Acer Aspire 3 review: A standout budget laptop for school and work

Price at time of review

$329.99

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Acer Aspire 3 A315-24P-R75B 15.6 inch (2022) – Ryzen 3 7320U – 8 GB – SSD 128 GB

$377.99

In an area crowded with economy laptops, there’s no shortage of cheap but lacking in quality. The Acer Aspire 3 fits right in this category with its simple, thin styling, full-size keyboard with numeric keypad, and wide screen perfect for video conferencing. There’s no shortage of trade-offs for the low $400 price tag, but Acer has made a wise decision to build a machine that’s relatively inexpensive and does a good job.

Looking for more options? Check out our roundup from PCWorld. best laptops for college students.

Acer Aspire 3: Specs and Features

Packed with a 2.4GHz AMD Ryzen CPU, 8BG RAM and a 128GB solid state drive, the modestly spec’d Aspire 3 isn’t a workhorse, but it’s more than enough to get things done on a budget. It has an HDMI port for connecting to an external display and one USB-C port for connecting new accessories and devices.

• CPU: Quad-core 2.4GHz AMD Ryzen 7320U
• memory: 8GB
• Graphics/GPU: AMD Radeon
• screen: 15.8 inch LCD with LED backlight
• Storage: 128GB
• Connectivity: 1 x HDMI port, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port
• networking: IEEE 802.11ax Wi-Fi
• Biometrics: none
• Battery capacity: 40 watt hours
• size: 0.74″ x 14.3″ x 9.4″
• weight: 3.97 pounds

What are these specs missing? An SD card reader and a second USB-C port would be nice. It’s sometimes tedious to get by with just one of them, but you can always add more by plugging in an adapter.

PCWorld / Robert Stromeyer

Acer Aspire 3: Quality of design and build

At just under 4 pounds, the Aspire 3 isn’t light by any means, but at the cost of perhaps a quarter of a pound more carrying weight, you get a generous 15.8 inches of space for a full-width keyboard. As someone who lives and dies in spreadsheets, I’m a huge sucker for the numeric keypad on my keyboard, so it’s great to have one on such an affordable machine. This keyboard feels pretty solid under your fingers and doesn’t flex or bounce too much during heavy typing. Low-end machines often sacrifice chassis construction for cost savings, the result of which can feel flimsy or even cause the mouse cursor to bounce across the screen on the trackpad. But with this Acer, there is no such worry. Typing is actually fun.

That wide keyboard is fronted by a relatively spacious 3-inch by 5-inch touchpad. Unlike other Acer laptops we’ve tried, this trackpad feels solid and smooth, and responds with a decisive yet quiet click. I’ve found that both single-digit and multi-touch gestures track well.

At about 3/4 inch thick, the Aspire 3 is a bit bulky, but it leaves room for plenty of healthy ports. The overall look and feel of the laptop is considerably more solid than most other sub-$500 laptops we’ve tested. This is a machine suitable for working adults, not a cheap plastic kid’s computer. My only major build quality complaint is that the screen wobbles a bit when you move it around while it’s open, instead of staying firmly in place. This means that the webcam image will wobble if you move the device while in use. This also happened in testing.

Acer Aspire 3: Display and Audio

Acer’s budget laptops include The Aspire 5 we reviewed last year, has long been prominent in 1080p displays. The Aspire 3 is similarly equipped, but as the market progresses, competitors are also bringing the same resolution to the budget line, so it no longer stands out in the crowd on this front. That said, if you’re buying a laptop in 2023, the lowest resolution a buyer should accept is his 1080p, as 768p barely fits the native resolution of most modern web pages. Responsive web design is great, but if your 15-inch laptop screen shows a minimized layout with a maximized browser window, you’re better off browsing on an iPad Mini.

The Aspire 3 is well within the range of acceptable resolutions for today’s devices, but as I said, this is the minimum resolution we need at the moment. Overall, I liked the look of his Aspire 3’s display for movies and videos. The color quality was decent, but not noticeable and bright enough to be comfortable in the sun.

The two small, downward-facing speakers produce fairly loud audio, well-tuned for video conferencing and YouTube videos, but a little loud for bass-heavy music.

