Why Is The Acer Aspire 3 Most Loved By Students
The Acer Aspire 3 is currently priced at $299. It features AMD’s brand new 7000 series chipset, the Ryzen 3 7320. I haven’t had a chance to look at the Ryzen 7000 series before, so we’re going to get our first look at it here today.
Remember, it’s a Ryzen 3, not a Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7, or Ryzen 9, which will be more powerful. However, what I did notice is that it’s a pretty efficient chipset. It’s going to provide great battery life, really good thermals, and excellent performance for everyday use.
This laptop is a really nice secondary option or perfect for a student. We’re going to get into it today in this review.
Specs And Pricing of The Acer Aspire 3
The Aspire 3 is running the brand new AMD Ryzen 7000 series chipset.
Disclosure:
As we take a look at the specs, in the interest of transparency and full disclosure, I want to let you know that I’m not being paid by Acer and I’m not being sponsored by Acer. All the opinions you’re about to hear are my own. Acer is not getting copy approval, meaning they’re seeing this video for the first time just like you.
This review unit is on loan from Acer, and once this review is done, I’ll be sending it back.
Now, the Acer Aspire 3 comes in at a very affordable starting price of $299.99, and that gets you the latest 7000 series Ryzen 3 processor, the 7320.
We will get into the performance numbers later on this budget laptop. For those interested in picking one up or finding more information about this, you can click here.
Unboxing The Acer Aspire 3
With the specs and pricing out of the way, let’s find out what you get inside the box. Let’s open it up.
Right off the bat, you get a pretty slim 45-watt barrel pin connection adapter.
You could also charge via USB-C, and they also give you the extension cable as well.
You also get some documentation, warranty information, and of course, the unit itself.
Now, holding it for the first time, for $299, I’m not expecting an all-metal design. It’s not; it’s plastic.
But it actually feels pretty solid and nice for this price point, with not too much give or flex in the chassis.
Hinges, Keyboard, And Touchpad
For those wondering, you can’t quite open it up with one finger; the hinges are just not designed to do that. I noticed a little bit of screen wobble right off the bat.
As far as the keyboard itself is concerned, it’s surprisingly good in terms of tactility, feedback, and key travel.
It’s actually been pretty good as well. One thing to note is that there is no backlight on this keyboard, and at $299, I’m not going to ding them too much on that. Again, this is not a high-end premium laptop; keep that in mind.
It was really comfortable for typing for extended periods of time, really surprisingly good for typing long documents.
For those number crunchers and spreadsheet users out there, it does have a numpad, although it’s not full size — it’s a little bit narrow. It’s great to have it nonetheless for those that need to crunch those numbers.
Another pleasant surprise is how much I’ve liked the touchpad. It’s a really nicely sized touchpad.
You’ll notice it’s off-center a bit to accommodate the inclusion of that numpad we just talked about. As far as the two-finger scrolling and all the gestures, everything worked really well.
I found it very responsive, and the touchpad is not loose or anything like you find in a lot of these budget laptops.
The clickiness is good, and again, the responsiveness has been great. No complaints on that touchpad — really, really surprisingly good.
Port And Connection
Let’s start off on the left side where you get your DC-in port; that’s where you’ll charge it. But you could also charge via USB-C port, which supports data, charge, and display out. I used a number of different USB Type-C chargers, and they all worked on this, and that’s been great, especially for a budget laptop. You get an HDMI port, which is great, and a USB-A port.
Now, moving over to the right side, you get your microphone/headphone combo jack, which is always great to see, another USB-A port, and finally a Kensington lock port to round out the ports on this laptop. Notably missing, there’s no SD card reader, but again, at this budget-level price point, I’m not expecting too much out of this. I would say overall a pretty decent port selection.
Internals And Upgradability of The Acer Aspire 3
To get inside this laptop, it’s actually really easy. All you need to do is remove the 11 Phillips head screws, pop off the bottom plate with a guitar pick or a pry tool, and that’s it. It’s pretty easy.
The bottom cover is made out of plastic, and once inside, you notice a single fan for cooling. We’ll get into the thermals, surface temperatures, and fan noise later on in this review. You’ll also notice that 43-watt-hour battery. We’ll get into the battery life later on as well.
