Acer Aspire VX5-591G (7700HQ, FHD, GTX 1050 Ti) Laptop Review

The futuristic-angular design of the black, apparently plastic casing definitely follows Acer's Predator lineup aimed at players. While the base unit's upper side has a glossy finish that is relatively insusceptible for fingerprints, the underside and the display bezel are simple, slip-proof plastic. Acer is quite generous with optical accents, such as the trimming on the brushed display back, but it is not exaggerated in the tester's opinion.

The base can be warped to a small degree and produces a quiet cracking noise with a bit of force. The not exactly thin lid could be slightly stiffer, but image distortions are barely visible when selective pressure is applied to the back. Thanks to the hinges very good setting, the Acer Aspire VX5-591G can be opened easily with one hand and the display only rocks for a moment after being jerked.

Apart from some inaccurate gaps and a few, marginally protruding edges, the build of the solid-looking casing makes an impeccable impression that corresponds to its price.

As said in the intro, there are significant differences in size and weight this time. The just 17 mm thick Dell XPS 15 is the most compact device here. The much wider and deeper, but only 20 mm thick Asus Zenbook weighs approximately 2 kg. Both other laptops achieve around 2.5 kg.

The surface areas of both Acer laptops are almost identical. The Nitro is a few millimeters thinner than the review sample. The still relatively compact Asus Zenbook places itself between Acer's models and the XPS 15.

Basically, only the USB Type-C port (Gen1) is worth mentioning; the other interfaces are standard. One of the three USB Type-A ports still uses the 2.0 standard. This is not a disadvantage when connecting, for example, an external mouse, but the slow port has unfortunately been placed on the left which is not favorable for right-handed users. A Gigabit Ethernet is installed for stationary use, but VGA is absent which will unlikely be a problem for anyone nowadays. Ergonomically favorable: All interfaces are in the back areas of both sides, but the spacing could have been a bit more generous.

As for the SD-card reader, Acer and Asus only install a sluggish card reader that is connected via USB 2.0, which we deem unsuitable in view of the price. Dell's laptop sports a better model, but we are surprised about the big difference in the read test. The 57 MB/s that we measured when copying JPG files is not quite on the average of the mean speed class. We again used our Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64 GB UHS-II reference card for the measurements.

Intel's somewhat obsolete yet tried Wireless AC 7265 module is responsible for wireless connections. Thanks to MIMO 2x2, a theoretical gross data rate of 867 MBit/s is possible and, in addition to the older 2.4 GHz standards, it also supports the latest ac-standard that exclusively uses the less frequented 5 GHz band. Bluetooth 4.2 (updating the driver might be required) and Intel's Wireless Display are also present.

Considering the normal overhead, Acer's Aspire VX5 achieves a good 533 MBit/s in receive and a very good 653 MBit/s in transmit. We perform these measurements at a distance of one meter to our standard Linksys EA8500 router.

Acer does not include any special accessories. The power supply and its cable, various leaflets concerning setup and warranty conditions and a "Resource DVD" are in the box.

A maintenance hatch is not present and the battery can only be accessed after removing 14 Philips screws from the base tray, which might involve risking the warranty. It does not look as if this undertaking would be easy to perform. We did not make any attempts to do this since our review sample is a shop device.

In our opinion, Acer makes contradictory statements about the warranty, and thus we would refer to the manufacturer's website. A "2-year pick-up and return service (1st yr. ITW)" is stated under "Notebooks". When opening the linked PDF, it turns into a "2-year mail-in/carry-in". The latter will likely be correct. The additional International Travelers Warranty is limited to one year. Acer offers various warranty extensions for a surcharge. Please see our Guarantees, Return policies and Warranties FAQ for country-specific information.

Thanks to the powerful quad-core and enough memory, the Aspire VX5 should be able to cope with virtually all commercial software. However, the mid-range GPU limits its graphics performance, and the installed hard drive or the omission of an SSD sometimes prevents a smooth workflow. In particular, the processor-integrated Intel HD graphics would have benefited from dual-channel RAM - performance is not demanded from it thanks to Optimus.

It is at most the not very generous 8 GB of working memory that limits excessive multitasking and not the CPU's performance. When programs have been launched, they run perfectly smooth. However, compared to SSDs, the sluggish HDD is the reason that the user often has to be patient. Thus, booting the OS and opening programs, and in particular the loading times of large games can take a while. Opening programs is faster when they have been cached in the memory, but 16 GB of RAM would not have hurt here. The next paragraph illustrates a possible remedy.

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4 GB of dedicated GDDR5 RAM (effective: 7000 MHz, maximum level) is a mid-range graphics card based on the current Pascal architecture that follows the GTX 960M and 965M. It calculates approximately 30% faster and also surpasses the smaller GeForce GTX 1050 by roughly the same percentage. The 1050 Ti does not come close to the GTX 1060 situated above it. The Radeon RX 480 and RX 470 Polaris graphics cards by AMD fill this gap in the desktop sector. Technical details concerning the 1050 Ti can be read here.

Acer has opted for the standard clocking of 1493 to 1620 (Turbo). Of all seven cards with this name that we have in our database, four outperform the one in the Aspire XV5-591G-75C4 by 2 to 8% depending on the benchmark. Thus, the performance is on the expected level. The total score dropped by 25% in 3DMark 11 in battery mode.

As the FPS chart below illustrates, it gets tight with up-to-date, graphically demanding games in the highest settings and maximum image enhancements, such as anti-aliasing and occlusion. A GeForce GTX 1060 would be needed here. It looks better in high settings that often only involve marginal drawbacks compared with ultra. Exceptions prove the rule: The modest in view of its graphical beauty Battlefield 1 achieves over 50 FPS on average even in ultra, while the new Mass Effect Andromeda has to be satisfied with medium presets. These and more benchmarks concerning the GTX 1050 Ti can be found on our page about the graphics card.

Both speakers that are slanted toward the bottom/front have enough power to fill medium-sized rooms with sound. Unfortunately, distortions become audible when playing light pop music at full volume, but the volume does not fluctuate. Apart from that, the mids and trebles sound astonishingly natural depending on the title. Hints of dynamics and surround are certainly present. The often heard blending of instruments in metal music at high volumes is also kept within limits. The sound system, useful for laptop conditions, can throughout fulfill the demands on a multimedia laptop of this price range when reducing the volume.

Frequency diagram in comparison (checkboxes above can be turned on/off!)

Power Consumption

Since it is not possible to reasonably compare the power consumption of the laptops in the test due to their completely different configurations, we searched our database for laptops with a GTX 1050 Ti and i7-7700HQ. Two of the four existing devices have a 17 and a 14-inch screen. This database actually does not allow estimating the relative consumption. What can be said: The power consumption of the Aspire VX5 is within the expected range in all load states, and there are no peaks. The 135-watt power supply always provides enough power.

The first thing that struck us was the short time difference of just 20 minutes between the maximum runtime test and practical Wi-Fi test with a bright screen. Compared with the weaker CPU and graphics card in Dell's XPS 15, which also has a slightly stronger 56 Wh battery, the too short idle runtime of just 322 minutes is noticed while it is almost neck-and-neck in the other tests. We would recommend following the Wi-Fi test.