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Acer Aspire 5 Slim Laptop Model A515-43-R19L Review – Best Selling Low Budget Laptop on Amazon

solowayne

December 24, 2020

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Acer Aspire 5 Slim Laptop, 15.6 inches Full HD IPS Display, AMD Ryzen 3 3200U, Vega 3 Graphics, 4GB DDR4, 128GB SSD, Backlit Keyboard, Windows 10 in S Mode, A515-43-R19L, Silver

Acer Aspire 5 Slim laptop model A515-43-R19L, is currently the most sought after budget-friendly laptop available on the market for less than $400.

Released in May, 2019,  Acer Aspire 5 a515-43 quickly attained best seller status on Amazon (and other online shops) barely 3 months after its release.

Read Customer Reviews on Amazon

One of the reasons why Acer Aspire 5 a515-43 is selling like hotcakes on Amazon, Walmatt, Best Buy, eBay etc is due to the fact that its  a medium spec laptop that can easily be upgraded to a powerful machine (it can be built up to serve your computer needs) hence its highly sought after by students, bloggers, Youtubers, music producers etc  (Its lightning fast when upgraded to 16gb of ram).

Simply put, Acer Aspire 5 a515-43 is the type of laptop one buys with the intention to upgrade later, as one’s financial situation improves.

Buy this, add a drive and a memory stick and you get a premier laptop for less than $400. And you get a better screen, too. How ‘easy’ the RAM and hard drive upgrades are depends on how comfortable you are working with computers. I found them quite simple. And anyone can do that, it isn’t tough at all. If you can turn a screwdriver, you can update this machine. Be careful not to crack the plastic housing when removing the bottom cover. Using the correct plastic spudge is helpful, you can search Amazon for a selection of tools. (spudge = type of plastic or rubber pry bar). Google the ‘how-to’ videos first.

Suggested upgrade – add a single 4gb RAM chip in the empty slot (Google for videos on that) to bring the total to 8gb RAM. After installing the additional 4gb the computer will report 8gb installed with “5.94gb usable”. The ‘missing’ RAM is being commandeered by the Radeon software for the display. If you need/want more the machine can support up to 32gb (1 16gb chip in each slot, discarding the 4gb already installed). 16gb would require 1 8gb chip in each slot, discarding the 4gb already installed. For business purposes (Office, Chrome and You Tube videos) I’m finding the 8gb (5.94 available) to be acceptable.

But, for basic photo/video editing and daily tasks like web browsing, spreadsheets and word processing, the Ryzen cpu with a low-cost 4GB memory upgrade is more than adequate.

For users who need more internal storage, Acer has left a slot open inside the laptop which allows a 7mm thick 2.5″ SSD to be added at any time. With prices falling on SSDs in the 256GB-512GB range, this is a welcome feature and a simple plug-n-play upgrade.

I noticed the SSD was the M.2 style!! SSD’s are faster than the old HDD drives but many budget laptops use a SSD that is little more than an HDD with RAM memory inside. This original SSD is still slowed by using a SATA connection, which is unable to handle true SSD transfer speeds. This laptop has the M.2 style drive that is directly connected to the motherboard using a PCI bus! That allows the SSD to transfer data much faster than the older SSDs. What a great surprise!

Why is the laptop so cheap???

Rather than focusing on manufacturing a laptop with all Aluminum/ metallic chassis or an ultrabright high-res touchscreen, Acer decided to cut corners by manufacturing a laptop with good internal components with less focus on build quality i.e. Acer Aspire 5 Slim laptop a515-43 is mostly plastic, though it’s capped with a thin sheet of aluminum to class it up a bit (Aluminum cover, plastic housing). The laptop is made with light weight material and strong. So you will not feel carrying a 15 inch laptop at all. Also the material is strong and will not break with small accidents. However, if it slips off your table or lap and hits the ground, don’t expect it to be the same again.

Because of the build quality I am not sure if this is something that would survive daily commutes to school in a book bag. I think it should be fine around the house or at work. The Aluminum top cover makes it look sturdy but don’t expect the durability of a premium laptop .

Nevertheless some tech bloggers are of the opinion that the main reason why Acer decided to use mostly plastic on the housing (and Aluminum on the cover), is because they wanted their Acer Aspire 5 slim laptop to be ultraportable and affordable as the laptop is widely advertised as a lightweight laptop.

