Acer Aspire Acer Aspire 3 A315-24PT-R0UX Slim Laptop | 15.6" Review

A basic $500 laptop with a good amount of RAM and a touchscreen, but held back by a weak CPU and terrible port selection. It's fine for simple tasks only. Not worth it if you need performance or reliability.

The Acer Aspire 3 A315-24PT is a $500 laptop that tries to be a jack-of-all-trades. It's got a touchscreen, 16GB of RAM, and a decent SSD, all wrapped in a slim 15.6-inch package. On paper, it looks like a solid deal for basic tasks and light entertainment, which is exactly what Acer is aiming for here. But our data shows it's a mixed bag, with some specs that are just okay and others that fall flat on their face. Let's dig in.

Performance is a story of two halves. The 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD are solid middle-of-the-pack components, so multitasking and load times are fine for everyday use. The integrated AMD Radeon graphics are actually a bit above average, so you can do some very light gaming or video streaming without much fuss. The problem is the AMD Ryzen 5 7520U CPU, which lands in the bottom 15% of our database. It's a real bottleneck for anything demanding, and it explains why this machine scores so poorly for developer work. The screen is also underwhelming, and the port selection is one of the worst we've seen.

At $499, the value proposition is tricky. You're getting a lot of RAM and a touchscreen, which are nice. But you're paying for them with a seriously underpowered CPU and a bad selection of ports. If your needs are incredibly basic—web browsing, documents, streaming—it's an okay deal. The second you need to do anything more intensive, you'll hit a wall. For the same money, you can often find laptops with much better processors, which is usually the smarter buy.

Stacked up, it's clear where the money went. The Apple MacBook Pro and ASUS ProArt are in a different league (and price bracket), so that's not a fair fight. More relevant are budget options from Lenovo or even older models. Compared to a Lenovo IdeaPad around $500, you might get similar RAM but a better CPU. Versus something like a refurbished business laptop, you'd likely get worse build but far better performance and ports. This Acer's main draw is the touchscreen and RAM combo, but that comes at the cost of core processing power.

Skip this if you do any coding, photo editing, or anything else CPU-intensive. The processor is a real letdown. Also, if you need to connect multiple peripherals, look elsewhere immediately—the port situation here is a joke. Anyone prioritizing long-term reliability should also steer clear, based on our data.

Buy this if you need a basic, slim laptop with a touchscreen for under $500 and your workload is dead simple. The 16GB of RAM means it won't choke on too many Chrome tabs. But that's about it. For students, casual users, or as a secondary family computer, it might work. Just don't expect it to be fast, reliable for long-term use, or good for anything beyond the basics.