Acer Aspire 3 Laptop Review: An affordable Mendocino offering with excellent battery life and a sub-par screen

[Redaktion]

The Acer Aspire 3 with AMD's Mendocino-based Ryzen 5 7520U processor targets the low-end market with its affordable price. It features a 15.6-inch TN panel, a 512 GB NVMe SSD, 8 GB of soldered LPDDR5 RAM, and a 40 Wh battery. Is it worth sacrificing some features to save a few bucks? Read on to find out.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Aspire-3-Laptop-Review-An-affordable-Mendocino-offering-with-excellent-battery-life-and-a-sub-par-screen.704064.0.html

[Neenyah]

The Witcher 3 ran quite poorly on the Acer Aspire 3 to begin with, so there's no question of throttling (unless you consider a drop from 6 FPS to 4 FPS throttling).

This gave me a much needed joy and laugh today 😁 Thank you Anil for that and for the nice review 🖤

[NikoB]

A pathetic and miserable shame from the past with a speed slightly higher than that of the R5 3500U(Zen+) from faraway 2019.

Terrible screen, very bad keyboard with a completely broken numpad - it's impossible to work in excel with fast touch input.

HDMI is NOT 2.1 (this is a marketing lie that lazy authors on NB vilely repeat after them) - but only real 2.0b. Full 2.1 is available only in the Aspire 5 2022+ and only in the Intel version.

I don't know for whom and why the stupid Acer marketers are releasing this rubbish, like the Aspire 5 with exactly the same non-working keyboard without a normal numpad.

It not sell and hang for months in warehouses precisely because of a damaged numpad, frankly bad screens.

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Give people up to $1000 a normal working laptop (home/office):
17.3-18" 4k@120Hz with automatic VRR from 24Hz. Anti-glare 2000:1, 100% sRGB. Viewing angles 178/178, response no more than 7ms on G2G/B2W.

A full keyboard with a classic numpad and full-sized Esc, F1..F12 with backlight.

Powered by angled plug on the side or straight at the back (or usb-c ONLY at the back). 3 usb-a ports (one Gen2 10Gbps), one TB4 / USB40 (strictly behind if it is also a power port in the singular)

HDMI2.1/DP2.1 - full 48/80Gbps.

RJ45 at 2.5Gbps+ on the back.

2 audio jacks for 4 pins - left and right, so that it is convenient for both right-handed and left-handed people. Plus an optical spdif port (it costs a penny and has long been integrated into all audio codecs for more than 15 years)

2 memory slots and 2 M.2.

The threshold for turning on coolers is from 72-75C on the processor + manual control of coolers in a proprietary utility (above 80C - forced automatic) in BIOS and Windows / Linux

The power button is OUTSIDE the keyboard!

This is actually the secret of success and high sales of the ideal work laptop.

Does it all cost more than $1,000 retail? 100% no. All this easily fits into $1000 with Zen3+/Zen4 or Intel i5 13xx+.

So why do morons manufacturers make a lot of idiotic models, instead of the only correct one?

Do we need fashion for working things and a bunch of options invented by idiot "designers" to justify their salaries? Definitely not.

The new "Steve Jobs", hey, where are you, who, like in cell phones, will give a kick to the entire industry of mediocrity mired in a swamp? Are there still such people on the planet? To give a kick to a bunch of mediocrities in the development departments of laptop manufacturers? That

[Neenyah]

Does it all cost more than $1,000 retail? 100% no.

I mean true but if you go by that logic then an average car cost no more than 4000€ top.

But then you realize that there is R&D, there is marketing, there are salaries to pay, there are taxes to pay, there is profit to be made... everywhere, not just with cars.

[Hunter2020]

I gave up on the idea of owning a laptop in the future least of all a budget laptop with crap parts so the OEM could cut corners and save a few bucks.  Plus all laptops are expensive even the budget models.  For that price u can get a decent mini-ITX system coupled with nice large monitor.

There is a new emerging trend I see on Aliexpress.  OEMs are starting to make portalbe monitors that look like laptops.  It means they have a kb attached to the monitor in a clam shell laptop-like chassis.  All u do is plug in the Type-C video source/Type-C input device like a cell phone and you have a fully functional laptop.  This kind of system uses high quality parts because after all it's marketed as a portable monitor with connected kb and cheaper than the cheapest budget laptop.

[Neenyah]

I gave up on the idea of owning a laptop in the future least of all a budget laptop with crap parts so the OEM could cut corners and save a few bucks.  Plus all laptops are expensive even the budget models.

That's true but if you need laptop to travel and work on the go I recommend something like a refurbished ThinkPad in mint condition and almost as new for not that high price; so you get quality that's still fa(aaaa)r above anything new that you can get for that money, but you also get still very relevant and potent specs. If you are in EU check Thinkspot.de or Thinkstore24.de as example.

[Hunter2020]

"That's true but if you need laptop to travel and work on the go I recommend something like a refurbished ThinkPad in mint condition and almost as new for not that high price; so you get quality that's still fa(aaaa)r above anything new that you can get for that money, but you also get still very relevant and potent specs. If you are in EU check Thinkspot.de or Thinkstore24.de as example."

No, all you do is buy that portable monitor that looks like a laptop with kb+touchpad+full laptop sized battery.  Plug in your cell phone via Type-C and that's your business laptop on the go.

The most ingenious thing I've seen in a while.  Forget expensive $1000 business laptops.  You're always gonna carry a powerful cellphone around so why not put it to use with that device costing only some $300-$350 USD!!

[Starjack]

For a system with a CPU that offers similar multi-core performance of that of a i3-1215U, they have to implement a weak 2CU (128 shader) GPU for that? Even the UHD Graphics Xe 64EU iGPU in the i3-1215U is faster than this. If it was me, i would rather go with something like at least a Ryzen 5 5500U. The Radeon Vega RX 7 in that CPU will give you more graphical firepower.

[LL]

That screen is pre-historic how is that thing is still be made?