- Hey, guys, this is Austin. A few months ago, we took a look at this, the $350 Acer Aspire E15,
which just so happens to be the best-selling laptop on Amazon. But for 350 bucks, what
are you actually getting? Well, at first glance, it
doesn't look all that special, so for $350, you're
getting plastic on plastic with a side of plastic. Nowhere is this more
obvious than the screen, which flexes, well, a lot with just a little bit of pressure.
However, if you can look past a few of these smaller nitpicks, you'll find that this is actually a surprisingly solid laptop. What really makes this guy stand out is the level of specs and features that you're getting for the price. Inside, you're getting a 7th-generation Intel Core i3-7100U processor, 4 gigabytes of RAM, as well
as a one terabyte hard drive. Definitely the slowest part
is going to be the hard drive.
It's 2018, and you know, SSDs are a thing. However, what really
helps to save this laptop is the Core i3. This is gonna be a lot more powerful than pretty much any other
laptop in this price point. Luckily, it's really
easy to upgrade this guy.
Remove three screws on
the bottom of the laptop. You get access to not
only your hard drive, but also to your memory as well
as to install a full M.2 SSD. And it just so happens that
I have an M.2 SSD right here. For $45, you can get
this ADATA 128 gig drive, which, once you install on this, is gonna make a huge difference.
If you've never installed
an M.2 Drive before, it's about as easy as it gets. Remove this single screw from the bottom, and then all we need to do
is line it up with the slot, make sure it's fully inserted, and then we take that same screw and use it to hold it into place. Now while a 128-gig drive
might not sound too impressive, the idea here is that
this is going to be enough to install Windows as well
as a few games and apps, but you still have your full
one terabyte hard drive, which means that you're gonna have over a terabyte of
capacity inside the laptop, and if you want to get even crazier, you can remove the optical drive to install yet another drive inside. I said the word drive a lot,
but hopefully you get the idea.
Something else I was able
to pick up for just over $40 is another four gigabytes of RAM. Now this is okay as it
is, but especially if you want to get into anything like gaming, or just want more than four gigs of RAM. For, like, you know, six
or seven Chrome tabs, this is gonna be really helpful, and again, super simple to upgrade. You can literally do all this
stuff in, like, 10 minutes.
And so, with that, we have
eight gigabytes of RAM, a 128-gig SSD, and an
upgraded $440 laptop. But, is it actually any good? With these upgrades, we're
ready for a bit of gaming, and starting out, we have CS:GO. Now with integrated Intel graphics, you shouldn't expect a ton. I should really turn my volume down.
So running on low settings at 900p, we're actually getting solid frame rates, so we're at anywhere between
50 to 80 frames per second. Now, it's not going to be a
perfect CS:GO experience, but this is not a bad
little gaming laptop. Next up, we have Fortnite. Now this is a game that actually scales pretty well to lower-end hardware.
Here at 720p on low settings, we are getting between 30
to 40 frames per second. Now don't get me wrong,
this is not a gaming PC. However, especially with that Core i3 and that dual-channel memory, it's not going to be too bad as long as you keep your
expectations in check. Some lighter titles are
definitely going to be playable.
I've actually gotta say, I
don't really ever play Fortnite, but this does really scale nicely. I mean, yeah, we're getting
35, 40 frames per second here, but on such a low-end
laptop, it's not bad at all. Next up, we have Rocket League, another game that traditionally runs pretty well on low-end hardware, and here at 900p on Performance settings, we're getting anywhere between
40 to 50 frames per second. It's not bad, which I know I keep saying, but when you consider just
how cheap this laptop is, even with the upgrades, I'm impressed at how much it doesn't suck.
This laptop is definitely useful for more than just gaming, though. It's rocking a 15.6-Inch 1080p panel. Now it is going to be TN, so
you're going to be sacrificing some color and especially
some viewing angles, but when you consider that
this guy cost $350 stock, the screen is much, much
better than you usually get. I can't tell you how many
laptops I've looked at that cost much more than this
with much, much worse screens.
Something you don't exactly
see on laptops very often these days is an optical
drive, but this does have it in addition to a USB 2.0
Port, but more importantly, on this side, we're going to be getting two more USB 3's, HDMI. Weirdly enough, there's a VGA port, but then you get Ethernet
as well as a USB Type-C. The keyboard is classic Acer, so it's a good thing for the most part. You're getting a pretty standard layout with a couple of odd additions, but you do get the number row, and for $350, it's pretty impressive that it actually does have a backlight.
It's not a super-bright
backlight, but again, that's not something you
usually find on a budget laptop. You're also going to be getting a Windows precision trackpad. Now, it's pretty solid. You're getting full support
for the multi-touch gestures, and thankfully, like all of
these precision trackpads, it does actually track
much, much more accurately than a lot of the third-party options.
It's almost like there's a
lot of things in this laptop that are shared with much
more expensive options. I sense a trend here. Battery life is going to be pretty solid, so especially thanks
to that Core i3 inside, you should expect somewhere
in the neighborhood of about eight hours of
light use on a charge, and if you upgrade with an
SSD and install Windows on it, that's probably going to
make things even better. So, for $350, is the
Acer Aspire E15 worth it? I've gotta say, it totally is.
I see why everyone on
Amazon is buying these. Now I will say, though,
that if you do pick one up, I think it is well worth it to spend a little bit of extra money to upgrade with an SSD and more memory. But regardless, if you're wanting
to pick up a cheap laptop, this is a solid option, and as always, links to this as well as
the upgrades I used for it will be in the description. Anyway, guys, thank you
so much for watching, and I will catch you in the next one..
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