Acer Aspire E5-722-2611 Notebook Review

The Aspire is uses the same glossy 17.3-inch display like the recently reviewed Aspire E5-752G-T7WY, but the measurements are still slightly different. This is, however, normal – even two similar displays are never completely identical. We can measure a very decent contrast ratio, but the panel could be brighter. It is still sufficiently bright for use indoors.

Acer’s Aspire E5-722 is a 17.3-inch office notebook with sufficient performance for office and web applications as well as video playback. Our review unit retails for around 400 Euros (~$434) and is currently the least expensive configuration. Acer also offers more powerful versions with faster APUs and/or dedicated graphics cards. Even more performance is provided by the models from the similarly constructed Aspire E5-752G series.

The heart of the Aspire is an E2-7110 (Carrizo) APU from AMD. The CPU part of the APU consists of a quad-core processor clocked at 1.8 GHz, but there is no Turbo. Our CPU benchmarks show that the CPU can utilize its full performance both on mains as well as battery power. This APU is the successor of the A4-6210 (Beema) APU, which was also clocked at 1.8 GHz. The Carrizo model cannot improve the performance, because both processors deliver the same results. Rivals for the Carrizo APU are Intel’s Bay Trail and Braswell CPUs. Carrizo only has a small deficit compared to the fastest chips from these two series.

The system runs smoothly and we did not notice any problems during our review. The results in the PCMark benchmarks are on the expected level for this APU. It is powerful enough for office and web applications as well as video playback. You can increase the overall system performance by replacing the hard drive with a Solid State Drive. The system would then start faster and Windows would be much snappier.

Acer equipped the Aspire with a 2.5-inch hard drive from Western Digital. It works with 5400 revolutions per minute and has a capacity of 500 GB. You can use around 420 GB after the initial set-up; the rest is occupied by the Windows installation and a recovery partition. The transfer rates are normal for a drive with 5400 rpm.

The graphics chip has the designation Radeon R2. Nothing changed compared to the predecessor (Beema/Mullins), which carried the same name, in respect of the technical data, but our version runs at a higher core clock of 600 MHz (instead of 500 MHz). 3DMark therefore determines slightly better results. We already mentioned that the E2-7110 APU is the direct successor to the A4-6210 APU, since both chips run at the same speed and deliver the same results, which is also the case for the graphics chips. You should not get confused by the designations: The Radeon R3 core of the A4-6210 APU is identical to the Radeon R2 GPU of the E2-7110 APU. Both graphics cores also run at 600 MHz.

Comparable GPUs from Intel’s Bay Trail and Braswell generation are beaten by AMD’s solution. You cannot increase the performance of the Aspire with a second memory module, because the integrated memory controller only supports single-channel mode.

The Aspire was not designed to handle games; the APU is just not powerful enough. Only a handful of games can be played smoothly – at low resolutions and low details. This includes Dirt Rally and classics like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, for example. Casual games from the Windows Store on the other hand are no problem. If the gaming performance is an important aspect, you should get another notebook. However, those devices will also be more expensive. One of the more affordable models would be the Acer Aspire E5-771G-36MJ (Core i3-4005U, GeForce 840M, no Windows OS), which was available for around 450 Euros (~$488) at the time of writing.

Users of the Aspire won’t have problems with a noisy notebook. The fan only runs at a low speed while idling, because you can only hear the murmur of the hard drive. This does not really change under load; we can only measure 36.4 dB(A) during our stress test.

We can measure a power consumption of up to 9.5 Watts while idling – a decent result for a 17.3-inch notebook. The slow APU also ensures that the values are not too high under load, either. During the stress test, we measured a steady 23.9 Watts. The value would obviously be a bit higher if the CPU could utilize its maximum performance. The power adaptor with a rated output of 45 Watts is more than sufficient.

Our Wi-Fi test simulates the load when you open websites, while the power profile "Balanced" is active and the display brightness is adjusted to around 150 cd/m². Our test determines a runtime of 4:43 hours, which is one hour less than the predecessor. This is, however, not really surprising since the latter had a bigger battery (49 Wh vs. 37 Wh).