If you are looking for a good laptop that will not put a hole in your pocket, the Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM 15.6-Inch FHD Notebook Full Review.
(Intel Core i3-7100U 7th Generation, 4GB DDR4, 1TB 5400RPM HD, Intel HD Graphics 620, Windows 10 Home). However, it may not be your preferred choice if you are a gamer; the laptop can be a bit slow. Nonetheless, it better for advanced computer users because it can be easily upgradable.
Unlike the previous Acer Aspire laptops, you do not have to remove the entire bottom cover, slowly but safely disconnect a bunch of cables and then remove random parts before you replace the hard drive or RAM.
All you have to do is to unscrew three screws and remove the bottom to add M.2 SSD, replace the hard drive for a faster 7200 RPM (Revolutions Per Minute) or upgrade the RAM.
Furthermore, the system will play 4k (2160p) YouTube videos, not so exciting I know; the wireless NIC is cannot stream fast enough. However, it will work a bit better if you use a regular Ethernet cable but it will 1080p and 1440p.
Pros
A longer Battery life
One of the favourite things about the Acer Aspire E 15 is the longevity of the Battery life. It can go for eight hours as per estimation from battery popups, and you can last up to twelve hours if you turn on the lowest brightness setting and turning off just about anything including reducing the performance on the built-in GPU.
You do not have to worry about battery drainage when you are not using the laptop; the drainage is minimal
It is easily upgradable
As stated earlier, the system is can easily upgrade the RAM, the hard drive, and upgrade to SSD to name a few.
Sophisticated Backlit keyboard
The backlit keyboard is beautiful and only turns on when you touch the keys. It turns itself off soon after inactivity to conserve battery.
Great designs
The outer metal cut matte finish is incredibly beautiful. It is completely fingerprint-proof.
USB 3.0 (Crystal Mark on the SanDisk Extreme SD card capable of 95MB/s read/write confirms the USB port can mostly reach these speeds 95.7 MB/s read / 85 MB/s write with the SD card), using a Transcend USB 3.0 to SD reader.
Cons
The Acer Aspire E15 still has the same old boring black inner; it would be more charming if the inner is as beautiful as the outer. It doesn’t stop you from getting the system.
You can get a fun armour skin to protect the screen and eliminate fingerprint smears.
- The BIOS is not configured much like a gaming laptop
- There is no dedicated GPU for gaming
- The SD card reader is not as fast as it appears; it runs at USB 2.0 speed. The same SD card noted above only did 22.83 MB/s read, and 22.18 MB/s writes.
- It is not an i5, but a 7th generation i3 is as fast as older generation i5’s.
- It is difficult to remove the battery in case it freezes. To force a shutdown, you can press and hold power for a few seconds.
How to upgrade your Acer Aspire E15 to meet your standard
1. Install a Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB M.2 2280 SATA III SSD (Model # MZN5E250BW). Ensure you get an M.2 SATA III SSD and not a PCIe or regular SATA connector type SSD. If you get the regular SATA port type SSD, it will work, but you will not be able to keep your regular hard drive. You can get it for about $70 during Black Friday. w00t! (This allows Windows 10 Pro to boot in about 2 seconds. Yes, you heard me right. 2 seconds).
Crystal Mark confirms 551.7 MB/s sustained reads, and 529.7 MB/s writes.
4K Q32T1 (random read/write – which is even more important than sustained reads/writes) is 247.7 MB/s reads and 221.9 MB/s writes.
2. Download the MediaCreationTool.exe utility from Microsoft so that you can download the Windows 10 ISO, which includes Home and Pro on the same ISO) unto a fast SanDisk Extreme USB stick (200 MB/s read/write).
3. Edit the USB contents (after creating the ISO from this utility) by manually creating a file called “ei.cfg” in the “sources” folder and add the contents: [Channel] _Default [VL] 0
4. When you add the ei.cfg file with this info, what happens is when you install Windows 10 from the USB stick, it will notify you what edition of Windows 10 you want.
This makes it effectively an “Any Version” like Windows 7’s trick. It is necessary because Windows 10 Home is spyware central; Microsoft spies on you. Moreover, Windows 10 Pro allows you to hack the system to prevent Microsoft from spying on you, which leads us to the next point.
5. When you install Windows 10, it will detect what is embedded in the Acer BIOS, which will automatically get Windows 10 Home if you do not add the ei.cfg. Even if you unplug the slow 5400 RPM drive that is included.