Acer Aspire 5 slim laptop model A515-43-R19L weighs 3.97 lbs; which is considerably light for 15.6″ screen) and of course if they would have used Aluminum/ Metallic chassis, they wouldn’t have attained their objective.

Other selling points of Acer Aspire 5 slim laptop model A515-43-R19L  include;

• Full HD 1080p display

2 things that stuck out to me when I started using Aspire 5 slim laptop are : screen and sound quality. Very impressed.

The screen is very sharp and high quality metal screen compared to other laptops in this same price range because it has a full HD IPS Display which you won’t find on most other laptops under $400.Black is actually black. The text is clear and easy to read.No blurry fonts.  No reflection from the lights in the room and high contrast. Matte Crisp.

Viewing angles (up/down and left/right) are pretty wide (a lot wider than TN panel).

The screen on this laptop is worth the price by itself and much better than laptops at twice or three times the price.     I do not see much difference to my gaming laptop which cost me thrice. Slim bezel.I also found the “Full 1080 HD” sticker on the screen bezel easy to take off.

I also saw this laptop has a night setting, which I love. Starting at 8pm, the display minimizes blue light so as not to mess with your body’s sleep cycle. That, to me, was a HUGE plus!

• Excellent Performance

Acer Aspire 5 A515-43-R19L comes with high level specs: AMD Ryzen 3 3200U Dual-Core Processor 2.6GHz . This makes it an excellent machine for web surfing, basic video & photo editing, document editing and for mild gaming or CAD, but for basic web browsing, office use, and video streaming, it will do well. I

The load times are ridiculously fast. Once you configure the laptop, even after shut down, it will take less then 10 seconds to boot to the login screen.

The Ryzen chip inside can be overclocked (with Precision Boost up to 3.5 GHz (Up to 4MB L3 Cache)) if you feel like it, but it is not needed. It is plenty fast for a laptop (not super fast). Stays cool since its a small chip. Fan isnt loud at 100%.

The chip, an AMD Ryzen 3 3200U, does pretty well for my purposes. Again, gamers may have a different opinion so YMMV. I’ve had no issues when viewing training or YouTube videos.

AMD Ryzen CPUs at this end of the market are just a better performing chip vs. Intel primarily because the graphics performance is significantly better. The processor is pretty fast, on par with Intel Core i3 netbooks, and the integrated Radeon graphics easily beats the integrated graphics in Intel chips, especially with the upgraded dual channel memory, but obviously this  is NOT a gaming machine by any means.

The integrated GPU is good for 30fps, 720p, low/medium settings gaming. It’s good if you want to game in a pinch.

It can play any “last gen” game – so Rocket League, Skyrim, Minecraft – at high settings 60fps nbd and generally anything that’s been ported to mobile (Fortnite) will run at 60fps at low settings. I will say this again: Your performance will be LITERALLY cut in half without that $14 stick of RAM. Just get the stupid thing. Don’t be a dipstick. Don’t believe me? Look up the benchmarks for this laptop. The CPU cores communicate over the RAM and so do the APU cores. Slowing down traffic by half also slows down *EVERYTHING* by half because it’s going to be the bottleneck once performance otherwise maxes out – and with 2 cores it will max out quickly with games.

I also added a 4GB stick of RAM to bump the total memory up to 8GB, which is more than enough for this laptop – you’re not going to be playing any crazy games or doing any heavy duty stuff like video processing anyways.

If you plan on gaming heavily, you may want to look elsewhere, as that’s not the strength of this particular model.

If you need more power than this machine has, Acer does offer a similar package with upgrades to the Ryzen 5 chip, 8gb of RAM, and 250gb of hard drive space as well as some other goodies:

• Good Backlite Keyboard

Acer Aspire 5 Slim laptop is equipped with a full Qwerty keyboard with numeric keypad. The keyboard feels very natural &  is very easy to type on. Ever sit down at a new computer/keyboard, and it takes you some adjustment to learn how to type on it without hitting the wrong keys? Not with this laptop — there was zero learning curve, and I’m typing 100wpm as always with zero adjustment period.

I’m a typist so the “feel” of a keyboard and typing is very important to me. My fingers fly over this keyboard! The letters appearing as I type appear to be flowing as words form.

The little numeric pad to the right is great. Yes, the keys are a little smaller, so larger fingers may not care for this, but it’s great when doing a lot of numeric work. I also love that the “backspace” button is larger- not like some keyboards I’ve had when it’s the same size as a letter key.

