Acer Aspire E5-471G-53XG

The Acer Aspire E5-471G-53XG is a desktop replacement laptop with a battery that lasts a day at work, a separate graphics processor for light 3D work or play, and many legacy features for users who still have older peripherals in active use. It has above-average range features and a good price, but the lack of a touch screen and other nits, like a load of bloatware, ultimately hold it back.

Design and Features
E5-471G-53XG chassis is glossy white, with a geometric pattern that runs on top lid and keyboard deck. It measures about 1.25 by 13.75 by 10 inches (HWD), and weighs 4.4 pounds. It is certainly light enough to tote around the house, but it is too bulky to fit comfortable on an airline tray table in coach. It essentially shares the same chassis as the lower priced Acer Aspire E5-471-59RT, although not bright colors of late.

The 14-inch screen with 1366-by-768 resolution, which is unusual for a budget system, although the list price of under $ 600, the E5-471G-53XG is at the top end of what we consider budget. Viewing angle LCD panel is narrower than in an In-Plane Switching (IP) panel, as seen in the HP Chromebook 11 (Verizon LTE), but the screen is clear and pretty useful when looking dead ons. No touch screen, which would make it easier to tile-based Windows 8 interface to use E5-471-59RT. Instead, there is one piece multitouch touchpad, responsive and efficient tracking. It is placed in the middle under the non-backlit keyboard. Sound from the built-in speakers is clear, but pretty soft. Listening to movies and music is best done in a quiet room or through the headphone plug-in to the laptop.

The keyboard is comfortable to use, although the keys are flat rather than sculpted in Lenovo and the Lenovo Z40 Flex 2 (15-inch), our Editors Choice 'for budget desktop replacement laptop. Sharp-eyed users will notice that the Enter key sharing a cutout keyboard deck with the backslash key. Making it so that you share Acer parts with its European and Canadian models, which are L-shaped Enter key.

The system has a mix of modern and legacy I / O port. You'll see an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, a headset jack, a Kensington lock port, an SD card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, and a VGA port. The Ethernet port is handy if you have a wireless router. DVD drives are becoming more prevalent in the new laptop, but people still use them for older software, music, and movies. Wireless connectivity is by way of 802.11 b / g / n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. The removable battery is a plus, because it can be easily replaced once stopped holding a charge, or swapped out with a spare one during long computing sessions away from an outlet.

The system has 8GB of memory, which is twice that of 4GB with include Acer E5-471-59RT. The 500GB, hard drive 5,400rpm certainly offers more space than, say, a 64GB solid-state drive, but it is slower in the latter, especially at system startup.

You can find many pre-loaded bloatware on the laptop. We counted over 21 extra tiles on the Start screen, including programs such as Amazon, Booking.com, eBay, Hulu Plus, iStoryTime, Netflix, Stumble On, and Wild tangent games. The regular desktop interface has more tacked on taskbar programs, including the Amazon (again), eBay (ditto), Spotify, and Pokki Start Menu. The extra clutter up the screen. If you're looking for a cleaner Start screen, you need to budget the afternoon to uninstall all of the extras you do not want. The E5-471G-53XG have one-year warranty.