Also, ensure you remove this from the system before installing Windows, so it does not include unnecessary boot information to the drive. Otherwise, it will slow down the bootup process and causes Windows not to load if the regular hard drive is removed or went down.
6. After you unplug the regular drive, change the boot BIOS.
7. During installation, it will give you an option to choose Windows 10 Pro. Complete the install. Regardless if you follow these steps or simply just use whatever’s included in the system, when setting up Windows, it’ll ask you a bunch of random “spyware” questions. Click NO to all of them except the “Smart screen”. Well, except you like to be spied on by Microsoft.
8. Once Windows 10 Pro is installed, find one of the Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate or Windows 8.x Pro license keys you no longer use and use that license key to activate Windows 10 Pro in the System Properties window. You can Google where this location is
9. Replace the 4GB (Kingston) RAM with 8GB HyperX HX421S13IBK2/8 DDR4 2133 SODIMM (2x4GB). This HyperX RAM is the fastest currently in the market found. It runs at CAS 13; the refresh rate is lower is better and faster.
10. Replace the 5400 RPM regular hard drive with a Western Digital Black edition 1TB 7200 RPM laptop drive. Western Digital used to make “Blue” versions run at 7200 RPM except you get the Black edition you will not get full speed.
Crystal Mark confirms 144.2 MB/s sustained and maintained reads and 119.8 MB/s write for the 7200 RPM Western Digital drive.
4K Q32T1 (random read/write – which is more important than sustained reads/writes) is 1.014 MB/s reads and 0.935 MB/s writes.
SSD vs. Western Digital Drive
To be specific, the SSD brand we used to compare with the Western Digital Drive is Samsung.
The Samsung SSD is 551.7/144.2 MB/s, which is 382.59% faster in sustained reads than the Western Digital 7200 RPM drive.
The Samsung SSD is 529.7/119.8 MB/s, which is 442.15% faster in sustained writes.
The Samsung SSD is 247.7/1.014 MB/s is 24,428.008% (24 thousand %) faster in random reads.
The Samsung SSD is 221.9/0.935 MB/s is 23,732.620% faster in random writes.
The 5400 RPM Toshiba HDD that came with the laptop:
Crystal Mark confirms 101.5 MB/s sustained reads, and 91.23 MB/s writes for the 5400 RPM Toshiba HDD that came with the laptop.
4K Q32T1 random read/write 0.811 MB/s reads, and 0.885 MB/s writes.
Samsung SSD vs 5400 RPM Toshiba HDD( comes with the laptop)
The Samsung SSD is 551.7/101.5 MB/s is 543.55% faster in sustained reads than the 5400 RPM Toshiba HDD that came with the computer.
The Samsung SSD is 529.7/91.23 MB/s is 580.620% faster in sustained writes.
The Samsung SSD is 247.7/0.811 MB/s is 30,542.540% faster in random reads.
The Samsung SSD is 221.9/0.877 MB/s is 25,302.217% faster in random writes.
Western Digital 7200 RPM drive vs 5400 RPM Toshiba HDD (Comes with the laptop)
The faster the disk drive is rotating, the faster the hard disk headers can read/write to the disk.
The Western Digital 7200 RPM drive is 144.2/101.5 MB/s is 42.07% faster in sustained reads than the 5400 RPM Toshiba HDD that came with the laptop.
The Western Digital 7200 RPM drive is 119.8/91.23 MB/s is 31.32% faster.
The Western Digital 7200 RPM drive is 1.014/0.811 MB/s is 25.031% faster.
The Western Digital 7200 RPM drive is 0.935/0.877 MB/s is 6.613% faster.
We can attribute the differences to various things such as different hardware, cache and logic software, etc.
Why are random reads/writes important? The operating system constantly does random reads and writes as opposed to sustained reads/writes, which is typically when we are copying 40 GB of movies from one drive to another, for example. So, if your laptop/computer seems slow, get an SSD. You can get an SSD to make it work faster.
However, the Acer Aspire E15 uses M.2. 2280 type; ensure you get an M.2 SATA III this laptop uses M.2 SSDs. Make sure you get an M.2 SATA III SSD and not a regular PCIe or SATA connector type SSD if you want to keep your regular hard drive. The Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM 15.6-Inch FHD Notebook is available on Amazon.
