Acer Aspire E5-511 review: Good value for money
Recommended as an alternate desktop computer for home or small office environments
Acer has made its name in the Indian computer market, for its affordable, yet good performance laptops. Their recent launch is the Acer Aspire E5-511, a 15.6-inch notebook, which sports the classic black body with a hairline pattern design, making it simple yet elegant.
The entire body of the Acer Aspire E5-511, including the frame, the keyboard area and the base, is matte black, with a brush finish on the lid and the keyboard area. Thanks to the finish, it does not attract any smudges or fingerprints, keeping it clean and scratch-less for a longer time.
The laptop weighs about 2.5 kg with a 6-cell battery pack, and its dimensions are 15.02 (W) x 10.08 (D) x 1/1.19 (H) inches. Most of the IO ports are placed on the left, which includes a Kensington slot, VGA port, Gigabit Ethernet port, HDMI port and a USB 3.0 port, along with an audio jack next to it. On the right side, are featured two USB 2.0 ports, an optical drive and a power socket. An SD card reader is provided upfront, and the two built-in speakers are placed at the bottom of the notebook.
The Acer Aspire E5-511 sports a full-size chiclet keyboard, which like the conventional desktop ones, features a numeric keypad too. The keys are well spaced and easy-to-use, however, the touchpad is inconveniently placed. The touchpad is located below the spacebar and not in the center of the keyboard. The odd position makes it a bit inconvenient while continuously using the keyboard and touchpad together.
The Acer Aspire E5-511 has three variants, and the one we got our hands on, runs on a pre-installed Windows 8.1 operating system. The notebook is built around an Intel Pentium quad-core N3530 processor with 2GB of DDR3L system memory (RAM) and a 500GB hard disk drive. An Intel HD 4400 graphics processor is included, which helps increase the performance of the notebook while gaming and using graphic-based applications.
The Acer Aspire E15 sports a 15.6-inch High Definition 1366x768 LED-backlit TFT LCD display with an aspect ratio of 16:9. An HD webcam, with 1280 x 720 resolution and 720p HD audio/video recording is located on the top. The display opens up wide by 178-degrees, making it convenient to work in different positions.
The Acer Aspire E15 looks simple and smart, and sports a sturdy build quality. Being about 15-inches wide, the keyboard, conveniently houses a numeric keypad. The size of the chiclet keys is appropriate, making the typing easy and the key travel optimal. The tactility of the keyboard is up to the mark, however the mouse pad could be a little conveniently placed. Although, it is located right underneath the main keyboard, it is not in the centre of the laptop, making it slightly discommoding to use. The
Though the large screen enhances the user experience of the laptop, however, the size and weight of the laptop could tend to come in the way when it comes to portability. In short, while the notebook is portable, the tad heavy weight and the larger size could restrict it to more of a desktop replacement. The Acer Aspire E5-511 is a great alternative for a small-office or home use.
The machine runs decently smooth, and is good to work on. It plays full HD videos flawlessly and the viewing angles are good with no colour blending or inverting from any angle. The stereo speakers, however, aren’t too impressive. Being located at the base of the laptop, the audio scatters and isn’t very clear, though it’s not too bad either. The speaker are audible enough, but for casual audio and video monitoring. We recommend headphones or an external speaker set in order to get pleasurable audio.
The Acer Aspire E5-511 is fuelled with 56 Wh 5000 mAh 11.1V, 6-cell Li-ion battery pack. The battery survives for about 7 hours on regular use. Therefore, one can expect around 2-3 hours on heavy usage.
Priced at Rs 22,900, the Acer Aspire E5-511 is a good value for money. The large screen offers a good display realty, convenient for spreadsheets and alike. However, the bulky size could cause inconvenience while porting it around. We recommend this notebook as an alternate desktop computer for home or small office environments. Nevertheless, for the price asked for the notebook and the performance it delivers, Acer Aspire E5-511 is a great deal for students and office executives. However, if your work profile requires you to be constantly on a move, and you require a portable laptop, we would suggest you go for a 12 or a 13-inch notebook instead.