By As a writer, one of the first features I look for in a laptop is a good, sturdy keyboard. Even with the greatest processing power under the sun, I will still find it difficult to type. The Acer Aspire 7 A715-76G’s sturdy keyboard, which includes a numpad, is its primary selling point. I don’t love the half-height up and down key on the Acer Aspire 7, as I don’t with many other full-width keyboards, but it’s not a major flaw. The laptop has straightforward backlighting with two brightness levels, and its control row is conveniently located in the expected location.
The fingerprint scanner is located in the upper left corner of the sturdy, well-built trackpad—a positioning that I thought was a little strange but not in a bad way. Both the click and the response are strong.
My primary criticism of the build quality is that I like the space because of the possibilities it offers. You can easily update the RAM and storage by going under the hood, and because there is enough for two SSDs, your storage options are much increased. The flexibility to make adjustments like this is a huge plus because I’m a big proponent of customizing your computers (my home PC has been built and rebuilt several times in the last ten years). Although the base is made of plastic, it has a sturdy construction, which is reinforced by the metal lid—which does collect fingerprints.
AUDIO AND VISUAL
Sadly, there is one significant drawback to the Acer Aspire 7 A715-76G: the screen. Although the screen is decent enough for viewing and typing, it only displays 58.1% of the colors in the sRGB spectrum and is quite dull (with a maximum brightness of 202 nits). Additionally, you will find it difficult to use it in bright areas like the outdoors because of light reflections on the screen, which make it nearly hard to see anything.
The fact that the speakers are rather quiet means that, while this is a good thing since it prevents distortion at high volumes, you’ll probably want to use headphones or an external speaker instead.
SPECIAL FEATURES
The Acer Aspire 7 A715-76G includes all the typical features you’d expect at this price range, including Thunderbolt USB-C, a very basic webcam, and a fingerprint scanner. However, it differs significantly from other laptops in this price range in that it has a dedicated graphics card. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 with 4 GB dedicated RAM under the hood of the Acer Aspire 7 A715-76G provides it extra power to perform contemporary games, 3D modeling, and video editing.
CPU: Intel Core i5-12450H
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 with 4 GB memory
RAM: 16GB
Screen: 15.6″ Full HD (1920 x 1080) 16:9 IPS 144 Hz
Storage: 512 GB
Connectivity: 1xHDMI, 3xUSB-A, 1xUSB-C thunderbolt, Audio jack
Size: 19.9 x 362.3 x 237.4mm
Weight: 2.1kg
Additional features: Fingerprint reader, webcam, microphone, backlit keyboard
PERFORMANCE
When it comes to creating digital content, the Acer Aspire 7 A715-76G does fairly well, save from the dark screen. It should be able to handle most tasks given its scores of 8373 in rendering and visualization and 7692 in photo editing on PCMark 10. However, its somewhat low score of 4662 in video editing is a letdown.
I used the entire range of 3DMark’s gaming benchmarks to see if the graphics card affected the result. Given its construction, the Acer Aspire 7 A715-76G’s overall scores place it squarely between an affordable gaming PC and a business laptop. Given that the screen resolution is 1080p, its score of 50+ FPS on 1080p Ultra is quite adequate. However, it can only run Red Dead Redemption 2 at 20 FPS on 1440p Ultra. While gaming, the fans do come on, but they’re not too loud; considering the quiet speakers, you might want to use headphones at this point.
Pro Tools Studio operated flawlessly on the Acer Aspire 7 A715-76G in the field, recording several channels via Dante via the Ethernet connector. Additionally impressive was the Acer Aspire’s battery life, which lasted for 6 hours at 50% brightness according to the Procyon Battery Life test. If your train is on schedule, this should take you from London to Perth, Scotland. The sales brochure rates the battery at 5 hours and 50 minutes.
SHOULD I BUY THE ACER ASPIRE 7
The Acer Aspire 7 A715-76G, priced at £899.99, is an excellent laptop for certain applications but not for others. It might be the ideal laptop for you if visuals aren’t your primary concern (for instance, if you’re searching for a recording laptop), especially if you enjoy playing PC games occasionally. However, if you work in a field where graphics are important, you might want to invest a little extra money to obtain a laptop with a superior screen, such as the ASUS Vivobook Pro 15 OLED or the Dell XPS 13 9315 2-in-1.
