Acer Aspire 3 Review 2024: A Decent Budget Laptop For Students
If you are not a gamer and just want a basic laptop for everyday work, a budget laptop will do just fine. They don’t have a full-blown gaming laptop’s colorful RGB-fused bells and whistles. Therefore, if you are on a tight budget for buying a laptop under $500, then the Acer Aspire 3 might be worth your time.
With an AMD Ryzen 3 processor. With 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD, this laptop is perfect for working professionals and students. Therefore, read this Acer Aspire 3 review 2024 now to make a good buying decision!
Acer Aspire 3 Specifications And Price
The primary Acer Aspire 3 specs of the Acer Aspire 3 A315-24PT-R08Z are:
| Operating System (OS) | Windows 11 Home (64-bit) |
| Display | 15.6” FHD LCD touchscreen (1920 x 1080 resolution, 60 Hz refresh rate) |
| Processor | Quad-Core AMD Ryzen 3 7320U processor (2.4 GHz – 4.10 GHz) |
| Graphics | Integrated AMD Radeon HD graphics |
| Memory | 8 GB LPDDR5 RAM |
| Storage | 256 GB NVMe SSD |
| Webcam | 720p HD Webcam |
| Audio | 2x Stereo Speakers |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth 5.2, WiFi 802.11b/g/n |
| Ports | 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, 1x HDMI 2.1 |
| Battery | 3-cell Lithium Polymer battery @ 45 W |
| Dimensions (H x W x D) | 0.74” x 14.29” x 9.4” |
| Weight | 3.92 lb (1.77 kg) |
| Sie Colors | Pure Silver |
The current Acer Aspire 3 price in the USA is $499.99, as per its official price on the Acer Store. However, you can get it cheap at Amazon for only $292 ($200 off)!
Acer Aspire 3 Review: My Experience
I got to test a few budget laptops recently, with the Acer Aspire 3 A315-24PT-R08Z being one of them. Moreover, I also tested other budget laptops like the Dell Inspiron 15 and the Lenovo ThinkPad E14. All of these laptops have a price tag under $500 – making them great budget laptops for students and corporate workers.
While I did not expect performance on par with gaming laptops like the Asus TUF Gaming F15, I still did test some games here, pushing the power of its GPU and CPU to its limits. Therefore, keep on reading to learn how it went!
Design: Bland And Dated
The Acer Aspire 3 has a dated design. It looks simple and minimalistic, having a barebones approach to its design. Therefore, it’s not as minimalistic and graceful as you would expect from the Apple MacBook M7 12in M7.
The bezels are quite thick, and the entire design appears to have a blocky shape. In addition, the screen’s hinge is wobbly, as it shook when my room’s fan was on. Moreover, the entire laptop feels flimsy, with other cheap laptops having better build quality.
Additionally, this laptop is on the heavier side, weighing almost 4 pounds. Most other budget laptops weigh a lot less.
Overall, I was not satisfied with the Acer Aspire 3 design, as it feels dated and not tough at all. Moreover, the pure Silver color makes it look more lustrous than it is.
Display: Decent Touchscreen With Washed-Out Colors
If you compare the Acer Aspire 3 display with its elder sibling – the Acer Aspire 5 – they are quite different. While the Aspire 5 has a more vivid 1080p display, the Acer Aspire 3 falls flat here.
While the 15.6” size and the 1080p resolution might be the same, the colors feel washed out here. As usual, I tested Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse here, and its wacky world doesn’t feel vividly visceral at all. Moreover, the same goes when I played Overwatch 2 and Valorant – their colors looked bland – which they shouldn’t have.
Surprisingly, the Acer Aspire3 touchscreen feels responsive to all my touch gestures. Regarding responsiveness, the touchscreen fees are similar to the Dell Inspiron 15 and the HP Chromebook x360.
Overall, the touchscreen is decent, albeit having washed-out colors. Therefore, the Inspiron 15 should be your deal if you want a better touchscreen.
Keyboard And Touchpad: Good For The Price
Even though the Acer Aspire 3 is a budget laptop, it has a decent keyboard and touchpad. As someone who spends his entire day typing, this keyboard feels solid and spacious. In addition, it has a numpad – a necessity for me.
It has decent key travel, and the keys never feel flimsy while I type at full speed. The keypress registration is also accurate since I didn’t experience any moment where my keypress didn’t register.
However, unlike gaming laptops like the MSI Cyborg 15, the keys don’t have ghosting and key rollover. Additionally, it doesn’t have any backlit keys as well, making it almost unusable in a dark room.
Moreover, the touchpad is big and spacious, measuring 3” by 5”. It feels responsive and is smooth to the touch. Therefore, I don’t have much to say about it since it does its job well. I prefer to use a wireless mouse anyway.
Webcam: Pretty Good For Video Calls
The biggest sunrise I got while using the Acer Aspire 3 was its webcam. It has a 1080p webcam, which produces decent video and picture quality. Therefore, since I use Discord a lot, I was surprised to see it produce less grainy videos while video calling. However, it still doesn’t beat the Apple MacBook Air M1 webcam.
Speakers: Low Bass And High Treble
The Acer Aspire 3 speakers aren’t that great, considering it’s a budget laptop. It sounds decent when used in your room. While it may not have the power of a Sonos Move 2, it’s decent if you don’t have any headphones. Moreover, the treble is higher than what I prefer, while the bass is a bit too low.
I still recommend using Skullcandy headphones like the Skullcandy Crusher Evo.
Connectivity And Ports: A Few More Would’ve Been Better
The Acer Aspire 3 has both the necessary connectivity options – WLAN 802.11 with Bluetooth 5.2. Since both are modern, you should have no problems connecting any Bluetooth device here.
Regarding the ports on its side, a few more could have been perfect. While it has two Type-A ports and one Type-C port, one more would be ideal. In addition, while it does have an HDMI port, I miss the SD card reader and the RJ-45 ethernet port.
Battery Life: Pretty Good For A Budget Laptop
The Acer Aspire 3 has a fantastic battery life for a budget laptop. Upon casual use (typing on Google Docs, some YouTube, and lots of Opera browsing) – the battery lasted 10.5 hours. This is close to the 11 hours of battery life Acer advertises.
Therefore, you will have no problems with the Acer Aspire 3 battery life.
Performance: All Work And No Play
As I expect from a budget laptop, the Acer Aspire 3 does less graphically intensive tasks smoothly. Therefore, using this for routine office work or for your studies will serve your purpose fine.
However, its weak AMD Radeon HD integrated graphics makes it unsuitable for gaming. Therefore, it’s unsuitable for 3D animation and VFX work as well. I played Overwatch 2 and Valorant, getting less than 50 fps on both games at the lowest settings.
However, if you plan on playing online card games like the Legends of Runeterra, Hearthstone, or Pokemon TCG, it will perform smoothly. Therefore, its gaming performance falls flat against cheap gaming laptops like the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3.
Acer Aspire 3: Deal Or No Deal For 2024?
Since it’s a budget laptop, I won’t recommend the Acer Aspire 3 to gamers. However, I would still recommend it to students and corporate workers who perform no graphically-intensive tasks.
Therefore, the design, build quality, and screen are sub-par, the excellent battery life, solid keyboard and trackpad, and fantastic battery life might make up for it. However, I would still recommend students get Chromebooks like the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 for studies.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| • Solid keyboard and trackpad • Good 1080p webcam • Great battery life | • Dull screen and design • Poor gaming performance |
