Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Pros: +Fast and handles everything smoothly +SSD +Backlit Keyboard +Good Keyboard +Decent track pad +Clear HD screen +$700 for 7th gen i7 and 940mx +Can be used for gaming(30-60fps) Cons -Bad Viewing Angles -Plastic Frame -Not Touchscreen -256GBs storage -Budget looking design I have spent more time than I would care to admit looking for a new laptop until I finally decided on this Acer Aspire. I knew exactly what I would be getting myself into when I purchased this and because it held true to the pros and cons associated with it I give 5 stars. Hopefully I can help someone decide if this is what they want based on why I bought it and how it has held up to my demands. First off, going into college I bought a $250 laptop just as something to write papers on and as anyone could have guessed that was a mistake. It could not handle Microsoft Word let alone browse the internet and because of this I knew I wanted a laptop that had more processing power than I knew what to do with and thus began my search of a new laptop and ultimately why I chose this Acer Aspire E15. First, it has a 7th generation Intel i7 processor that runs at 2.7Ghz and can be turbo boosted up to 3.5Ghz. This can handle intensive programs like CAD work and photo/video editing...stuff I'll never do but it marked the box on my checklist that said more processing power than I can use. I do you this laptop to do some work with decent sized Excel files and stream games which means I run OBS studios, the built in camera, a mirroring app, and atleast 6 chrome tabs at once, one of which is Pandora and the other is twitch(video streaming). With all of this going on the laptop doesn't complain at all! Second is the SSD, Solid State Drive, which is more important than I had originally expected. I initially was going to buy a laptop with 1TB of HHD but as it turns out SSD is undoubtedly the way to go no matter what your computer needs are. This helps tremendously with how quickly your laptop preforms such as starting up and general performance. One downside is that it is stock at 256GB. I will be storing some basic college projects like papers and excel files and a few images so I do not need 1TB of storage. Regardless it is easy to get external storage so the fact that this is 256GB of SSD is a huge plus because it could have only been 125GB! Third, it has a dedicated graphics card, an Nvidia GeForce 940mx. This is not a high end card for gaming and I do not play games on this laptop...yet. This card will help in general performance compared to an "integrated???" card and while not being high end it will help if you do choose to play games. I've heard it runs games like Mine craft, Skyrim, and League of Legends with no complaints and can even run newer AAA titles on medium to low graphic setting fairly smoothly like maybe even 30+fps? I chose this because I might play basic games and, again, I heard it helps performance and my goal when buying this was to get peak performance for my dollar! Some miscellaneous pros, the keyboard is indeed backlit and that just makes it look a little bit better and the keyboard itself is a breeze to type on. It's nothing special but it fits my hands nicely compared to some of the smaller laptops out there like 11" or 13". The track pad looks nice, honestly the best part of the design, and works really well in my opinion, atleast compared to my previous $200 laptop. The screen is Full HD and does look really crisp but maybe a little dull or dark. It is nice and shows minute details but doesn't look entirely amazing like the screen on my Galaxy S7 edge does. Now for the cons. First is design. The laptop looks like a budget laptop. Simple as that, it isnt extravagant or cool looking but I didn't buy it for looks, I bought it for what was under the hood. It's all plastic so it looks...meh, from the outside and the bezel around the screen is a rough cheap looking plastic. It doesn't look good! This is a $700 laptop but it doesn't look it, I will not lie! Next, it is not touchscreen. All laptops are now even $300 and $200 ones! It was a small sacrifice of convenience I made in order to get the specs I wanted at the price I wanted! (Which was $500 and I took the advice to pay extra for a better laptop) Sadly though, a touchscreen seems a small request at this price range... Back to the screen, and partially design! The bezel is huge and ugly making this a larger and bulkier laptop that it needed to be...poor design. But more importantly is the screen! It is truly Full HD, (1920×1080???) Which is better than some that come in at 1260×720 HD. BUT along with it looking rather bland, the viewing angles absolutely suck! You basically have to be looking straight on or everything is washed out. So it really isn't the best looking screen but hey! It's all about power and performance...right? I'll go over storage shortly, if you are going to be storing endless amounts of video and audio/songs the 256GB SSD might not cut it for you but I knew I didn't need it hence I bought this computer. It isn't the best but it works for me. To wrap up, it delivers impressive performance to handle all tasks you can throw at it and even a decent graphics card if you want to game a bit but you have to sacrifice some bells and whistles like a touchscreen and truly flagship looking beautiful design. I have done the research! You WILL NOT find a more affordable powerful computer than this for $700 but you have to give up some stuff for it. I bought it because I was prepared to deal with the cons in order to have the power (up to 3.5Ghz!!!) This is a laptop to last me throughout college without breaking the bank and it has lived up to all my needs perfectly and that is why it gets five stars. Really quick. If you are willing to give up some...a little bit of processing power so you can have some of the neat accessories check out the Lenovo Yoga 710 15! It is all metal and looks great and is a 2-in-1 so that means touchscreen! It has the same 256gb SSD and Nvidia GeForce 940mx graphics card. The model with the 7th gen i5 core goes on sale occasionally for $700 while the one with the i7 is rather expensive... Hope this helped! *Edit* Nearly a year in and nothing has changed, it still works wonders for me. I have begun to use Photoshop with this laptop and for those wondering, yes it runs it perfectly smoothly after the initial boot up of the program. I have also begun using this to play games. This update is for those wondering exactly how well it runs major games, mostly Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. It does not run on the highest settings very smoothly, it can but is not worth the dip in frames! Let me get that out of the way right now, it is a powerful workhorse of a laptop but was not made to run big games like this at their highest settings so if that is what you where looking for look somewhere else. BUT! At low settings I can run anywhere from 30-60 frames per second in PUBG so it does work. If you are looking for a cheap gaming laptop this can do the trick relatively well but I am sure you can find something a bit better for a bit more that was actually made for gaming if you looked elsewhere such as a Dell Inspiron or whatever their gaming laptops are called. Again, I did not buy this for gaming so the fact that it can run major and intensive games as well as it does at low to mid range settings is a huge plus for me! If you found this review helpful please hit that thumbs up or whatever!