Acer Aspire 3: webcam and microphone

In our video conferencing test, the Aspire 3 blew our hopes for an economical laptop. The HD webcam produced crisp, clean video, and the mic picked up and filtered audio from background noise very well.

I especially liked the Aspire 3’s low-light webcam performance when viewed side by side with my Macbook Pro. With temporal noise reduction, this high-res camera cleans up grainy low-light video and boosts exposure levels to make more expensive webcams perform better than most other built-in webcams we’ve tried. Provides brighter, sharper images than ever before. computer.

Likewise, the mic uses Acer PurifiedVoice software to clean up the room audio and eliminate noise, delivering clear, crisp sound to your recipients. For a computer in this price range, this speaks volumes. Overall, given the image and audio capture quality, you’d be better off jumping on his Zoom on the Acer Aspire 3 rather than some machines that cost four times his price.

PCWorld / Robert Stromeyer

Acer Aspire 3: Connectivity

One of the advantages of large laptops is that they have many useful connectors. Along the left side are the DC input, one USB-C port, a full-size HDMI port, and a USB-A port. On the right is a Kensington lock port, another USB-A, and a headphone jack. What you don’t get at this price is a second USB-C port, or card reader slot, which is becoming more and more common in high-performance laptops these days.

For most users, this port complement is more than enough, and having both a USB-C port and a full HDMI port on a $400 laptop isn’t bad. If you need to read an SD card, you can always plug the adapter into his one of her USB ports.

PCWorld / Robert Stromeyer

Acer Aspire 3: Performance

If you’re spending $400 on a laptop, you should significantly lower your performance expectations. With its quad-core 2.4GHz AMD Ryzen 7320U process and Radeon graphics, the Acer Aspire 3 is no exception, offering decent performance for basic business tasks but subpar results especially in graphics and gaming. .

PCWorld / Robert Stromeyer

Our PCMark 10 test measures your machine’s performance in everyday office tasks, from word processing and spreadsheets to video conferencing. The Aspire 3 performed moderately at 4,284 in the category of slightly more expensive machines we’ve tested in recent months, notably beating his Intel-powered Aspire 5’s score of 3,902 tested last year. This is a good thing because the machine was designed to appeal to school and small business users. If you’re looking for an affordable laptop for the fall back-to-school term, or just need to replace an aging work machine on a budget, this performance makes it a good investment.

When it comes to playing movies and videos, the Aspire 3 outperforms other budget systems we’ve tested. In the multi-threaded Cinebench 15 test, the Aspire 3 scored 1,925, making it the top economy laptop. In his single-threaded Cinebench test, a score of 435 outperformed the others for which results have been obtained.

PCWorld / Robert Stromeyer

PCWorld / Robert Stromeyer

Where the Aspire 3 really falls short, even compared to other budget laptops we’ve tested, is gaming graphics performance. In the 3DMark TimeSpy 1.2 test, the machine scored 584, less than half of the Aspire 5’s, which is a dismal result. Of course, whether this is acceptable depends on how you feel about the game. If you’re buying this for writing or surfing the web, don’t worry. But if this is a student’s laptop, I can tell you that you don’t have to worry about games interfering with your study time.

PCWorld / Robert Stromeyer

Acer Aspire 3: battery life

The Aspire 3’s battery life was another positive performance. In our tests of repeatedly playing movies until the battery died, we consistently averaged about eight hours of life. This corresponds to approximately one working day. Even if you don’t have a video playing all the time, it should be enough to get you through the day, perhaps if you take a lunch break. When you need to recharge, the Aspire 3’s tiny charging brick is one of the most compact bricks available, so it doesn’t take up too much space in your bag.

Acer Aspire 3: Should you buy it?

In a world where budget constraints demand compromise, the Acer Aspire 3 makes smart tradeoffs. This is arguably one of the best built sub-$500 laptops we’ve tested, with a sturdy build and a spacious keyboard and trackpad. It won’t give gamers much joy, but it’s a capable enough work machine that makes Zoom calls look and sound great. If you’re looking for a basic business laptop or a computer for back to school, you should take a closer look.