Page down and Enter at the numeric pad is just awesome. Tactile feel real solid.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the keyboard lights up!.

The keyboard has a back lit so you can see the keys if you need to take a look at them while typing especially in a dark environment and its note worthy that the keyboard backlight stays on while you’re typing and only turns off when you aren’t (after a set amount of time) and you must press a key for it to illuminate again i.e. moving the mouse/touchpad does not cause the keys to light up. You must touch a key.

Frankly I never expected backlit keyboard at this price. Fantastic !

However, it should be noted that there is no light on the keyboard to tell you when cap lock or num lock are on. I found this to be a problem straight out of the box setting it up when I couldn’t tell what were the capital letters in the password I was putting in!

Laptop is also equipped with a spacious and responsive touchpad

• Good Battery Life

I found that the battery is good for almost 3 hours and charges very quickly.

Battery life on any laptop is dependent upon the programs and use. Don’t expect 10 hours. 5 to 7 hours of word processing, surfing, video/photo editing, and some streaming.

• Decent Audio Quality

I did notice the speakers are very weak i.e. the two speakers are located on the bottom front lip. When trying to use Zoom I can’t always hear what people are saying (their microphones arent good/loud enough) even if my volume is at 95% ….but honestly I am seldom impressed with laptop speakers. That’s when Bluetooth speakers come into play and you can do that easily with this.

If you are not satisfied with the audio quality, buy the top rated OontZ Angle 3 (3rd Gen) – Bluetooth Portable Speaker  and connect it to your Acer Aspire 5, if you need a better audio quality.

Wireless Connectivity

Wi-Fi super fast compared to my previous laptop that I used the Acer to replace with. On a Satellite internet connection the Wi-Fi card (internal) process the signal efficiently enough to stream HQ video with no problems.

it’s wireless connectivity is excellent as well.

• HD Webcam (1280 x 720)

Acer claims their Acer Aspire 5 Laptop is equipped with an HD webcam. However i and many customers have noted that the webcam is not very crisp. However  its definitely more than adequate for Zoom and Google Hangouts.

• Microphone is Decent

Microphone is decent.

Built-in webcam and microphone that I need for my lectures.

good battery life, fingerprint reader, ample ports with HDMI, light weight, slim bezel, and fast.

Fully upgradable!

PROS:

• Great price
• Powerful Processor AMD Ryzen 3 3200U Dual-Core Processor 2.6GHz with Precision Boost up to 3.5 GHz (Up to 4MB L3 Cache.
•  Boots in 10 seconds. Reboots in 20.
• Fast SSD/NVMe
• Excellent screen: Super high quality. No reflection from the lights in the room.
• Light Weight: Sturdy yet lighter than a usual 15 inch laptop.
• Build and Looks: Aluminum. Looks like a $1000+ laptop.
• Dual speakers sound pleasingly well (after you fix the volume issue as directed above).
• Heat from the laptop is at least 50% lesser than any others in its league. So your lap will not burn. 🙂
• Keyboard is soft, feels very natural &  is very easy to type on…and has numberpad & Backlit too.
• Great trackpad, positioned well for right-handed users
• Laptop is equiped with good amount of starting RAM (4gb)
• Has Extra slot for 2.5″ SSD and extra RAM slot
• Great battery life

CONS

• Taking the back lid off (to install RAM/HDD) is challenging. Must have plastic tools. You may end up breaking/scratching the back lid (plastic housing).
• BIOS has very less customization settings. (Hold F2 and power of the laptop to enter BIOS)
• No lights to indicate when Caps Lock or Num Lock are ON/OFF.
• Small SSD but you get what I pay for
• The touch pad is very large and is impossible to avoid while typing on the keyboard and so I had a lot of typing corrupted by false hits on the touch pad. I finally turned the touch pad off via the Ubuntu mouse control panel and used an external mouse and the problem was solved.I finally turned the touch pad off via the Ubuntu mouse control panel and used an external mouse and the problem was solved.
• The keyboard backlight turns off after a set amount of time, you must press a key for it to illuminate again. Moving the mouse/touchpad does not cause the keys to light up. You must touch a key. I see the is a BIOS option for disabling the timeout. I’ve disabled it but it appears to have no effect. It still turns off.
• The screen is not a touch-screen which, I suppose, at this price point you can’t really expect. In my opinion, that feature is stupid in a laptop
• Windows “S” is installed; it is limited to running apps available only in the Microsoft Store.

