Customer Ratings & Reviews

The battery drains very quickly. The graphics are good, the design is bad. The memory cards are soldered, and it is impossible to expand the memory.

Acer laptop review I am coming from a similar profile Acer laptop that has been my daily driver now for over a year. While they may look the same, they have two completely different use cases. One is meant to be light and portable and this one is meant to be more capable. I chose to “upgrade” to this laptop for a few reasons. 1), I have been extremely satisfied with my other Acer laptop in the last year. Much more so than I had ever expected I would be. I have other Windows laptops, and I pretty much stopped using all of them. The Acer never locks up, it never crashes, it never blue screens, unlike some of my others. 2) While I have been satisfied with my current laptop, Its graphics capabilities are a little too limited for my current needs and I really need the improved performance this laptop offers. 3) I do not need the capabilities that a really high end gaming laptop might offer, because I already have a gaming desktop, but I really needed something more portable than the desktop, that was more capable graphically than the laptop I was already using. That brought me to this. This fills a really specific niche. If you are an Avid gamer wanting to run the latest games at the highest resolutions and frame rates, you might be better to use the money towards a more capable gaming desktop and a more portable, less powerful laptop, or a much more expensive gaming laptop. I have a more capable gaming desktop, and I have a less powerful, more affordable, laptop, but I actually needed the niche that this laptop fills. Something more capable than my current laptop, but more portable than my current desktop. It does come with some trade offs though. Compared to my current laptop, it is 20% heavier. It is 30% more expensive. It has worse battery life. It runs hotter, the fans are louder, It has a much bigger power supply. It also can’t run off USB C, so I have to bring its bigger power supply with me if I am going to need to use it for more than a few hours. USB power supplies are basically a commodity at this point, and I tend to keep them in various locations where I work so I don’t need to carry one with me all the time, but that isn’t really going to work with this laptop. Compared to my current desktop, it has worse performance, less memory, a lower amount of storage, etc.. All I am saying is if you are not really part of the demographic this laptop is target to, there are concessions you are going to have to make if you choose this laptop. With that said, if you are in need of more performance than a base laptop in a still portable system, at a reasonable price point, let’s move forward. While this is a “gaming” laptop, I am also looking for the performance improvements, for CAD, and simulation as well. I do like to play games, but I have a gaming desktop for that, but I need the ability to do these other tasks while I am on the move, and as I don’t make long overnight trips much, I can wait to play games until I am home. Where I could see this laptop being good for a gamer is someone who travels a lot, or does not or cannot have a dedicated gaming desktop for some reason, or doesn’t want to pay a fortune for a high end gaming laptop. If I were a student, I am not sure I would want to be carrying this thing around on my back all day. The added weight, and lower battery life combined, will also probably have you toting the power supply too, adding even more weight. From a form factor standpoint, Acer has done a great job with this in that, when looking at the two Acer laptops side by side, I could barely register a difference in their physical dimensions or appearance. This laptop doesn’t “look” bigger, even though it is. They accomplished this by making the top and the sides virtually identical, but then bulging out the bottom, which makes it thicker without it actually “looking” like it is thicker. You can definitely feel the weight difference though when working with it actually sitting on your lap. Unfortunately another thing it has in common is when using it in your lap, it has a sensor to detect when the cover is closed. I carry a wallet in my front right pocket that has a magnetic money clip, and if I have my wallet in my pocket and set the laptop on my lap, it shuts the laptop down. Another thing I actually really like about the fact that it doesn’t really look any different, is some gaming laptops really try to stand out so when you see them you know they are a gaming laptop. This is much more subtle Other than the logo on the top of the cover and below the screen, this doesn’t look much different than the laptop I already have. I actually really like that. I think it looks more at home in a professional environment than some gaming laptops do. For some this could be a con and they may think it is a boring design, but for me, it is a pro. The extra thickness also allows for a full Ethernet port, something I have not had on the smaller lighter laptops I typically use, in quite some time. I actually do need a physical Ethernet connection fairly frequently for work that I do, so it is nice to have. I was actually kind of surprised, at this price point, that it did not have a fingerprint scanner. I have much less expensive laptops that do. As for the finish, it is plastic, but feels solid and well built, but the surface REALLY shows the oil from fingerprints badly just from touching it. I have included a picture to show this, taken only 1 day after taking it out of the box. No, my hands are not really that dirty. My other laptop, I would see this on the trackpad, and you do see it on the trackpad here too, but it wasn’t as noticeable on the surface finish of the other one. Setup I took this out of the box, turned it on, logged in with my Microsoft account. It asked if I wanted to restore a backup from my other Acer laptop, which I agreed to, and that was pretty much it for setting it up. Gaming I went to open Steam, and it said it had not been installed already during the restore, since it was not available in Microsoft’s app store, so I went ahead and installed that. I then opened Steam and logged in, and it immediately recognized my gaming desktop on the network. Before installing anything I just selected the option of streaming a game, Portal RTX, that was installed on the gaming desktop. I heard my gaming desktop fire up, and then I played the game with no issues over my wifi network. Next, I actually installed, Portal RTX locally on this laptop. This is a very small game, compared to modern games. With some modern games using 70-100gb of storage, the 512gb of storage this laptop has is one concession on this laptop that you may want to really consider if you are going to be doing a lot of gaming with it. When I went to run the game, Steam actually suggested I still stream the game, instead of running it locally, suggesting I might experience better performance. I told it to run locally instead. It came up, but was not playable. The sound was echoing like an interrupt gone bad. There was a prompt suggesting I could press alt-x to access some graphics settings, but when I tried that, it locked up hard and I had to kill it. It was around this time, I got a pop up message warning me my battery was about to die. I thought I had had it plugged in this entire time, but I went and pressed on the power cord, and it did click in, maybe an extra mm or two and indicated it was charging. After that, once it was plugged in, I tried running Portal RTX again in 1080 mode, locally, and it played well and was getting 36 to 52 fps. Next I installed Bioshock 2 remastered, set it to 1080 mode and I didn’t see it dip below 170fps while playing. Next I installed Quake ][ RTX. I played the first couple of levels and it maintained a steady 64 fps. These are the kinds of games I play. It handled them all well, so I really need nothing more than this, and I think it is affordable. I am perfectly fine with 1080p gaming on a laptop. Not everyone is. So it really comes down to what your requirements are. After installing just these few older games though, I was already down in the 300gb of free space on the hard drive range, so I could see the amount of storage really being a problem fairly quickly. Summary: If you do everything online, then this is probably not for you. Stick with something thinner, lighter, more portable, more affordable. If you really want the latest games at the highest resolution, then this is probably not for you. Get a gaming desktop, or pay 2x-3x more for a better gaming laptop, But if you want to be able to play games on the go and don’t mind playing them in 1080p, and you don’t want to spend a fortune to do so, this may be exactly what you are looking for. I definitely fall in the niche that this laptop was designed for, and for me this laptop fills my needs almost perfectly. However, I realize it may not be right for everyone and I hope this review helps you decide if it is right for you. I am very happy with it and would highly recommend it.

Overall great first time gaming laptop. The only thing I would've loved is more memory, but haven't bumped into any issues and my daughter gets to play her games with no delay or freezing.

System worked great then suddenly has issues allocating RamProperly .