Acer Aspire VX15 gaming laptop review. budget balance

Acer has long separated its gaming products into a separate line and created a subsidiary brand for it, Predator. At the same time, the Aspire series of workhorses remained in its place, continuing to expand and update. The laptop that came to us for review is balancing on the verge of these two model directions. The Acer Aspire VX15 is a gaming laptop that belongs to a more modest family than the Predator, with a more humane price tag.

Acer Aspire VX15

The appearance of the packaging is strict and concise, there is nothing superfluous in it. The owner will see only the model – Acer Aspire VX15 and a sticker with specifications on the end. Unfortunately, the box cannot boast of a special thickness, which means that almost any serious damage can most likely affect the device inside.

Contents of delivery

The package bundle of the laptop is very modest: a few booklets and a charger. Although, in fairness, I note that today, even in top-end devices, you should not expect surprises inside.

Appearance

Acer designers clearly tried to give an interesting look to the laptop, even without regard to its belonging to entry-level devices. The top cover was given the appearance of brushed aluminum, although, in fact, all the external surfaces of the laptop are plastic. It is very pleasant that this surface is not an active collector of your fingerprints.

In addition to the manufacturer’s logo, two oblique red plastic stripes were also placed on the lid. They do not glow during operation, which, in my opinion, is only a plus, but, nevertheless, such accents dilute the appearance and attract attention.

At the bottom of the laptop there are four excellent rubberized feet, the size of which allows you to stably hold the device on hard surfaces. The manufacturer did not complicate the disassembly of the device – there are no hidden screws anywhere, it is enough to unscrew all the visible ones and the cover can be removed.

Please note that there are quite a lot of perforations, and the cooling “turbines” capture the outside air directly, without pulling it out of the last forces through the entire hull.

There is nothing interesting on the front side, except for activity and charging indicators. In addition, the stereo speakers of the laptop sound system come out here.

The rear part is entirely devoted to the cooling system. Bright red glossy grilles frame the “exhaust” of hot air and were apparently inspired by supercar diffusers. One way or another, the zest has been added and you can definitely put a tick for the “game” appearance.

Side faces, as always, work for everyone. On the left are the following ports: Kensington Lock, charging port, USB 3.0, card reader and 3.5mm four-pin headset jack.

The right side accommodates a gigabit network port, an HDMI video output, two USB 3.0 connectors, and one USB 3.1 Type-C.

I think you have already noticed that the corners of the device are slightly beveled. This made it possible to visually reduce it.

But after opening the lid, you understand that the Acer Aspire VX15 did not try to squeeze it to a minimum. The frames around the screen are wide enough, and the lower one is striking. But I would like to note one detail – due to the large width of the bottom frame, the screen is a little more distant from the keyboard unit. This is especially noticeable after working on another device. And such an arrangement, oddly enough, allows you to play with great comfort, without lowering your eyes too low.

The opening angle of the lid is standard and will allow you to use the laptop in various conditions.

Given the size, it was not a problem to fit a full-sized keyboard with a number pad. The top row of function buttons was slightly shrunk due to the inclusion of the power button on the right. In addition, the keys of the digital block are also a little narrower than the main ones. The left Shift is full-sized, but the double-row Enter key would not fit in any way.

In general, the keyboard pleasantly pleased. The key travel is slightly longer, making it much more comfortable to play than standard laptop keyboards, but typing is still a pleasure.

The manufacturer provided the keyboard with an unobtrusive red backlight, without the ability to change colors.

Emphasis is placed on the WASD button block, which emphasizes the gaming orientation of the device. The side faces of the buttons are not made of standard black plastic, but of translucent red. Thus, the block clearly stands out both in the presence of external lighting and in complete darkness.

The touchpad is shifted to the left and centered exactly on the space bar. The integration of buttons with a touch surface allowed to slightly increase the working surface. I would like to note that the touchpad works very accurately without false positives or any backlash, which has been quite common lately.

The top bezel houses the HD camera.

Screen

The laptop is equipped with a 15.6-inch screen based on the BOE NV156FHM-N42 ADS matrix with a resolution of 1920×1080. Considering the filling, it’s even good that the manufacturer did not install a much more expensive 4K matrix, thereby increasing the cost of the laptop. The matrix itself is matte and it is very pleasant to work with.

Brightness adjustment is made in the range from 20 to 267 cd / m2, in connection with this, most users will most likely not have enough brightness to work in the sun. The contrast level could also be higher.

Measurements made by the X-Rite i1Display Pro calibrator showed a color gamut of about 57.6% for sRGB and 41.2% for Adobe RGB. As you can see, these figures are far from outstanding and it is still better to calibrate the screen of this laptop to get the best impressions from the image. After calibration, the situation improved a little, but as you can see from the color triangle, the coverage is still far from ideal, and the color is shifted towards green and blue tones. The color temperature also has a deviation from the reference value in the entire range.

The DeltaE deviations shown by the Argyll utility averaged 5.05, and the peak value, even more surprising, was as much as 21.32. True, the calibration brought the values ​​​​to acceptable for obtaining a successful assessment: 0.48 on average and 1.22 at the peak.

IPS-matrix provides a much larger viewing angle than TN and, nevertheless, we see that with a horizontal deviation, the image becomes parasitic yellow. With vertical angles, the situation is better and the image is almost the same as the standard one.

Internal stuffing

The laptop is based on the popular Kaby Lake generation Intel Core i7-7700HQ CPU with four cores (with Hyper-Threading support), 6 MB of L2 cache and made according to the 14-nm process technology, in connection with which its TDP is 45 W.

The base frequency of the processor is 2.8 GHz with the possibility of overclocking in automatic Turbo mode up to 3.8 GHz.

The GeForce GTX 1050 Ti acts as the main video adapter, and without 3D loads, the Intel Graphics HD630 video core built into the processor pulls the strap.