Suggested upgrade – move up to Windows 10 Home. It’s a free upgrade – with the caveat that you cannot return to “S” version.

To upgrade to Home version (instructions as of the date of this review; I assume/accept no responsibility if things go awry. You may want to Google instructions to verify):

Go to Settings.
Then select Update & Security.
In the left sidebar, click Activation.
Then click “Go to the Store.”
Press the “Get” button under the “Switch out of S Mode” section and in a very short time you’ll be assigned the Windows Home version.

• Sound: Not loud enough. Sound isn’t very loud when turned up all the way. Sound is decent, but not stellar.
• The trackpad feels a bit “cheap” when pressing at the edges, but it works very well and the response is really good overall.
• The main body of the laptop isn’t aluminum, it’s plastic. This wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that the plastic feels cheap. Really cheap. I’d go so far as to say flimsy. This doesn’t inspire confidence that it will hold up for the long run.
• Battery life: 7.5 hours in the advertisement is a joke. Expect around 4 hours of continuous use, compared to the 7+ the manufacturer claims. I’m assuming the battery can be upgraded to a better one at a later time, since it’s easily accessible when the back cover is removed. However, don’t be put off when you find yourself plugging in for a recharge a little sooner than expected. It’s still “average” compared to most other laptops.
• CPU fan noise: Somewhat annoying.
• Function key and arrow keys are smaller than normal size. sometimes I need to move my finger slowly not to miss right key :-).
• This PC includes Microsoft Windows 10 in S mode. I suppose some people will be ok with this mode, as it enhances security and performance by only allowing programs available in the Microsoft Store. The vast majority of us however, will want to switch out of this mode ASAP. Fortunately switching modes is a very simple procedure. Here is the process:

Go to Settings  > Update & Security  > Activation.

In the Switch to Windows 10 Home section, select Go to the Store. There is also an “upgrade your edition of Windows” section on the screen during this step, do NOT click the “Go to the Store” link below that!

On the Switch out of S mode page that appears in the Microsoft Store, select the Get button.

Congratulations! Your new computer now has Microsoft windows 10 home, without the restrictions of S mode!

(minor) CONS:

• No ‘CAPS Lock’ and ‘Numeric Key Lock’ indicator lights: Very inconvenient.
• No Memory Card slot.
• No dedicated home key, but turn off numlock and you have those keys
• No USB Type C ports, for future proofing
• Comes with Windows Home S, but is easy to fix
• The system seems to reserve 3 GB RAM (give or take) for graphics and other stuff. To me, that’s unacceptable and if I had known that I would have passed on it. I installed an extra 4 GB ram, but the system kept reporting only 5.9 GB Ram is usable. Defective Ram – I thought. Went ahead and slapped 16 GB Ram into it, but now using Speccy and Windows reopt only 13.9 GB is usable. If you are considering buying this machine, paste this into your Google machine: Aspire A515-43 usable ram less than installed – and see for yourself. It’s a known issue and there isn’t a real fix for it.  So when purchasing this laptop on Amazon, consider adding an 8GB RAM to your cart.
• Has a bit of a muffled quality with the speakers being on the bottom of the laptop (at the two corners of the laptop). However you can fixed it as follows : Settings -> Sound Settings -> Sound Control Panel -> Select Speakers (Realtek Audio) -> Properties Button -> Advanced tab -> DESELECT “Exclusive Mode – Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device” and also “Hardware Acceleration – Allow Hardware Acceleration of audio with this device” and apply. After this setting you will enjoy the dual speakers at the best volume.

Product Description from Manufacturer (Acer Aspire 5 Slim laptop model A515-43-R19L Specs)

• AMD Ryzen 3 3200U Dual Core Processor (Up to 3.5GHz); 4GB DDR4 Memory; 128GB PCIe NVMe SSD
• 15.6 inches full HD (1920 x 1080) widescreen LED backlit IPS display; AMD Radeon Vega 3 Mobile Graphics
• 1 USB 3.1 Gen 1 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports & 1 HDMI port with HDCP support
• 802.11ac Wi-Fi; Backlit Keyboard; Up to 7.5 hours battery life
• Windows 10 in S mode. Maximum power supply wattage: 65 Watts

Technical details