Best Deal Today
The Acer Aspire 3 has been one of our favorite budget laptops for years now. It offers a great deal of specs, a thin and light design, and lots of ports at a very reasonable price. The latest model, the Aspire 3 A315-59, offers all the bells and whistles you’d need for a college or work laptop, and it’s a great upgrade to last year’s model.
It’s not without compromises though – the plastic body isn’t the most durable, and it comes with some bundled bloatware. However, if you remove the bloatware and can look beyond the plastic body, the Acer Aspire 3 is certainly money well spent.
Our review model features a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1255U processor, 16GB RAM, and 512GB SSD storage. Even in the crowded field of economy laptops, this Aspire shows up nicely in this category, sporting simple, low-profile styling and a wide screen that’s very useful for daily use.
More-capable laptops come in just above it in price, like the Acer Aspire 5 (2024 model) and Asus ZenBook 14 OLED, which offer better performance and boast premium designs. If all you need is an affordable, performant laptop for college or work, Acer is giving you plenty of bang for relatively few bucks.
About the Acer Aspire 3
Here are the specs of the model in this review
- Processor: Intel Core i7-1255U
- Graphics: Intel integrated graphics
- RAM: 16GB
- Storage: 512GB SSD
- Display: 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 LCD display
- Wireless connectivity: Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1
- Weight: 2.9kg
- Size: 36.29 x 1.99 x 24.13 cm
The Acer Aspire 3 has a 15.6-inch Full HD (1080p) IPS screen, an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, and 512GB storage, which should be enough for most users, but the sub-£500 makes it even more incredible value.
With the Aspire 3, Acer once again proves that budget machines are the way to go. And, as long as your needs don’t include a whole lot of video editing or designing, this might be the best laptop for you.
What We Like
Decent performance for the price
The Intel Core i7-1255U is a capable processor when it comes to performing essential daily tasks such as web browsing, handling office productivity, college assignments, and streaming videos and movies. The Core i7 chip was launched in early 2022 as part of Golden Cove architecture with 2 performance cores, and 8 efficient cores.
On this Aspire 3, the processor is paired with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD storage, and intel-integrated graphics to deliver decent productivity performance, provided you remain within the basic threshold. Again, at this price, you’re buying a laptop for basic-medium tasks, such as web browsing and web browsing. This might be as well a productivity workhorse, delivering better performance than budget laptops such as the Asus VivoBook 15 laptop, as it can multitask better, all thanks to the Core i7 processor and generous memory
The Aspire 3’s integrated graphics won’t win any awards either, with 3DMark scores that generally leave it in the “less than 15fps” category. But to be fair, 3DMark uses very high graphics settings, so it should be applied on machines with dedicated graphics. Still, you can get some casual gaming done on this laptop now and then.
A comfortable keyboard and touchpad
The Acer Aspire 3 has a decent keyboard, but the keyboard is just passable. The keys are like those found on many budget laptops, they often have more travel than those of some ultra-premium notebooks and have a slightly hollow feel.
Acer offers some good keyboards, and this one isn’t too bad at all. Thanks to the spare space on the keyboard deck, the A315-44P easily fits in a NUM pad. There’s no keyboard backlight here though.
Almost all-day battery life
All the longest-lasting Windows laptops I’ve used over the last couple of years have had AMD Ryzen processors under the hood. However, the Acer Aspire 3 doesn’t belong in that category, its battery life is merely OK despite using one of them.
It lasts up to 7 hours and 43 minutes in general productivity, but eight hours and some more is precisely what I look for in a work laptop. For a budget laptop, this is very OK, since we’ve seen premium laptops like the Asus ZenBook Pro 14 OLED last less than the Acer Aspire. Even so, this is still respectable compared to some other budget laptops out there, it lasts longer than some Chromebooks in the same price range.
And while most laptops now use USB-C for charging, the Acer Aspire 3 uses a power adapter with a cylindrical adapter.
What we don’t like
Not-so-bright display
The display on the Acer Aspire 3 is pretty basic, though that’s expected with a budget laptop like this. It’s an LCD with a 1080p resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate, which is fine for the price. It doesn’t have the best viewing angles, but it will get the job done.
There’s also a built-in webcam, but it isn’t the best you can find in a laptop – after all, 720p is pretty basic and can’t compare with 1080p available in more expensive laptops.
Simple, plastic construction
For the latest Aspire 3, Acer prioritized performance and specs over design. That means you should be contented with the plastic construction and not look forward to an aluminum shell and very lightweight profile.
However, for its price, the Aspire A315-59 looks decent. It’s an all-plastic case that looks like it could be aluminum from a distance, or even up close. I find it sturdy enough for daily commute, and it has no signs of being poorly made. It’s on the lighter side for 15.6-inch laptops, weighing 2.9kg and measuring 1.99-inch thick. While it’s a little heavy to be ideal for everyday portable use, it will fit easily in a backpack for offsite meetings and university lectures.
Should you buy the Acer Aspire 3 A315-59?
Yes, it’s a decent all-purpose laptop for work and college at a low price.
The Acer Aspire 3 A315-59 is a competent everyday laptop that delivers decent productivity performance; boasting an Intel Core i7 processor, lots of RAM, and fast SSD storage, but its display would be brighter. The Aspire 3’s MSRP is extremely affordable, but spending a few hundred more can snag you a laptop that’s roughly twice as quick in CPU performance and with a brighter IPS display.
Still, this Acer Aspire 3 is easily one of the best-built laptops we’ve tested for under £600, with a beautiful design, and spacious keyboard trackpad. While it won’t give gamers much joy, it’s a pretty competent work/college machine that’ll make you look and sound good on Zoom calls. If you’re in the market for a basic business laptop or back-to-school computer, you’ll want to take a closer look.
Similar Deals Today
