Acer Aspire 3 15 (2023) Laptop Review

The Acer Aspire 3 is a simple, basic-looking laptop with a silver-color chassis, black keycaps, and black bezels. The air vents are on the back of the device, and the speakers are on the bottom, near the front.

The build quality is okay. It's all plastic and feels a little cheap, exhibiting a fair amount of flex in the display and keyboard deck. However, the finish is fairly scratch-resistant and doesn't pick up many fingerprints. There's a small gap between the display and the bottom bezel, although that could just be our unit, and it doesn't affect the laptop's functionality. The feet feel strong and stick firmly to the bottom. If you want a laptop with better build quality, check out the MSI Prestige 14 Evo (2023).

The hinge is sub-par. It doesn't feel smooth when opening and closing the lid, and it isn't very stable, resulting in a fair amount of wobble when touching the display or typing aggressively. There's a little too much resistance in the hinge to open the laptop with one hand. If you prefer a 2-in-1 convertible with a 360-degree hinge, check out the Acer Aspire 3 Spin 14 (2023).

The serviceability is passable. Accessing the internals is easy; you only need to remove 11 Philips screws and pry open the bottom panel. The storage drive is user-replaceable, but there's only one slot.

• Acer Aspire 3 laptop
• 45W power adapter and cord
• Documentation

The Acer Aspire 3's display looks decently sharp and provides enough room for split-screen multitasking. Its 16:9 aspect ratio is great for media consumption as most online videos are in the same format; however, a taller 16:10 or even 3:2 aspect ratio would have been preferable for productivity, as it lets you see more information at once when reading a document or website, reducing the need to scroll.

This laptop is only available with a 60Hz display. It has a very slow response time causing visible ghosting, so it isn't ideal for viewing fast-moving content or gaming.

The Acer Aspire 3's display has a bad contrast ratio. Blacks look gray, even under typical indoor lighting conditions.

The screen doesn't get very bright, meaning you may have visibility issues in bright environments. However, it's great for dark room viewing, as it gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which helps reduce eye strain. If you want a laptop with a brighter display, check out the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i 15 (2023).

The reflection handling is good. Its matte coating does a good job of diffusing and reducing the intensity of bright reflections. The reflections make it hard to see dark-color content, but it isn't an issue when viewing light-color content with the screen at maximum brightness.

The black uniformity is awful. The whole screen looks blue instead of gray or black, and the bottom half looks much lighter due to the TN panel's bad vertical viewing angle.

The Acer Aspire 3 Slim's display has a poor horizontal viewing angle. The image gets dimmer and more washed out very quickly as you move to the side. It also has a greenish hue. You have to be close or directly in front of the screen to get the best image quality.

The vertical viewing angle is bad. The image quality degrades very quickly from above and below, more so than when moving to the side. There's also chroma inversion when viewing from below, which is typical for TN panels. You'll have to keep the screen facing you directly if you want the best image quality, which might be difficult in tight places like a bus or airplane.

The Acer Aspire 3's display accuracy is terrible out of the box. Most colors are inaccurate due to the panel's narrow color gamut, and the white balance is visibly off. The color temperature is significantly colder than the standard 6500K target, giving the image a very noticeable bluish tint. The gamma doesn't follow the sRGB curve; dark scenes are slightly too dark, while bright scenes are too bright.

The display's color gamut is bad. It doesn't even have full sRGB coverage, meaning most content will look slightly washed out. This panel isn't suitable for color work like photo or video editing.

The backlight is flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain.

The keyboard is sub-par. The layout is fairly standard and easy to get used to. It feels spacious except for the Numpad, which feels more cramped because the keys are narrower. The keycaps feel smooth but cheap. The keys are stable and have a good amount of travel; however, they're a little mushy, and they can cause some fatigue over an extended period, as the operating force is on the higher side. Typing noise is low and isn't bothersome in quiet settings. Unfortunately, there's no backlighting. If you want a similar laptop with a better keyboard, check out the ASUS Vivobook 16 M1605 (2023).

The touchpad is okay. It's reasonably large and feels relatively smooth. It tracks movements and gestures well; however, palm rejection doesn't always work, and because of this issue, it's sometimes hard to perform actions like dragging and dropping. You can only click in the bottom half of the touchpad, and the click mechanism doesn't feel satisfying.

