Gaming laptop market is hot; everybody wants the latest laptop to keep their games running smoothly with beautiful graphics. The only problem is, new Gaming notebooks cost a lot of money – it might not be possible to buy such a rig even if you wanted. Yet, Acer tries to solve this issue by providing a gaming computer with rather affordable price tag. Enter Acer Aspire VX 15 (VX5-591G-54VG), my comments about it can be found below!
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Gaming in nutshell
Acer Aspire VX 15 (VX5-591G-54VG) doesn’t surprise us with the crushing performance of GeForce GTX 1080 or other high-end card. Instead, it comes with a mainstream GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (4GB video RAM) which is tad lower on the hierarchy as far as performance is concerned. But fear not, as long as you keep resolution at 1080p (can’t go higher on this notebook anyway), you can use pretty much any settings you want. To give you an example, The Witcher 3 which is one of the most demanding games to date would give +30FPS on very high settings. More impressive would be GTA 5 in the 60 frames per second range.
Just remember, the graphics card in this notebook is not upgradeable.
General performance
Like all the better notebooks, also Acer Aspire VX 15 (VX5-591G-54VG) has a solid-state drive. From what I can gather, this 256GB M.2 drive uses the SATA interface. It’s of course a removable unit, and the mainboard supports NVMe interface too. There’s also a sleeper 2.5″ slot in the case, you can use that for adding another drive. The notebook can be ordered with an installation kit for 2.5″ 9.5mm/7.2mm/7mm drives, Acer should send it with no extra cost.
The processor runs at four cores, 2.5GHz clock speed and 3.5GHz turbo. So guess what it is? Yep, the Intel Core i5-7300HQ. It’s a product of 2017, using the latest Kaby Lake architecture that’s also known as the 7th generation. In general, i5 processors are capable of multitasking and resource-heavy programs, so even power users won’t have problems with this. The CPU Mark score is indeed high, around 6700 points.
The laptop has 16GB DDR4 2400MHz memory. There are two slots on the mainboard, although I’m not sure about the current configuration – whether it’s one or two sticks. Either way, the maximum memory stands at 32 gigabytes. If you are asking my advice, it’s not a good idea to upgrade from 16 to 32 gigabytes almost in any case.
Video
Ports and interfaces
There are a few useful ports on Acer Aspire VX 15 (VX5-591G-54VG). You can find two USB 3.0s there as well as USB 3.1 Type-C. It seems the Type-C doesn’t support extra features such as Thunderbolt 3 or charging of the laptop. In addition, HDMI-output is available. Keep in mind it only spits 1920×1080 @ 60hz image, no 4K support here.
For network connection you have the brilliant 802.11ac WiFi card (2×2 dual-band technology). Bluetooth 4.0 works too if you want to connect mobile phones and similar devices. Plus, there’s a Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45 port for the cable. You might want that if extra robustness is what you are after.
More and more notebooks these days come without an optical drive. Also this Acer has none so you are forced to use an external DVD burner if you want discs. But the bright side is, those cost only like twenty dollars and attach to the laptop’s USB port. In addition, this computer also comes with a standard-sized SD card slot which might prove handy.
Miscellaneous
Acer Aspire VX 15 (VX5-591G-54VG) has the common screen diagonal of 15.6 inches. The resolution is Full HD, just perfect for the GTX 1050 Ti card and gaming. It seems to be IPS display with 60hz refresh rate. Color gamut runs at 45%. It’s not a glossy screen as far as I know.
The Acer comes with a 52 Whr battery. If you want to remove it, you’ll need to take out the laptop bottom first. As for how long the battery lasts, some users have reported 5+ hours when not gaming and two hours under gameplay. That’s pretty OK for such a laptop, I’d say.
The notebook has a backlit keyboard. I think it’s static red, the color can not be changed.
Reasons to buy this
Acer Aspire VX 15 (VX5-591G-54VG) makes an excellent gaming laptop, and you’re not going to pay an arm and leg! Might be you can’t max out settings on every single title, but you can still use pretty high settings on all the games. In another words, the price – gaming performance ratio is solid on this one.
You may also use this rig for any software purpose whatsoever. A Core i5 processor, solid-state drive and 16GB RAM take a lot beating. In fact, I think you will very rarely see 100% resource use on such components.
Reasons not to buy this
It’s not a smart move to get a laptop like this Acer if you don’t play games. You would be paying for a dedicated graphics card which, as a non-gamer, you’d find no use for. It’s simple as that.
Verdict
Acer Aspire VX 15 (VX5-591G-54VG) is a very reasonable buy for gamers on budget. The GTX 1050 Ti graphics card is wonderful if (very) decent frame rates do interest you, no matter how demanding games we are talking about. Likewise, useful is the storage solution with SSD which you can even enhance with the available upgrade kit. Processor and RAM are also in check, so is the IPS display which seems to have sharp image according to users. Especially for this price, complaints are very minor – the Acer seems to be one of the better budget gaming rigs of 2017!
