Acer Aspire E15 E5-553-T2XN Review

The Acer Aspire E Series has always been a solid line of laptops, especially for value hunters, and the Acer Aspire E5-553-T2XN is no exception. This entry level desktop-replacement model has 8GB of memory, a 1TB hard drive, and an AMD a10-9600p processor.

While it performs faster than the Intel Core i3-powered Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM, our Top Pick for entry level desktop-replacement laptop, the difference isn’t huge, and the Acer E5-575-33BM maintains similar features to the E5-553-T2XN, including the same body and screen.

There are some less expensive options available if you’re looking to save a few bucks, but considering that the Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-57D4 delivers better performance, has a dedicated graphics card and offers longer battery life, makes it a worth choice to consider.

 Design

The Aspire E5’s design isn’t fancy, but it has a solid overall build for a budget system. The entire body is made of plastic, with a brushed hairline pattern on the lid and keyboard, that adds a little flair to an otherwise basic style. The chassis measures roughly 1.2 by 15 by 10.2 inches (HWD), and weighs 5.29 pounds. It has a 15.6-inch, 1,920-by-1,080 resolution screen, which should be the main reason you buy the system over any similarly priced laptop.

The extra chassis space adds up to a keyboard deck that is wide and comfortable, albeit non-backlit, but the chiclet-style keyboard has a full numeric keypad.  Some will find the keys to be small, but we do expect that from a 15-incher, since they don’t enjoy the luxury of deck space like 17-inchers. Even with the narrow keys, it is still acceptable, and is still better than the Acer Aspire E5-471G-53XG, which lacks the space for a numeric keypad.

Features

Its angle viewing is a smidge narrower, if you’re a perfectionist, but the system’s LED backlit screen is certainly bright and clear enough for a viewing session among close friends. If you need to carry it around, you can slide it into the Bonvince 18.4″ Laptop Backpack, with its nicely placed compartments for the power adapter, mouse and other peripherals.

For a desktop-replacement laptop, the weight is not far from what we expected. It can be carried around to school or to the office and back to the house. During testing, we managed to view 1080p HD trailers, including the new one for the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean 6, was clean and smooth on the display. Sound is also a strong point: The volume can fill a small to medium-size room without a hint of distortion.

Ports and Storage

Connectivity is excellent, thanks to all the space on the sides of the system. Here you have all the ports you’d expect of a midrange laptop including; an Ethernet port, an HDMI port with HDCP support, a headset jack, a Kensington lock port, an SD card reader, one USB 3.1 (Type C) port, two USB 3.0 ports (one comes with power-off charging feature) and one USB 2.0 port. Wireless connectivity comes via 802.11ac WiFi+Bluetooth 4.1, alongside a HD Webcam (1280-by-720) and a DVD drive for your old movies and programs.

There’s 8GB of memory, which is just enough for keeping dozens of tabs open, and the 1TB hard drive is plenty of real estate to store your downloads, movies, pictures and audio files. We do have a point here that the 8GB can be upgraded to a maximum of 32GB, but most will find 8GB ideal for daily computing. Also, if you find the traditional 1TB 5400rpm painfully slow down the road, you can easily swap it with a snappier solid-state-drive (SSD).

Performance

The Acer Aspire E 15 has the latest seventh-generation AMD a10-9600p processor, a 2.4GHz Intel Core i3-7100U processor, 8GB memory with Radeon 5 graphics, and it’s an average performer. The AMD A10 processor is a direct competitor to Intel’s Core i5-7100U processor, which we’ve seen in most laptops and desktops throughout the year, with power efficiency on the mobile versions.

We expected the new architecture to be even better when it comes to battery life, which perhaps explains the Aspire E15’s good battery life. All these make the system fine on day-to-day tasks like office document editing, webcam conferencing, and Web browsing. Multimedia editing will be definitely on the lower side of average, but it is still adequate for a general user who won’t be editing photos beyond the occasional color correction and cropping.

Graphics Performance

For the price range, we didn’t expect anything close to a discrete graphics card. Rather, it uses a Radeon 5 graphics card, which is just enough for day-to-day productivity needs and media consumption. For budget hunters who sometimes have the need for dedicated graphic card that will allow them play a few games here-and-there, but don’t want to spend so much on a gaming laptop, the 15-inch Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-57D4 is worth an eye.

It features a seventh generation Intel Core i5-7200U Processor, 8GB memory, 256 solid-state-drive (SSD) storage, a dedicated Nvidia GeForce 940MX (with 2GB) graphics card and a Full HD (1080p) display.

After all, it is a budget laptop and luxuries like an SSD and dedicated graphics card will only push the price up. Still, you can play some casual games and nothing more. If gaming is important to you, our Editors’ Choice midrange gaming laptop the Acer Predator Helios 300 suffices for most modern titles at higher resolutions thanks to its Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor and Pascal-based NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (with 6GB) graphics card.

Battery Life

Battery life is always a strong point for basic laptops, and the newer AMD A10 processor makes it even better. It lasted 8 hours 45 minutes on our battery rundown test. That’s good enough to make it through an entire workday or a Netflix binge-watching session. This is in the same ballpark as the 8 hours 56 minutes we got from the Acer Aspire E15 (E5-575G-53VG), and is almost double the Lenovo Edge 15’s 5 hours 39 minutes.

Value for Budget Buyers

At the end of the day, the Acer Aspire E5-553-T2XN is relatively nondescript budget laptop, with a lot going for it. In fact, it suffices as a satisfactory desktop replacement for the general user/student who simply needs a Windows PC to use traditional programs like MS Office, browse the Internet, watch Netflix and stream YouTube videos in Full HD, for far much less.

It’s a good choice if you’re on a tight budget, but if you can spare a few more bucks the Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-57D4 is also worth a long look as you shop around. It boasts a better Intel Core i7 processor, a dedicated graphics card, and has longer battery life, and performance that’s good enough for daily productivity making it a much better value. For all these reasons, it remains our Top Pick for midrange desktop-replacement laptops.