The new line of 6th Generation Intel Core processors have started showing up on new devices. Today I am taking a look at just such a device for our under 500 dollar category. I am looking at the new Acer Aspire E15 E5-574G-52QU 15.6-inch Notebook in cotton white. Let’s see what it has to offer.
The Exterior
The Acer Aspire E15 has been around for some years now, and it seems it’s been so good that with the Aspire E15 E5-574G-52QU it got a new white finish. The black top cover is finished in a textured cross hatch pattern with a silver Acer logo in the brand specific middle left area of the cover. Once open we get to see the 15,6-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixel) LED screen. The screen border receives the same white color as the palmrest with only the integrated webcam on the top and a silver acer logo on the bottom. Surprisingly the built in microphone is not on the screen border. It’s located next to the touchpad. If you pay close attention to this detail photo you will notice it.
The palmrest itself comes in contrasting white with black chicklet style full sized keyboard. Before we move any further the one detail I’m not really sure about is the black the screen hinges. I might be wrong about this.
The power button is nicely integrated in the keyboard on the upper right most key. If you didn’t know to look for it you probably could miss it. The generous white touchpad is slightly off center for better typing.
The status LEDs and the built-in card reader are fitted to the left side of the front edge. The built in speakers are located on each side underneath the body. If you are a regular reader you already know that this is a very bad design call as they can get easily muffled when used on your lap. The underside also receives the same crosshatch pattern as the top cover and no service cover is to be found.
The Connectivity
The connectivity options on the Acer Aspire E15 E5-574G-52QU 15.6-inch Notebook are pretty standard and it comes with everything you would expect.
The left side of the body comes with the combo Headphones/Mic-Jack 2 USB 3.0 Ports, the HDMI-out, Gigabit Ethernet LAN-Port, VGA-out and Kensington-Lock-port.
The right side of the body features the ramaining USB 2.0 Port and the power connector. The built in memory card reader is on the front edge of the body.
On the inside we get Bluetooth 4.0 and Wiresless WiFi 802.11 b/g/n/ac. It has all bases covered.
The Performance
Now we come to the main reason why we are looking at the Acer Aspire E15 E5-574G-52QU 15.6-inch Notebook, the 6th Generation Intel Core i5 processor. This laptop comes with the newly launched Intel Core i5-6200U processor running at 2.3GHz and can go as high as 2.8GHz with TurboBoost. These new 6th generation processors, as with previous iterations, come with better performance while at the same time needing less energy to power them. The performance of this processor is slightly below the former Core i7-5500U while maintaining the smaller energy requirements of the i5 series. It also comes with the much improved Intel HD 520 integrated graphics card. While this is very good, the Acer Aspire E15 E5-574G-52QU also comes with a nVidia GeForce GT940M and we will focus on that one instead.
As this and other videos show, the GT940M is a more than a capable laptop graphics card.
It can run most of today’s games and thanks to Windows 10 it can actually be used to its full potential in every game.
The Acer Aspire E15 E5-574G-52QU 15.6-inch Notebook also comes with 8GB of DDR3L RAM and a 1TB HDD. These are pretty much standard on most laptops at this price range. The battery life is quoted by Acer at up to 6 hours, which usually means if you baby it. I would expect a more realistic 4,5hours out of this laptop, but I could be wrong as I don’t have that much experience with these new processors.
Overall I think this notebook proves to be a more than capable multimedia and gaming laptop with a grate performance package and a grate screen.
