Acer Aspire 5315 Notebook Review
The Acer Aspire 5315 is a 15.4-inch notebook PC, aimed at lower-cost consumer market. The Aspire 5315 features Acer’s Gemstone chassis design. It includes an Intel Celeron 540 or 550 processor, and comes with a 80GB or 120GB hard drive, as well as with Combo optical drive or DVD burner. All of the Aspire 5315 models listed on the company’s website have 1GB of DDR2 memory, the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100, an 802.11b/g wireless module, and built-in stereo speakers. The laptop has a 1280×800 15.4″ widescreen display. In addition, select models come with a built-in web camera.
Various 5315 configurations are priced between $460 and $650 in the US market.
I have tested a $499 AS5315-2808 model with:
- Intel Celeron Processor 550 (1MB L2 cache, 2.0GHz, 533MHz FSB)
- 1GB DDR2 667 SDRAM
- 120GB hard drive
- integrated Super-Multi drive (DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD-RAM)
- 15.4″ WXGA (1280 x 800) CrystalBrite (glossy) TFT display
- Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
- Two 2W integrated stereo speakers
- 802.11b/g WLAN
- 10/100 LAN
- V.92 modem
- Three USB 2.0 ports
- ExpressCard/54 slot
- VGA and S-video TV-out ports
- 11.1v 4000mAh Battery
- Windows Vista Home Premium OS
- 6.2 lbs Weight
Chassis Design, Display, Speakers
Although budget notebooks often have a cheap look, the Acer Aspire 5315 provides an interesting and stylish chassis design, produced with help of BMW Group designers. The notebook’s lid has a glossy dark gray finish, while the keyboard, touchpad and surrounding areas are matte white. The keyboard is comfortable for use, as same as the touchpad. However, the touchpad buttons are a little bit stiff.
 |
 |
 |
 |
I am quite satisfied with horizontal viewing angles of the 15.4-inch display. Vertical viewing angles are not so wide. Moving your head up or down while working on your laptop gives you an impression of color inversion, so you will have to find the best angle and stick to it.
The display has a glossy coating, called CrystalBrite. It certainly gives more vivid colors than the same display with a matte finish, but it also reflects ambient lights more.
Stereo speakers in the 5315 are not so powerful, as same as in majority of other notebooks, but they sound nice. However, left speaker jingled a little bit, when I played music with volume set to the maximum.
Performance, Battery Life, Heat, Noise
The reviewed notebook configuration has a PCMark 05 score of 2491 points and 324 3DMark 06 points. Its Windows Vista Experience Index is 2.4. The Aspire 5315 provides a decent performance for some light tasks such as web browsing or word processing, but 1GB of RAM is not enough for smooth Windows Vista experience. Of course, its GMA X3100 integrated graphics is not suitable for gaming at all.
The laptop comes with a Hitachi HDD with a rotational speed of 5,400rpm and 8MB of cache. The hard drive has an average performance for present-day laptops. The average transfer rate was 41.5 MB/sec in HD Tune test.
The notebook’s fans are not loud. I am satisfied with its cool operation, but I also noticed the trackpad area can get warmer than other parts of the laptop after a few hours of continuous work. For me, that amount of heat is tolerable.
The 11.1v 4000mAh Li-Ion battery in the Acer Aspire 5315 provided 1 hour and 40 minutes of run time during DVD playback, with wireless turned off and screen brightness set to 90%. A light operation (word processing, web surfing, a couple of .mp3 and Youtube video clip playbacks) with wireless on and 90% brightness drained 5315’s battery for 1 hour and 50 min. Under the same conditions, the battery life can be extended to 2 hours and 10 minutes by switching the Wi-Fi module off and decreasing display brightness to 40%.
Conclusion
The Acer Aspire 5315 is a decent laptop for budget-minded users, who do not expect high processing and graphics performance. But, I wish it has a screen with better vertical viewing angles, a longer battery life, and more RAM for hardware-demanding Windows Vista.
If you want a sub-$600 mobile computer without sacrificing screen size and storage space, the Aspire 5315 can be a good buying choice. But, be sure you also check other cheap notebooks first. For those who don’t care about display size and storage, and prefer greater mobility, there is the Asus Eee PC ultraportable for a similar price.