Deal | Less than $500: Acer Aspire 14 AI with long battery life records big 44% discount vs list price

The Windows laptop landscape is full of exciting notebooks with super-powerful internals, great displays, quirky designs, and much more. However, sometimes all a person needs is a basic laptop that is fast enough to handle day-to-day tasks, lasts a long time on a single charge, and does it all at an affordable price. The Acer Aspire 14 AI with the Intel Lunar Lake APUs fits this description perfectly, and you can now get it for less than $500.

The Acer Aspire 14 AI with a Core Ultra 5 226V APU, 16 GB of LPDDR5x RAM, and 512 GB of storage is retailing for $459.99 on Amazon, a 44% discount on the full $830 list price. According to the laptop’s price history on camelcamelcamel, the current $460 price is just $20 more than the all-time low. So, the Acer Aspire 14 AI is almost down to its lowest price ever.

In addition to the 8-core Lunar Lake APU, the Acer Aspire 14 AI also features a 14-inch FHD+ touch-sensitive display, a 1080p webcam, Wi-Fi 6E/BT5.3, and a backlit keyboard. The notebooks runs on a 65 Wh battery.

For the ports, the Acer Aspire 14 AI incorporates:

• Two Thunderbolt 4 connectors
• Two Type-A ports
• An HDMI 2.1 out
• A 3.5 mm audio jack

While the hardware of the Acer Aspire 14 AI is nothing out of the ordinary, the laptop punches well above its weight. We noted in our review that the notebook boasts good performance-per-watt, commendable iGPU performance, quiet operation, and long battery life. For instance, the Acer Aspire 14 AI played Cyberpunk 2077 at 39 FPS at 1080p/low and lasted well over 12 hours in our Wi-Fi websurfing test.

Our only real gripes were the weak IPS panel, unimpressive build quality, and average CPU performance. However, since the laptop is now much more cost-effective than before, these weaknesses of the Acer Aspire 14 AI sting much less.

In other words, the Acer Aspire 14 AI on sale is a pretty good value. It has plenty of performance for routine operation, and it will comfortably last a whole workday. You could even game on the thin-and-light laptop if you lower the settings and stay away from extremely demanding titles. At just $460, you’ll be hard-pressed to find something better.