Acer is taking advantage of the Consumer Electronics Show to introduce two new laptops built around AMD’s latest Ryzen 5000 CPUs.
The Aspire 7 is the high-end offering, aimed clearly at professionals and enthusiasts who are looking for power, while the Aspire 5 is aimed at providing affordable power for productivity users.
Acer Aspire 7
The Aspire 7 will utilize the new AMD Ryzen 5000 CPU, giving it up to eight cores and 16 threads of high performance. Paired with the Ryzen 5000 will be up to an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 GPU, to provide faster performance in GPU-enabled creativity applications and casual gaming. Up to 32GB of RAM can be configured, along with up to 1TB of PCIe solid-state drive (SSD) storage. Connectivity will include Wi-Fi 6 and USB-C ports at up to five gigabits per second.
The laptop’s aluminum chassis is meant to provide a “sleek, understated” design to appeal to users who don’t want a laptop that stands out, and it will weigh 4.73 pounds while housing a Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) 15.6-inch IPS display with an 81.61% screen to body ratio. The laptop has a thermal design intended to allow it to run quietly and without generating excess heat, and three performance modes (silent, normal, and performance) will be available via the Fn+F key combination.
Acer will include a number of utilities meant to provide users with control over the display’s colors. The Acer Color Intelligence utility, for example, will dynamically adjust color saturation and gamma in real-time, creating optimal saturation, brightness, and screen color and avoiding clipping and over-saturation.
The Aspire 7 will be available in March 2021 and will start at $750.
Acer Aspire 5
The Aspire 5 will also take advantage of the performance provided by AMD’s Ryzen 5000 CPU, although it will be mated with AMD’s own GPU, the Radeon RX 640. Up to 24GB of RAM will be available, and dual drives of up to a 1TB SSD and/or up to a 2TB hard disk drive (HDD) can be configured. The laptop is intended for users who don’t need quite the performance of the Aspire 7 but who still demand better-than-ultrabook power.
The plastic chassis will be 0.70 inches thick and will feature a sandblasted aluminum lid for added durability. The Aspire 5 will also utilize a 15.6-inch Full HD display with Acer BlueLightShield technology to reduce eye strain. Connectivity will include Wi-Fi 6 and USB-C ports.
The Aspire 5 will also be available in March 2021 at a starting price of $550.
