Acer Aspire 5 (A517-51G-8433) Review

Here's something you don't see every day: a 17.3-inch laptop that's not a gaming rig or a mobile workstation.

Instead, the Acer Aspire 5 model A517-51G-8433 (starts at $499.99; $999.99 as tested) is a desktop-replacement aimed at home users who want a big screen for general applications and multimedia, whether that's surfing the web, watching movies on DVD (it has something else rarely seen these days, an optical drive), or casual gaming thanks to its entry-level discrete graphics.

Can you find a more powerful, game-worthy laptop for a thousand bucks? Sure, but it'll have a smaller screen.

Can you find a more powerful, game-worthy 17.3-inch laptop? Sure, but it'll cost at least $300 more.

Seen in that light, this big Acer fills an intriguing niche.

Relatively Svelte

At 6.61 pounds, the Aspire is downright light for a 17.3-inch system—compare the Razer Blade Pro at 7.7 pounds, the HP Omen 17 at 8.23, or the Alienware 17 R4 at 9.77 pounds.

The laptop measures 1.11 by 16.7 by 11.4 inches, landing between the Razer (0.9 by 16.7 by 11 inches) and the Omen (1.3 by 16.7 by 12 inches) in the "reasonable" rather than "whopper" size class.

If the 17.3-inch screen is too large for you, note that there is also a 15.6-inch version.

As a matter of fact, as of the time of this writing there were 34 configurations available between the two screen sizes.

The lid is textured black plastic with a centered chrome Acer logo.

Another logo appears below the wide-bezeled display and the Aspire name is etched into the screen hinge, which opens a full 180 degrees.

There's a brushed aluminum keyboard deck and wrist rest and thin chrome strips around the touchpad and front and side edges.

The overall effect is attractive if not luxurious.

On the laptop's left side, you'll find an SD card slot, an HDMI port, a USB 3.0 Type-A port with device charging, a USB-C port, an Ethernet port, and a Kensington lock slot.

The right edge is more retro, with the DVD-RW drive and two USB 2.0 ports as well as an audio jack and the connector for the Acer's AC adapter.

A screwdriver lets you remove two panels on the bottom to access the system's RAM and hard drive for user upgrades.

The Aspire's full HD (1,920-by-1,080) in-plane switching (IPS) panel looks great, with vivid colors and contrast, plenty of brightness, and broad viewing angles.

We wish we could say the same for shots from the webcam, which delivers typically dim and grainy generic-laptop-class stills and video.

Would-be Windows Hello users will find neither face recognition nor a fingerprint reader.

The keyboard is not backlit and has the Apple- or HP-style row of cursor arrows, with half-sized up and down arrows sandwiched between full-sized left and right, that we always complain about as inferior to an inverted T.

The Delete key, too, is tiny and almost hidden between the Pause/Break and Home keys on the top row; we sometimes hit Home when we wanted Delete.

The keyboard permits fast typing but has an oddly hollow feel.

The touchpad is satisfactory.

Bottom-mounted speakers produce pleasing sound up to 75 percent or 80 percent volume, above which things get rough and raucous.

Instrumentals and vocals are accurate, though bass gets shortchanged.

Acer preloads apps and sites ranging from the useful (Dashlane, Firefox) to the commercial (Priceline) and backs the Aspire 5 with a one-year warranty.

Leaving Watts on the Table

While most big-screen laptops use Intel's 45-watt mobile processors, for this model Acer chose one of the 15-watt U-series chips normally found in smaller systems—the Core i7-8550U, a 1.8GHz (4.0GHz turbo) quad-core—and teamed it with 12GB of RAM and Nvidia's GeForce MX150 graphics, which we found in our review of the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 UX461UN ($1,499.11 at Amazon) easily outperforms most integrated graphics but come nowhere near Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1000 series.

Storage comes in the form of a 256GB solid-state drive plus a 1TB hard drive.

Our configuration of the 17-inch Aspire 1 is the most powerful, and most expensive.

An entry-level model is half the price with a Core i3 CPU with integrated graphics and no SSD (among other concessions), and various configurations are available in between.

See How We Test Laptops

In the absence of directly competitive systems, we matched the Acer against a comparably priced 15.6-inch gamer (the Lenovo Legion Y520) and more expensive 17.3-inch rig (the PowerSpec 1710); the ZenBook Flip 14, which has the same CPU and GPU; and our test system's budget desktop-replacement cousin, the Acer Aspire E 15.

The big Acer posted an excellent score of 3,321 in our PCMark 8 Work office productivity benchmark, but underwhelmed in our Cinebench CPU measurement and Handbrake video-editing exercise, even compared with the Asus with the same processor.

The Aspire 5 and the ZenBook Flip went toe-to-toe in our graphics tests, with the former winning the demanding 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme contest.

The GeForce GTX-equipped Legion and especially the PowerSpec were in another league, however, as (in a bad way) was the humble integrated-graphics Aspire E 15.

The Aspire 5 rewarded Acer's power-thrifty CPU choice with a solid nine-and-a-half-hour time in our battery-rundown test.

Easy on the Eyes

We confess that after reviewing a slew of 13.3-inch and 12.5-inch ultraportables, it's pleasant and relaxing to sit back and enjoy a 17.3-inch view; the Aspire 5's combination of screen size and 1080p resolution lets you see fine details without squinting.

If you collect movies on DVD rather than Blu-ray or streaming and are looking for a combination home PC and DVD viewer, this Acer is worth a look, though its performance trails that of big-screen gaming laptops and more potent desktop-replacements such as the admittedly far more expensive Editors' Choice Microsoft Surface Book 2 .

If you're just looking for a media-consumption device, there are also many other configurations of the Aspire 5 available at lower price points.