The Acer Aspire 3 A315's speakers are disappointing. They sound unnatural and shouty, with no bass whatsoever. On the upside, they get pretty loud with minimal compression artifacts at max volume.

The webcam is acceptable. The image looks soft and slightly overexposed, with some noise in darker areas. The colors aren't exactly true to life; however, they aren't so off as to make the image look unnatural. The microphone's gain is a little too high, but it otherwise sounds clear, with very little background noise.

The Acer Aspire 3 has a great port selection. One of the two USB-A ports supports USB 3.2 Gen. 1 data transfer speed (up to 5Gbps), while the other supports USB Gen 3.2 Gen. 2 (up to 10Gbps). The USB-A supports USB 3.2 Gen. 2 and DisplayPort Alt Mode. You can charge the laptop via USB-C.

The wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX101.

The Acer Aspire 3 is only available with an Intel Core i3-N305 CPU. Unlike Intel's U- and P-series processors, which have a mix of performance and efficiency cores, this CPU only has efficiency cores. It can handle general productivity tasks like web browsing, text processing, spreadsheets, and video playback. However, don't expect to do anything intensive like video editing or gaming. If you want a laptop with faster CPU options, check out the Dell Inspiron 14 (2023).

This laptop is only available with Intel UHD graphics. This low-power integrated GPU can only handle light productivity tasks like web browsing and video playback. You can play some simple, puzzle-like games, but you may have to play with low graphical settings.

You can get this laptop with 8GB or 16GB of RAM. The memory isn't user-upgradeable because it's soldered onto the motherboard.

You can configure this laptop with 256GB or 512GB of storage.

The Acer Aspire 3 has a decent overall score in the Geekbench 5 benchmarks. Its single-thread performance isn't as good as Intel's U- and P-series processors because the Core i3-N305 only has efficiency cores; however, it's still fast enough for general productivity tasks. The performance is roughly equivalent to an Intel 10th Gen. CPU. Its multi-thread performance is good but significantly behind other current CPUs with more cores and threads. In short, the Core i3-N305 can easily handle light tasks, like text processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, but it'll struggle in demanding workloads like video editing and 3D graphics. The Intel UHD graphics perform poorly in GPU computing tasks, which is typical for integrated GPUs. If you want a laptop with a faster CPU, check out the MSI Modern 14 (2023).

The Acer Aspire 3 performs decently well in the Cinebench R23 benchmarks. The CPU isn't very fast because it only has efficiency cores, but it can maintain near-full performance for a long time. You can do some CPU rendering work; it'll just take a long time, which isn't ideal if you have strict deadlines. If you need to render images or perform other demanding tasks, it's best to get a mobile workstation or gaming laptop with an H-series CPU.

The performance in Blender is inadequate. It takes the CPU a long time to render the simple bmw27 scene. If you need to do 3D rendering work, it's best to get a laptop with a dedicated GPU, as most discrete graphics can do the job much faster than the CPU.

The Intel UHD graphics perform poorly in the Basemark GPU benchmark. It can only handle simple, puzzle-like games, and even then, you may need to play with low graphical settings.

Borderlands 3 isn't playable at 1080p on the Acer Aspire 3. The gameplay is too choppy, even with low graphical settings, and it sometimes freezes completely. The CPU and its integrated graphics can't handle this and other similarly demanding games.

The performance in Civilization VI is awful. The average frame rate at 1080p with high settings is too low, even for a strategy game. With low graphical settings, it's a little choppy but playable, although the average turn time is pretty long.

CS:GO runs poorly at 1080p. The gameplay is too choppy with high settings. The average frame rate is too low, and there are regular frame drops. You can get over 60fps with low settings, but you'll still experience some stutters, which isn't ideal for an FPS game.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider isn't playable at 1080p, even with low graphical settings. The gameplay is far too choppy. You can expect similar performance in other graphically demanding AAA games.

The keyboard is cool at idle, and the fan is completely silent. Under load, the keyboard only gets mildly warm, and the fan is audible but not annoying.

The Acer Aspire 3 has a few pre-installed applications, including:

• Acer Product Registration: Lets you register your laptop with Acer for warranty purposes.
• Acer Configuration Manager: Checks for driver updates.
• ExpressVPN: Virtual private network service. Requires subscription to use.
• McAfee LiveSafe: Antivirus and internet security software.