the first look, one can easily mistake the Aspire 7 to be a regular office laptop. It has no flashy red accents or RGB backlighting and comes in a rather plain looking chassis. The build is all plastic with the lid having a brushed finish. While not as sturdy as an all-metal laptop, it is still good enough considering the fact that it is meant to be a budget device. The hinge is sturdy and the laptop can be opened with one hand rather easily. The hinge opens up all the way to 180 degrees. The bezels are not as narrow as on other models but they are not too obtrusive. The webcam is in its correct position.

The laptop weighs in at 2.15kgs, typical of a 15 inch laptop with similar internals, while the narrow bezels help reduce its size footprint by a bit.

Ports, I/O and Connectivity

The Acer Aspire 7’s port selection is similar to the Nitro 5 and Nitro 7 models of 2019. To the left, there is the Kensington lock slot, RJ-45 ethernet, HDMI 2.0, USB Type-C and 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A ports. To the right, there is the DC power jack, status LEDs, USB 2.0 Type A and combi audio jack. The position of the power jack on the right can be a bit troublesome as it somewhat blocks the air exhaust on the same side but it does not seem to make much of a difference to the thermals.

The Acer Aspire 7 comes with a WiFi 802.11 ax (WiFi 6) module which is the latest standard. It also comes with the latest Bluetooth 5.0.

Maintenance

Getting into the laptop is relatively easy. By just removing 11 screws from the bottom panel and popping it off, one gets access to the 2x SODIMM slots, one of which is empty and available for upgrade, WiFi module and the single M.2 Storage slot. The lack of a second M.2 slot or a 2.5 inch drive bay is disappointing considering that even some thin-and-light ultrabooks have 2 M.2 slots.

Input Devices

Keyboard – The keyboard on the Acer Aspire 7 has decent travel and tactile feedback for a laptop keyboard and one can comfortably type up long documents on it. The keyboard has a integrated numpad while the UP/DOWN arrow keys are a bit squeezed inorder to make room for it. The power button is a part of the keyboard and one can mistakenly press that which will, by default, cause the laptop to go to sleep though this can be configured as per the user.

Touchpad – The touchpad comes with Windows Precision drivers and is of a click-pad style, meaning you can click down anywhere. It is of a decent size and even has a fingerprint sensor on the top-left. The fingerprint sensor is quite accurate and supports Windows Hello.

Display

The Acer Aspire 7 has a 15.6 inch 1080p IPS panel. The response rate is 60 Hz and viewing angles are around 178 degrees, typical of an IPS panel. The colour accuracy is lacking at around 45% of the NTSC colour gamut which is what most budget panels have.

Peak brightness is around 250 nits, though this can vary a bit depending upon the panel used on the particular model, making sunlight-legibility difficult.

Performance

The Acer Aspire 5 comes in a single configuration, powered by a 9th generation Intel Core i5 9300H CPU and a Nvidia Geforce GTX 1650 GPU. It comes with 8GB of DDR4 RAM in single channel configuration and has an extra slot for a maximum capacity of 32GB. The GTX 1650 GPU is the refreshed 2020 model with 4GB of faster GDDR6 memory instead of GDDR5. This causes a 5-10% performance boost in games.

The Nvidia Geforce GTX 1650 GPU is powerful enough to run most older titles at 60+ FPS at native resolution with high settings while newer titles need to be turned down to medium details in order to achieve a stable 60 FPS.

The heat dissipation is adequate for the laptop, though the fan noise tends to pulse while under load which makes it more annoying than a constant noise.

Storage

This particular configuration has a 512 GB NVMe Intel SSD. The laptop has an empty 2.5 inch drive bay which can be used to expand the storage. Other configurations include a 1TB/128GB hybrid configuration and a 1TB SSD configuration. Read/write speeds are upto NVMe standards and load times for games are very fast.

Speakers

The FX505DT comes with dual bottom firing speakers which provide for a decent experience. They are good enough for understanding dialogue in movies and games but overall, sound quite “tinny” and lack bass. There is also a high amount of “pink noise” at the maximum volume which can hamper user experience. It is recommended to use headphones while gaming as the fan noise can drown out the audio from the speakers at times.

Battery Life

The FX505DT has a 48Wh battery, which is on the smaller side, especially for a gaming laptop. There is no fast-charging support and battery life can last upto 4 hours on light tasks. Gaming while on battery causes the battery to drain fast and it limits the performance as well.