Acer Aspire 5 A515-43-R19L Slim Laptop (15.6″ Full HD, AMD Ryzen 3 3200U / Vega 3, 4GB DDR4, 128GB SSD)

The Acer Aspire 5 A515-43-R19L is a budget-friendly 15.6-inch laptop. Although it is in the sub-400-dollar range, the Acer Aspire 5 A515-43-R19L offers quite decent specs.

Surprisingly at its price point, the A515-43-R19L sports a display with sharp 1920×1080-pixel Full HD resolution and wide viewing angles. Usually, budget laptops come with 1366×768 HD resolution and narrow viewing angles. The notebook also stands out with its keyboard backlight, which isn’t a common feature on affordable notebooks. Furthermore, Acer highlights the notebook’s portability with its 0.7″ slim profile and light 4-pound weight, as well as aluminum top cover.

Performance-wise, the Aspire 5 A515-43-R19L isn’t a sluggish machine. It is based on the AMD Ryzen 3 3200U dual-core processor with enough power to run the ordinary computing tasks easily. For sure, it isn’t as fast as the mid-range quad-core AMD Ryzen 5 or Intel Core i5 series. But chances are you wouldn’t be able to tell a difference when using these chips for the routine duties like web browsing, movie watching, or work in Microsoft Office applications. However, the difference is noticeable in heavier duties like video editing. As for gaming, the Ryzen 3 3200U features the Radeon Vega 3 integrated graphics processor. It is a basic IGP which can run only light PC games.

The Acer Aspire 5 A515-43-R19L isn’t generous when it comes to system memory (RAM) and data storage capacities. It comes with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB solid state drive. 4GB RAM can be limiting for running multiple tasks simultaneously. At least 8GB of RAM is recommended for comfortable multi-tasking. As for the 128GB SSD, it can’t store large amounts of data like for instance ordinary 1-Terabyte (1000GB) hard drives, but solid state drive storage is noticeably faster than HDD storage. Thankfully, both RAM and data storage are upgradeable on the Aspire 5 A515-43-R19L. The laptop has two RAM slots, enabling you to install up to 32GB of RAM. The included SSD is in form of a M.2-format card, which can be replaced with a more capacious one. Furthermore, the laptop has an empty 2.5″ storage bay in which you can insert a 2.5″ hard drive or solid state drive.

As for the battery, Acer has equipped the A515-43-R19L with a 3320 mAh unit. Acer says the battery life of this notebook model can last “up to 7.5 hours”.

It’s worth mentioning that the laptop comes pre-loaded with Windows 10 in S mode. S mode means limited functionality of Windows 10 operating system, but also better security in comparison to the standard Windows 10 Home. However, you can switch out of S mode and get full access to Windows 10 Home free of charge.