Acer Aspire 15 (2024)  Laptop Review

The Acer Aspire 15 laptop is only available in the Steel Gray colorway. See the bottom of the laptop.

Though entirely plastic, the Acer Aspire 15 feels well-built, with no obvious gaps in the construction. There's some flex on the lid and keyboard deck, but not enough to be of significant concern. The finish is relatively scratch- and fingerprint-resistant. The feet feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom.

The hinges are sub-par. They're very stiff, giving the device a somewhat cheap feel and making a one-handed lift impossible. There's some wobbling when adjusting the screen but very little when typing heavily.

Accessing the internals is easy; you need to remove 11 Philips screws and release the bottom panel's clips with a prying tool. The storage slot supports M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

See the service manual for more details.

• 65W power adapter
• Power cord
• Documentation

The Acer Aspire 15 laptop is available with the following displays:

• 15.6" TN 1920 x 1080 60Hz (matte, 45% NTSC)
• 15.6" IPS 1920 x 1080 60Hz (matte, 45% NTSC)
• 15.6" IPS 1920 x 1080 60Hz (matte, touchscreen, 45% NTSC)
• 15.6" IPS 2560 x 1440 60Hz (matte, 100% sRGB)

Regarding sharpness, a 1080p resolution is passable at this 15.6-inch screen size. You can see individual pixels up close, but this isn't an issue at typical viewing distances. The QHD panel, which has a pixel density of 188 PPI, looks noticeably sharper and will provide the best viewing experience. 16:9 is a standard aspect ratio that's well suited for media consumption since most videos are in that format; however, a 16:10 or 3:2 aspect ratio would have been better for productivity, as the increased vertical space lets you see more text when reading a document or website, so you don't have to scroll as much.

The FHD (non-touch) IPS panel has a slow response time, causing noticeable ghosting behind fast-moving objects. The other displays are likely similar in performance. However, none of the available displays supports variable refresh rate to minimize screen tearing when gaming.

The FHD (non-touch) IPS panel's contrast ratio is decent and within the typical range of most IPS panels. That said, it's relatively low compared to other display technologies like OLEDs and Mini LEDs. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings. The other displays likely have a similar contrast ratio, with the TN panel being just slightly worse than the IPS screens.

The FHD (non-touch) IPS display's peak brightness is passable. It's fine for most indoor environments, but not outdoors in broad daylight. The screen gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting—this is good for viewing content in dark settings, as it helps reduce eye strain. Acer doesn't advertise each display's brightness, so we can only assume that the other displays are similar in brightness.

The display's matte finish handles reflections well. It does a fairly good job of diffusing and reducing the intensity of bright light sources. For the most part, you'll only have trouble with reflections when viewing dark-color content.

The FHD IPS display's accuracy is bad out of the box. The white balance is visibly inaccurate, especially at higher brightness levels, and the gamma is too high in most scenes, making them too dark. As for color accuracy, the color dE is high mainly because the panel has a narrow color gamut and can't display saturated reds, greens, and blues. The QHD display likely has better color accuracy, as unlike the FHD panels, it has full sRGB coverage.

The FHD (non-touch) IPS panel has a poor color gamut. It doesn't even have full coverage of the commonly used sRGB color space, making most web content look slightly washed out. This display isn't suitable for color-critical work like photo and video editing. The other FHD panels have the same color gamut, while the QHD panel has full sRGB coverage.

The other displays are likely flicker-free as well.

The Acer Aspire 15 laptop has a decent keyboard. It has a spacious, standard layout that's easy to get used to. The keys are easy to actuate, and as a result, won't cause fatigue over longer typing sessions; however, they could use a bit more travel and tactility. They're also not the most stable keys, exhibiting a significant amount of wobble. Regarding the backlight, while the legends let the light shine through, most of the light comes from around the keys.

The touchpad is okay. It's decently large for a 15.6-inch laptop, and it tracks most movements and gestures well. Palm rejection also works as intended. It's a traditional diving board touchpad, so you can only click in the bottom half. Unfortunately, the clicks feel mushy and are sometimes unresponsive. This unresponsiveness makes some actions, like copy/pasting and drag/dropping items challenging.

The Acer Aspire 15's speakers are on the bottom of the laptop, near the front feet. They sound clear but boxy, with almost no bass whatsoever. They also don't get very loud.

The Acer Aspire 15 has an okay webcam. While the overall image looks reasonably sharp, a lot of the finer details are blurry due to noise. The colors and tint are a tad off, though these are relatively minor complaints. As for the microphone, voices sound loud and clear, albeit slightly over-processed.

The Acer Aspire 15 has a decent port selection. Both USB-A ports support USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed of up to 5Gbps and power-off charging—the latter lets you charge a mobile device connected to the port even when the laptop is in sleep mode. The USB-C port supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speed of up to 10Gbps, DisplayPort, and Power Delivery. Some configurations' USB-C supports Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40Gbps data transfer speed and two 4k @ 60Hz displays), so it's best to check the model's specifications before buying if this is important to you. Acer advertises HDMI 2.1 support, but the HDMI port can only output a maximum resolution of 4k @ 60Hz. As such, we consider it HDMI 2.0.

The wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 160Hz. Wi-Fi 6E has faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous Wi-Fi standards. However, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features. Check out our recommendations for the best Wi-Fi routers if you're looking to upgrade your home's wireless performance.

The Acer Aspire 15 is available with the following CPUs:

• Intel Core 3 100U (6 cores/8 threads, up to 4.7GHz, 10MB cache)
• Intel Core 5 120U (10 cores/12 threads, up to 5GHz, 12MB cache)
• Intel Core 7 150U (10 cores/12 threads, up to 5.4GHz, 12MB cache)

All three are energy-efficient processors designed for general productivity tasks like web browsing, text processing, spreadsheets, and video playback. They have a hybrid architecture; the Core 3 100U has two performance and four efficiency cores, while the Core 5 120U and Core 7 150U have two performance and eight efficiency cores. The choice of the CPU depends on your workload. Most people can likely get by with the Core 3 100U, though it might be worth going up to the Core 5 or 7 if you're a heavy multitasker or plan on keeping the laptop for a while. The main difference between the Core 5 and Core 7 is their clock speeds—the Core 7 is only slightly faster.

The Acer Aspire 15 is only available with integrated graphics. The Core 3 100 U uses Intel UHD Graphics, while the Core 5 120 U and Core 7 150U use Intel Iris Xe, sporting 80 and 96 execution units, respectively. There's a performance difference between them, but ultimately, these are all integrated GPUs designed for light productivity tasks, so don't expect to do anything particularly intensive like 3D modeling or AAA gaming.

You can get this laptop with 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of RAM. The memory isn't user-replaceable.

You can get this laptop with 512GB or 1TB of storage. The storage is user-replaceable; the storage slot supports M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

The Acer Aspire 15's Intel Core 5 120U CPU scores well in Geekbench 5. Its overall performance is adequate for general productivity tasks and some moderately demanding tasks, but for heavily multi-threaded more demanding workloads, you'll want to consider a laptop with a faster chip and superior cooling, like a gaming or workstation laptop with an H- or HX-series chip. The integrated GPU performs poorly and isn't suitable for any intensive computing tasks.

Note: We performed all benchmarks using the laptop's best-performing mode (Performance in this case) instead of the default Normal mode, which usually throttles the performance to prolong battery life. This is more representative of the laptop's maximum potential (you can always turn it down if you prioritize battery life and/or lower fan noise and thermals), whereas the Balanced mode would only show the manufacturer's tuning of that mode.

The Acer Aspire 15's Intel Core 5 120U performs well in Cinebench R23 for a low-power U-series CPU, but again, there are much faster CPUs on the market. If you need to perform highly intensive tasks, getting an Apple MacBook Pro with a Pro/Max SoC or a Windows laptop with an H- or HX-series CPU (like the M4 Apple MacBook Pro 16 or the Razer Blade 18 respectively) is best, as you'll get a much smoother experience and complete projects in less time.

While you can render 3D images in Blender on the Acer Aspire 15 (2024), getting a laptop with a discrete GPU is best, as even an entry-level GPU, like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050, can render images much faster.

The Acer Aspire 15 laptop performs poorly in the Basemark GPU benchmark. Its integrated graphics can only handle simple, puzzle-like games or older titles at 1080p, and even then, you'll have to play at a lower resolution or with low graphics settings to get playable frame rates.

To better simulate typical usage, we conducted the web browsing and video playback tests using the Normal mode and the gaming test using the Performance mode.

Borderlands 3 isn't playable on the Acer Aspire 15 laptop. The CPU and integrated GPU can't handle this and other similarly demanding titles. You can likely get a little over 30 fps on a model with an Intel Core 7 150U with the lowest graphical settings, but the gameplay will still be too choppy due to frame drops.

Civilization VI, as well as other similarly demanding strategy games, is playable with a few tweaks in the graphical settings. The turn time is likely much slower on models with a Core 3. Upgrading to the Core 7 150U will only improve the turn time slightly.

Counter-Strike 2 runs poorly at 1080p on the Acer Aspire 15 laptop. Although you can get over 60 fps with the lowest graphical settings, the gameplay is still very choppy, which isn't ideal for an FPS game.

Shadow Of The Tomb Raider runs poorly at 1080p on the Acer Aspire 15 with an Intel Core 5 120U CPU's integrated graphics. The gameplay is choppy due to the low frame rate, even with low settings. Turning on Intel's XeSS upscaling feature to Balanced (using the High graphical preset) boosts the average frame rate to 35 fps, so you can likely get to a playable state with a bit more tweaks in the settings.

The keyboard gets a little toasty under load and can cause some discomfort, as the hot spot is near the number 4 key. Unfortunately, the bottom gets even hotter, reaching 53.2 °C (127.76 °F), so you'll have to be careful when using the device on your lap. The fan gets pretty loud, sometimes producing a light, high-pitched whistling noise.

We tested the thermals and noise in the Performance mode. There's also a Normal and Silent mode, accessible via the AcerSense app, which will reduce fan noise and heat, albeit at the cost of performance.

The Acer Aspire 15 laptop has many pre-installed applications; see this video for the full list.

Some models have a fingerprint sensor at the top left corner of the touchpad—check the specifications if this matters to you.