As far as what’s user upgradable, the SSD is user upgradable, although from these reads and writes, not the greatest out there. But again, at $299, I’m not going to ding them too much. It’s certainly fast enough for what you need to do in everyday use with this — no problem there. It has 8 gigabytes of LPDDR5 RAM, which is good to see, although it is soldered into the motherboard.
When it comes to wireless, this has Wi-Fi 6 along with Bluetooth 5.2. The card is slotted in, not soldered in, so if you need to change it out down the road, you have that option. That’s always nice to have. As far as the wireless itself, the Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth both work without any issues, both working flawlessly.
Of course, it would have been nice to have Wi-Fi 6E, but again, at this price point, I wasn’t expecting that. Having Wi-Fi 6 will certainly be good enough for what you need it to do.
Display of The Acer Aspire 3
Now let’s talk about the display. At $299, I didn’t have many expectations coming into this, and I was pleasantly surprised at just how good this is for this price point.
You’re looking at a 15.6-inch IPS display with a full HD resolution of 1920 by 1080, and yes, that is a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Although I’d like to see 16:10, 16:9 is great for watching movies, Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube. You won’t get any black bars on the top and bottom. It’s also a matte display, so there’s not too much glare or reflection, which is pretty good.
What I also noticed was pretty good deep blacks and decent contrast at a thousand to one. Again, this is not something we normally see at this price point. You also get decent color accuracy, although not the greatest. I’d like to see it below 2, and the coverage of the color gamut I would say is great.
But again, you’re not buying this to color grade or video edit on. Really, you’re buying this to consume movies, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and to get work done like spreadsheets and Word documents. For that, this is really good. Again, at $299, I won’t ding them for the coverage of the color gamut.
One thing that really bugs me with budget laptops is typically you get really dim displays that don’t get bright enough for my liking. That’s not the case here. I actually measured over 300 nits — 308 to be exact — which is above the 300 nits claimed.
That’s pretty unusual for a $299 laptop, so don’t take that for granted. It’s bright enough for pretty much what you need it to do. Because it’s a matte display as opposed to a glossy display, you can get at least better coverage in terms of seeing it outdoors, including indoor scenarios.
Again, it’s not the brightest out there, of course, when you compare it to much more expensive laptops. But at over 300 nits, this is actually pretty decent.
So my overall takeaway is that this has been a pleasant surprise in terms of the display. Of course, when you compare it to, say, an OLED display in a much more expensive laptop that has better coverage of the color gamut, better color accuracy, and higher resolution, that’s always going to be better. But for this price point, I think you’re getting a pretty nice display.
Webcam And Array Mics
This is the camera on the Acer Aspire 3, a $299 pretty decent laptop. Now, I’m not going to be too harsh here for having a 720p webcam. Again, at $299, you can’t expect too much; you’re not going to get a 1080p camera.
Let’s get that straight.
It’s not IR, no Windows Hello login, and I don’t think there’s any biometrics here. I don’t think there’s any fingerprint scanner on this laptop. But as far as this 720p camera, is it good for your Zoom calls or any of your video conferencing needs? Let me know.
It does have array mics. Again, at $299, not too bad. I would say this is actually pretty good. I’ve actually seen worse webcams on much more expensive laptops.
Battery Life of The Acer Aspire 3
Okay, let’s talk battery life. Now, this has a four-cell 43-watt-hour battery and it did over 13 hours on my continuous web surfing test over Wi-Fi at 115 nits. That’s actually pretty good results here. Very efficient laptop in terms of this chipset and the thermals employed here.
So, getting pretty good battery life. I would say in real-world mixed usage you can expect anywhere from eight to nine hours, but of course, it depends on what you’re doing. Everybody’s use case is a little bit different, so your mileage may vary. But I think pretty good battery life here for this pretty efficient chipset.
Now, it does come with a 45-watt barrel pin connector adapter as I mentioned, but you could also charge via USB-C adapters or power chargers. It takes about 95 minutes to 100 minutes to get a total charge on this, which is not too bad.
Again, we don’t have that really express charge, but actually pretty good.
If you notice here, you can see that there’s room for a bigger battery. They could have actually put in even more battery life if they wanted to, but of course, that would have added more weight and it would have probably added to the overall cost of the unit. But at over 13 hours on my continuous web surfing test, pretty nice result here.
Audio of The Acer Aspire 3
While we’re inside, you’ll notice the bottom-firing speakers. As far as the speakers are concerned, in terms of the audio, I would say they’re not that great.
