Acer Aspire 5 A515-58GM review: The office laptop with a wannabe gaming GPU

[Redaktion]

The Acer Aspire 5 (2023) is an office laptop sold for a much higher price due to its installed RTX 2050 gaming GPU. In this detailed review, you can read about whether this recipe resulted in a worthy allrounder. You can certainly look forward to two RAM banks, Thunderbolt 4 as well as quite a few improvements over its predecessor.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-5-A515-58GM-review-The-office-laptop-with-a-wannabe-gaming-GPU.753486.0.html

[NikoB]

This pitiful product from Acer, as I already wrote about the 2022 model, is simply not worth the money.

Again, a terrible (including tactile) keyboard, with a completely damaged numpad. Not 100% suitable for office work, development and research.

Disgracefully slow ddr4 memory. And it's not enough, for such a price there should be 32GB out of the box. This was still tolerable in 2022, but not in 2023. Disgracefully slow processor - the old i5 1235U in the 2022 model is faster than it in sustained mode, according to Laptop Media. Here you need a 7840U.

The SSD is small - for the money in this setup - there should be at least 2TB out of the box.

A shameful screen for this money should only be 2.5k 100% sRGB and no other options worse, but better 16:10 16" 4k@120Hz with a response of no more than 8ms on G2G/B2W.

The set of ports has become worse than in the Aspire 5 2022. Shame again.

I have a question for Acer marketers? What kind of idiot customers are you hoping to sell this worthless garbage to in 2023? Here, in local retail chains, your items are lying dead weight in the warehouse, even in the more successful version of 2022. Apparently the trade will have to write them all off under the bulldozer.

But it's easy to make a normal office laptop for $1,200. There would be a desire. But instead, Acer employees apparently have only one desire - to cut the company's budget into their own pockets, creating the appearance of productive activity, and this lasts year after year, to the loss of the company's beneficiaries. But these problems, not ours, we will pass by...

How many zombie companies are there on the planet that are actually unprofitable?

[Poster]

Just a question about your categorisation: I thought the aspire (and ideapad 5 as the editor compared it to) was a  consumer line? So their travelmate business line not their 'office' line? Or are you suggesting all laptops are either gaming or 'office' laptops?

If this is correctly a consumer line then the drawbacks could be slightly be tolerated but not totally.

The abysmal screen:220 nits!? Oh why are they still making these abiminations?
The keyboard is messy: terrible key contrast, the the numberpad, the backlight.

I guess this is marketed to buyers who'll be using in dungeons and dark rooms and certainly not offices with bright lights

[Neenyah]

58% sRGB is fine, low brightness is fine, low contrast is also fine... But not for fu🤬ng 1200€ when you can use that money to pick a literal brand new ThinkPad (E series but still a ThinkPad) with better screen in all regards than this one here. At least no PWM, yay.
 
Also what is this sentence: "Verdict: A budget laptop with an RTX graphics card for a premium price"?

How can be a budget laptop if there is a premium price? Apple is selling crap for even higher prices but no one calls them "budget laptops".
 

[NikoB]

The abysmal screen:220 nits!?

That's the only thing about this garbage that isn't a problem. At home and in the office, more than 150 nits are generally not needed. The brightness is enough for 5 years, without problems, but its frankly poor performance (it is slightly faster than the i5 8300H from 2018) for 2023 will force the owner to change the laptop in 1.5-2 years, if it is not a typewriter. Consumers are always looking in the wrong place. Screen brightness doesn't matter. This is not a model for outdoor use.

Acer has a good 2.5k screen with multi-row backlight and 1200:1 in the Aspire 5 2022 series. I saw it - it's good, but unfortunately it's a poor 16:9, which doesn't allow you to work effectively, there's not enough vertical space. As I wrote above, you need 16:10 with 2.5k or better 4k@120Hz at 300-350 nits / 100% sRGB. This will be enough for an office/home machine with a flimsy body.

But without a normal, full-fledged keyboard, Acer will remain in oblivion on the shelves of retail chains. That is why I wrote such a speech - you either have to be clinical idiots within the company or deliberately harm the company in order to produce laptops with crooked numpads and poor tactile feedback year after year. Rushing sales in the bud.

I would fire the entire Acer development department. The marketers would definitely be thrown out without severance pay.

[LL]

That's the only thing about this garbage that isn't a problem.

Really!? do you know that an office laptop can do lot more things than spreadsheets?

[Marvin Gollor]

Just a question about your categorisation: I thought the aspire (and ideapad 5 as the editor compared it to) was a  consumer line? So their travelmate business line not their 'office' line? Or are you suggesting all laptops are either gaming or 'office' laptops?

If this is correctly a consumer line then the drawbacks could be slightly be tolerated but not totally.

