BEST BUDGET LAPTOP

ACER ASPIRE E5-575-539R $699 | acer.com.au

Acer’s Aspire range includes some pretty solid offerings at this budget end of town, with select retailers selling this 15.6-inch model for a veryreasonable $699. For that price you get the basics: a passable 1,366 x 768-pixel LCD screen combined with a Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 1TB 5,400RPM hard drive running Windows 10 Home for the OS. What you don’t get is something that’s particularly portable — at 2.2kg, it’s getting on the heavy side, and the tiny 4-cell battery doesn’t last very long; you’ll be lucky to get a couple of hours before needing to recharge. Still, the value here is undeniable.