They could be a little bit louder, could have a little bit more bass. They sounded a little bit tinny to me, a little bit hollow, and the mids were decent but again could use more bass.
When it comes to the audio. Make sure you can use your headphones with this, which work fine, or connect to Bluetooth headphones if you want to be wireless. But again, the speakers are not so great.
Performance, Benchmark, And Gaming
By now, you’re probably wondering, well, how’s the chipset on this? How’s that AMD Ryzen 3 7320 that this has? Again, this is my first time looking at a 7000 series chipset, although it is a Ryzen 3, so let’s temper our expectations when it comes to the performance numbers.
As you can see, the multi-core and single-core performance is decent. But again, Ryzen 3 is not going to compete with Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7, or Ryzen 9. Just keep that in mind. But it’s a very efficient chipset, as we saw with the battery numbers, and it’s a very efficient chipset when it comes to the thermals, never getting overly hot.
So temper your expectations when it comes to these numbers. It’s not going to blow you away, but it’s perfectly fine for doing everyday work such as Microsoft Office, email, web browsing, consuming media, watching Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and even some light 1080p video editing with the included Radeon graphics. Again, this is not going to blow you away for 4K video editing.
When it comes to gaming, don’t expect to play AAA titles on their highest settings. It’s just not designed to do that. But if you lower some of the settings, some older titles might get you some playable frame rates. This is not really a gaming laptop; it’s more of a productivity device, and in that regard, it will do very well and definitely get the job done.
Thermals, Fan Noise, And Surface of The Acer Aspire 3
They did a really good job with the thermals. The laptop never gets overly hot in terms of the surface temperatures, even under maximum load, and the fan noise never gets above 38 decibels. That’s been pretty good, and I saw minimal thermal throttling, so they did a good job with the thermal solution employed here.
Pros and Cons of The Acer Aspire 3
Alright, let’s bring it all home. What do I think about the Acer Aspire 3? This is my first look at this AMD Ryzen 3 7320 chipset, a quad-core CPU that is impressive for what it is. Remember, it’s not a Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7, or Ryzen 9. You can expect better performance out of those as we see them starting next year. But as far as this very efficient chipset goes, you get good battery life, good thermals, and decent performance for everyday tasks.
It will certainly handle everything you throw at it in terms of Microsoft Office, email, web browsing, typing long documents, and spreadsheet use. Number crunchers will like the inclusion of the numpad, although it’s a little bit narrower than some other laptop implementations that have numpads. But it’s really good nonetheless.
Now, the negative with that keyboard is that it has no backlight. But again, at $299, you can’t ding them too much. It has a pretty decent 720p webcam that’s not IR and doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it has some pretty nice array mics.
So that was a nice pleasant surprise as well. It’s a pretty nice video conferencing device at $299. And that, to me, is the biggest pro here because you’re getting a lot of bang for the buck.
The Score
I think you can’t go wrong with this Acer Aspire 3, especially if you’re looking for it for a student or a secondary laptop that you don’t mind carrying around with you. It’s not too heavy either. So, I think they did a really nice job here and I recommend the Acer Aspire 3, especially if you don’t want to break the bank and not sacrifice too much on performance, battery life, and efficiency.
So what do you think about this bad boy, the Acer Aspire 3? This is a really nice bang for the buck. $299 gets you a nice 15.6-inch IPS display with over 300 nits, and over 13 hours on my battery life test, which is going to give you anywhere between eight to nine hours of real-world mixed usage. It has an upgradable SSD, LPDDR5 RAM, and although it’s not metal, it’s actually pretty nice. It’s nicely built and doesn’t feel like cheap plastic. It is plastic but not cheap-feeling, so it’s really, really solid.
It has a nice port selection, including an HDMI out, which I absolutely love. You can charge it with the USB-C port, which is really nice. Again, at $299, it’s perfect for a student or as a secondary laptop that you won’t worry too much about if you leave it behind at an airport. It will give you the ability to get work done. It also has a numpad, so if you’re going to crunch numbers on spreadsheets and those kinds of documents, you’ll definitely benefit from that.
One thing it doesn’t have is a backlit keyboard, but that’s not a big deal. I’m not going to ding them for that because, at $299, you’re getting a lot of bang for the buck.
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