Consumer line is a vague term. Laptops of different categories are consumer laptops, from office to multimedia, budget gaming laptops and even some business laptops. So ideapads and aspires are both consumer oriented mid-class ( ideapad 5 / aspire 5) / low-end (ideapad 3 / aspire 3) or "premium" (ideapad pro 5 / aspire 7) budget office laptops. Acers Travelmate series is a business-series, more like a thinkbook whereas the swift series is a consumer focused multimedia series.

what is this sentence: "Verdict: A budget laptop with an RTX graphics card for a premium price"?

How can be a budget laptop if there is a premium price? Apple is selling crap for even higher prices but no one calls them "budget laptops".

the Aspire 5 series itself is a budget series in terms of its construction and its characteristics. its not low end budget like the aspire 3 but also not the higher end of budget laptops like an aspire 7 or ideapad pro 5. That's the thing I tried to point out: It's designed as a cheap (budget) laptop in all ways but just got an RTX 2050 on top of it (which is also a budget gpu option in general) and now they sell that combination for a premium price. The comparison to apple is not valid. The workmanship, screens, speakers, features etc. are way more highend. It being "crap" is a highly subjective assessment.

[Neenyah]

the Aspire 5 series itself is a budget series in terms of its construction and its characteristics. its not low end budget like the aspire 3 but also not the higher end of budget laptops like an aspire 7 or ideapad pro 5. That's the thing I tried to point out: It's designed as a cheap (budget) laptop in all ways but just got an RTX 2050 on top of it (which is also a budget gpu option in general) and now they sell that combination for a premium price.

Ok, the point is clear now, thanks for the explanation of it 🙏

The comparison to apple is not valid. The workmanship, screens, speakers, features etc. are way more highend.

They are but just the fact that they believe in their own products to such extends to give them 1-year warranty says enough and when I said crap I meant that - the overall quality of the whole product.

It being "crap" is a highly subjective assessment.

Perhaps, but from my own experience, from reading experiences of other people on Reddit (r/mac, r/macbook, r/apple) and from people who fix Apple devices for living and well-document endless issues with them - Louis Rossmann ( https://www.youtube.com/@rossmanngroup ) as one example - then yeah, a bit wide "subjective assessment" there.

I mean, even the 💩tiest and the cheapest laptop from the past 5 years won't get this after 2-3 weeks:

• https://medium.com/macoclock/what-i-hate-about-my-macbook-pro-after-a-year-2f4da6cc15a4
• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253705285
• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254925851
• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252263446
• https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/hoxdjp/macbook_pro_16_keys_wearing_smooth_ive_had_this/?rdt=34335
• https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookpro/comments/upq8fe/does_the_m1_macbook_keyboard_really_get_shiny/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/qscfg7/why_thats_happening_for_my_6_months_mac_space_bar/

I can keep going there for days and just from 2020 onwards if you want only about one specific issue (Apple cheapening out by intentionally using the lowest quality possible ABS plastic for their keyboards). What else is that but crap? 🤷

Meanwhile my X1C6 and its keycaps after 4 years of everyday usage, under direct sunlight to not hide any traces: https://imgur.com/OChm4yX (I didn't even bother to clean it lately)

[Marvin Gollor]

Yeah, I get the point regarding Apple and I know all the videos from Rossmann. I don't disagree here but there are different kinds of customers. For example my girlfriend with her M1 MacBook Air: She got is since release with almost zero issues so far whereas I got several issues with my long story of laptops in the past years, mostly thinkpads but also some consumer office or multimedia windows laptops and tablets.

That said the highly praised macbook 2012 (non-retina), even praised by windows / linux users to some extend, gave up on her after 4 years  (keyboard died) and it wasn't easy to replace the kb, similar to most windows machines. I think both worlds offer a lot of crap tbh and most of it won't surface until years of use..

[NikoB]

By the way, on my Dell G5 5587, despite the fact that it continues to please me with absolute silence when surfing in the maximum performance profile and despite the fact that I practically never use its poor tactile keyboard (which I wrote about many times before), it is in Basically connected to an expensive monitor and an external good keyboard - it suddenly failed - several keys, such as backspace, almost stopped working. The laptop is almost 5 years old and on forums similar keyboard failures in reviews of this series have already been encountered more than once. Those. Dell puts disgusting quality keyboards in the G series tactilely, but not only that, even if you don't use it at all (less than 1-2% of the total time) - it will still fail after 3-5 years. This is no good. This was the first time I encountered a failure of a keyboard that was practically not worn out at all! This is nonsense! This speaks to the disgusting architectural quality of the supplier of these keyboards. Moreover, replacing it in the G series costs a lot of effort, because... getting to it is not easy.

So s*** happens to almost all manufacturers. Everyone has known about Dell for a long time - the Achilles heel is low-quality keyboards, batteries (they can turn off almost when fully charged due to a current failure) and coolers. Which often begin to crack after 1-2 months of use.

But nevertheless, all the manufacturers have finally become insolent and are setting price tags in 2023, as if they sell exclusively top series, even for junior ones...

Choosing a high-quality laptop, taking into account the arrogance of manufacturers in terms of prices and quality in series, as well as with deliberate elements of artificial aging, is becoming increasingly difficult even for an expert...