Acer Aspire 3 A314-23P-R3QA Review

The Acer Aspire 3 A314-23P-R3QA is one of the most affordable laptops with some serious power and a striking design. But in a world with the likes of the Lenovo IdeaPads, Asus VivoBooks, and hundreds of great Chromebooks, the Aspire 3 has some serious catching up to do. The laptop has always offered great value for money, but so has much of the competition.

When shopping in the under $500 budget category, the priority is always to get a machine that simply works. With the Aspire 3, however, you’re getting more than basic performance and you no longer have to do with a boring notebook that’s a pain to lug on a backpack to work or college.

Our review unit checks most boxes for a daily use machine; and while the screen would be brighter, it makes up with a sleek aesthetic and decent performance thanks to an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U processor, 8GB RAM, and snappy 512GB SSD storage. Beyond the hardware, what makes this Acer one of the best budget laptops you can buy right now? Let’s find out in this Acer Aspire 3 A314-23P-R3QA review.

Acer Aspire 3 Specs

Design and Features

Like the Aspire 5, Acer prioritised performance and specs in the Acer Aspire 3. That means you’re not getting high-grade case elements like aluminum and super-slow weight.

However, the Acer A314-23P-R3QA looks decent for its price. It’s an all-plastic shell that looks like it could be aluminum from a distance, or even up close. It doesn’t flex. It doesn’t creak or give off any signs of poor build quality.

Acer has massive experience in making sturdy, low-cost laptops, and it shows here. The Aspire 3 is a 14-inch screen model that weighs 3.09 pounds and measures 12.93 x 0.74 x 8.55 inches. It’s a little heavy than the lightest Chromebook around but is still ideal for everyday portable use and will happily fit in a rucksack for offsite meetings r university lectures.

It’s simple as it sounds, and the silver look makes the Aspire 3 appear more like a style-led consumer laptop than some of the more business-centric ones you’ll find at higher prices. The Aspire gets a decent keyboard and a passable keyboard. The keys are like those of many budget laptops- they have more travel than those of some ultra-premium laptops, but carry along a slightly hollow feel.

The LCD, touted as “Full HD IPS” is comfortably bright and crisp. Despite its anti-glare display, colors look surprisingly vibrant and there’s a strong contrast between colors. It’s not excellent, but it should suffice for that casual mix of work and entertainment. At 200 nits of peak brightness, it’s not the most vivid screen you’ll ever see, but it’s OK at full brightness, but at lower settings, it will seem a tad dull.

Around the edges of the laptop are the ports, and Acer is offering a decent selection. There are two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, a USB Type-C port, and an HDMI 2.1 port. Those are enough to get you going, but Acer could have thrown in a few more USB-C ports for good measure, especially in 2023.

Overall, Acer has done a decent job with the Acer Aspire 3’s design, considering the price point. It’s not overly sleek or stylish, but it does look fine and is functional enough for everyday tasks.

Performance

Under the hood, our review model of the Acer Aspire 3 comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U Quad-Core processor, 8GB RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD, and AMD Radeon graphics. This makes it more than capable of basic tasks, such as web browsing and word processing. It’s not a performance workhorse though – so, if you’re looking for something for gaming, or for heavy workloads, this probably isn’t it.

However, it does provide better performance than, for example, the Intel Pentium-based systems you might find selling for around the same price. With the Ryzen 5 chip, tasks like Photoshop-grade image editing and video editing become ill-advised, to put it lightly. But most other basic tasks are feasible with an Aspire 3. It uses Radeon graphics, which, while they can’t play the latest AAA titles, can still handle some older games fairly well.

Battery Life

All the longest-lasting Windows laptops I’ve used over the last couple of years have had AMD processors. However, the Aspire 3 A314-23P-R3QA has a battery life that’s merely OK despite using one of them.

It lasts 7 hours and 39 minutes of general productivity work. While eight hours is precisely what I look for in a work laptop, Acer doesn’t offer any additional leeway, if, for instance, you need to do something slightly more taxing or have bad browser window etiquette.

Bottom Line

The Acer Aspire 3 A314-23P-R3QA offers good performance for the price, looks beautiful, and isn’t too chunky or heavy to limit occasional portable use -or even daily commute to work or university.

There’s one crucial issue that holds it back from being one of the best budget laptops – the display. It doesn’t look great, and the panel suffers from a contrast shift. Still, it suffices for basic use, watching movies, and other daily tasks. If you need something more powerful for work and school, the Asus VivoBook 15X is a great alternative, offering solid performance and a sleek design.

Overall, the Acer Aspire 3 (2022) is a decent budget laptop that will be perfectly adequate for most. It’s good enough for day-to-day tasks, like web browsing and word processing — but it won’t handle heavier workloads or gaming very well. The display, speakers, and battery life are all okay, while value is definitely on its side.

Last update on 2024-05-17 at 19:08 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API