People normally don’t want to shell out $1,000 for the best laptops. Even if you’re after solid productivity performance, it can be hard to look for one that won’t hurt your wallet and doesn’t completely suck. Luckily, we’ve found three great ones despite their relatively low cost: Acer’s Aspire E 15, Swift 3, and Spin 5. The first one is the best Windows laptop that you can get on a shoestring budget, the second one boasts boosted performance thanks to discrete GPU, and the last one is the first-ever Alexa-enabled 2-in-1 laptop. Students and professionals alike would love these laptops, and for Cyber Week you can get them on Amazon at incredible discounted prices.
ACER ASPIRE E 15
– $328, was $380
The
Powered by an 8th-generation dual-core Core i3-8130U processor with 6GB of
The Aspire E 15’s 15.6-inch Full HD display has a 1,366 x 768-pixel resolution, which is quite rare for a budget notebook. Although its brightness level was kind of low at just 173 nits, colors were accurate, gamma was perfect, and contrast was class-leading at 960:1. This makes this laptop great for watching Netflix and for typical productivity tasks. Its keyboard is well-spaced and comfortable to type on, with a very good tactile feedback response. Additionally, its 4.1 x 3-inch trackpad is spacious and extremely responsive to multi-finger gestures. Last but not least is the Aspire E 15’s amazing battery life, which can last a formidable 13.5 hours long with continuous usage.
The
ACER SWIFT 3
– $608, was $780
People don’t normally associate great graphics with affordable
The 14-inch Full HD screen is surrounded by comically large top and bottom bezels. Acer seems hellbent on making all of its
Finally, the Swift 3 certainly lives up to its name as it runs on the latest and greatest Intel CPU, the Whiskey Lake 8th-generation quad-core Core i7-8565U. It can deftly handle whatever productivity task you throw at it. What’s more, the Nvidia GeForce MX150
ACER SPIN 5
– $870, was $1,000
The Acer Spin 5 brings Alexa to the midrange 2-in-1 market, the first one to ever do it. It works (almost) like an Amazon Echo speaker in a notebook format. Using four far-field microphones and Intel’s Smart Sound digital signal processor (DSP), you can fling questions from right across a large room and
This laptop is solidly built, with minimal flexing if you apply pressure on the lid or keyboard deck. Unfortunately, just like the Aspire E 15 and Swift 3, this device’s bezels are massive. It’s also a little heavy at 3.31 pounds. The hinge rotates 360 degrees and has a fairly smooth mechanism that doesn’t make the touchscreen wobble. This laptop is equipped with a Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 or 166PPI) display, the new standard for midrange and premium notebooks. Colors look great onscreen, although the brightness was a bit low at 279 nits (at least way better than the Aspire E 15), and contrast was average at 750:1. Still, overall images look spot-on, making this a great device for photo and video editing, design work, or simply watching Netflix.
The keyboard provides a very comfortable typing experience even though key travel is slightly shallow, thanks to a snappy and very responsive key mechanism. The touchpad is also quite good, boasting full Microsoft Precision touchpad support. The Spin 5 supports a digital pen, but that’s an additional $50 expense.
This laptop is powered by Intel’s 8th-generation i7 Core processor together with 8GB DDR4, and it was very efficient, as anticipated. This laptop is ideal for both basic and advanced productivity tasks, and with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1050 chip, it’s not too shabby as a
The Acer Spin 5 usually comes with a hefty $1,000 price tag, but take advantage of Amazon’s $130 discount this Cyber Week and get it for $870. What’s more, you can enjoy an additional $60 off instantly upon approval for the Amazon Rewards Visa Card, bringing the price even lower to $810.
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