Acer Aspire 5 A514-54
Acer needs to upgrade the Aspire 5 chassis, which is looking tired even for a budget machine
PRICE £499 (£599 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk
The Acer Aspire 5 chassis – the A514-54 on test is one variation of many that Acer sells – has been largely unchanged for years, and it’s showing its age. The metal effect finish of the plastic chassis fools no-one, while the high-contrast black bezels around the screen simply look large. And while Acer quotes an 18mm height, it’s closer to 20mm in many places. At 1.7kg, this is a chunky machine by modern standards.
First impressions aren’t improved by a lacklustre screen. Whites aren’t true, and even when we pushed the brightness up to its 264cd/m 2 maximum – and tweaked its colour balance in software – this wasn’t a panel that brought joy to our eyes. If you plan to watch films on your laptop, then again we suggest steering clear, but this time due to a pair of tinny speakers.
We’ve seen worse webcams than the 720p unit here, which suffers from noise (as do so many of this month’s contenders), but it does at least capture natural looking colours. You won’t be embarrassed making video calls on it.
And there are other positives. With an 11th generation Core i5 in place, it’s a nippy machine that performed creditably in all our benchmarks, while only 11 crosshead screws separate eparate you from the internals. You can add a 2.5in SATA drive into an empty bay, replace the supplied 256GB M.2 SSD or upgrade the 4GB SODIMM (4GB of memory is also soldered oldered onto the motherboard).
Acer spoils you when it comes to connectivity too, with Wi-Fi 6 inside and five handy ports on the left of the machine: Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, two wo USB-A ports (a third sits on the right) ight) and a USB-C port.
Don’t expect great speeds from the he USB ports, however, as they’re stuck on the old USB 3.1 standard, confusingly rechristened USB 3.2 Gen 1, and that means a theoretical 5Gbits/sec maximum. The USB-C port is strictly for data transfers, too, with no support for Power Delivery or monitor connections. That’s a disappointing omission.
We were also left wanting when it came to Windows 11, with no support for this system by the time we concluded our tests in early January. An update should come, as the laptop is fully compatible, but you may have to wait a while.
Sadly, this all adds to a feeling that this laptop is falling behind the times. Especially when the HP Pavilion 14 offers a far more compelling package for a similar price.