Acer Aspire 5 A515-56-33C0 Slim Laptop | 15.6 Full HD IPS Display | 11th Gen Intel Core i3-1115G4 Processor | 4GB DDR4 |128GB NVMe SSD | WiFi 6 | Backlit Keyboard | Windows 11 Home in S Mode

Purchased this upper end Acer laptop in July 2021 for our son to use his freshman year in college. He took excellent care of it, using a padded sleeve to carry it, and used it gently, but on April 22, 2022 it simply was dead when he opened it for class in the morning. Perfect timing for it to die with his last week of classes and final exams coming up. 9 months worth of use for this is just terrible service life for the cost. This was our 2nd Acer laptop purchased over the past couple of years (the other ones mousepad failed in a year), but I will be avoiding Acer products from now on. Highly disappointed.

Would be nice too have one HDMI slot, but over all I like it a lot.

My wife is a technical writer, and this is by far her favorite laptop after a little more than 2 months ownership. She loves the feel of the keyboard, the light weight, bright screen, and lighted keys (for when shes writing late at night). In the past 10 years she has used Dell, Lenovo and HP laptops, but never loved any of them the way she loves this Acer. She even prefers the 15.6 screen size over her previous 17 HP. She has a 27 1440p monitor for working with 2 pages at a time, but this laptop goes everywhere with her and the screen is plenty big for polishing something shes already written.

I purchased this laptop to use for basic functions only. Microsoft Office, browsing, and Zoom calls. 4GB RAM is not sufficient for Windows 11 or these functions, but I knew that upon purchasing. I immediately added another 8GB RAM. However, there were still significant lag and audio issues. I made sure all the drivers and other updates were completed, but the sound would be distorted or not work at all sometimes while on Zoom calls. It could handle Office functions, but anything beyond that was a real struggle. I returned the laptop as it could not even handle these basic functions.

good

All the latest technologies from intel in one unit. You will enjoy testing all the latest code in Windows 10/Ubuntu 21.04 dual boot system. Windows update will install the latest bios v1.08 and latest intel Xe drivers. Set admin bios password will allow disabling of secure boot for optimum dual boot with Linux. Also disable fast boot in bios and disable Hibernate in Windows.

Was thrilled when received, but within two weeks, my new Acer failed to boot. No damage, just stopped working. On line support excellent but ended up needing to send to Acer for service. Returned and working, but Ive lost confidence in this purchase. Time will tell.

for my purposes like excel, word, browsing, social media, blogging, light photo-editing, and other non-intensive (non-gaming) activities, this laptop is great. its fast, 0 to 60 in 10 seconds (the fingerprint reader helps rather than using the password). its quiet; its replacing an old dell inspiron 15 which had become a constant whir of fan and hard drive so that the acer feels almost eerily quiet. i did due diligence and the big bang of cpu, graphics, fhd, ram, ssd, wifi 6, backlit kb, and fpr beats anything out there (theres an asus vivobook thats comparable for a little more and was the last competitor in the running). who knows what the build quality will give me for years of usage but if its half-decent, it shouldnt become obsolete in just a few. my only complaint as of now is the ever-so-slightly crooked full hd 1080 sticker on the left-bottom bezel of the screen, but im an ex-qc guy whose eye has been spoiled by too many close inspections. but if anything else wrong appears (knock wood), ill edit this review. UPDATE 9/27/21 So I have discovered a quirk which could possibly be a problem if allowed to be one. When the unit is in sleep mode while plugged in (charging), the fan will turn on and apparently stay on while charging. I didnt check to see how long. And Im not sure how hot the unit actually is. The laptop is fine when shut down and charging. It is also fine when on and in use while charging (in fact, the fan is never on for my particular usages except when first booting it up from shutdown). But if, for example, the unit is plugged in while in use, and I simply shut the cover, causing the unit to go into sleep mode, the fan will turn on. Its not a big deal to me. I still give it five stars. I have been able to adapt. But I thought it worth mentioning.

I like the backlit keys. I would like longer battery life. Great product for the price.

There were some fan and screen issues until updates were done, which included BIOS updates. Once the updates were easily done then the laptop works like a charm. The extra RAM, I7 and IRIS video makes it pretty zippy. Used by college student.