Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22) is a notebook that costs very little. This is a practical daily driver or workhorse for the workplace; it is not a stylish gadget. This one, believe it or not, includes all the necessary “ingredients” for everyday use.

You can choose a Full HD monitor and the Aspire 3 laptop can be set up with more than 8GB of RAM, and there is an M.2 port for fast NVMe storage that may improve the machine’s overall responsiveness.

Although the laptop uses somewhat outdated AMD Zen and Zen+ CPUs, it looks reasonable given the price. The Ryzen 5 3500U, a 4-core model with 8 threads, should be more than enough for web surfing, video streaming, some office work, and even light gaming.

The Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22) is a 14-inch laptop that is rather light and thin, so portability shouldn’t be an issue. The display bezels are sufficiently small, and the laptop has a rather contemporary appearance.

The construction of Acer Aspire 3 laptop isn’t at all premium, the hardware platform is a little antiquated, and the availability of a 768p TN screen model in 2021 is rather alarming are all obvious negatives. Let’s see whether this laptop can provide a lot of value for the money, however.

Design and Built

As mentioned above this is a quite small affordable 14-inch laptop and weights 1.90 KGs and has a 19.9mm profile, which is perfectly fine if you often use your laptop outdoors.

Acer Aspire 3 a plastic gadget, which is to be anticipated at this budget point in terms of build quality. Fortunately, the lid can be opened with only one hand, but when you release it, it bounces a little.

The keyboard comes without both a NumPad portion and a backlight. Additionally, the arrow keys are half their regular size and are too near to other keycaps to be used normally. When typing vigorously, the keyboard deck is pliable, particularly the region between the “Space” key and the touchpad. However, the keys give a wonderful experience since they may generate a good “click” and travel. There isn’t much to say about the trackpad on this Acer laptop; it’s a typical device that is adequate for daily use.

Ports

This Acer notebook comes with two USB 3.1 Type-A (Gen. 1) ports, an RJ-45 connection, an HDMI port, and a power adapter socket on the left side of the laptop. Only an audio jack, one USB Type-A 2.0 connector, and a Kensington lock slot are present on the right side.

The Aspire 3 (A314-22) is simple to open; you only need to remove 11 Phillips head screws before using a plastic tool to release the bottom panel. You don’t need to use a lot of effort to get the panel to pop up. It just has one fan, one heat sink, and one heat pipe for its basic cooling system.

Cooling

Even with a dual-core CPU like the AMD Ryzen 5 3250U, the cooling system suffers on this laptop by Acer. Although the processor constantly rises beyond its base rate, the temperature of the CPU may exceed 90°C under light loads and stabilize at 86°C under severe loads.

Not bad for such a cheap gadget, we have one RAM slot (there is a 4GB soldered memory) and an M.2 socket for NVMe SSDs.

Acer Aspire 3 comes with a 37Wh battery that seems typical for a reasonably priced 14-inch device.

Display Quality

Full HD is available on the Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22) display. It has a 14-inch (35.56-cm) diagonal and a 1920 x 1080 resolution. In addition, the screen aspect ratio is 16:9, the pixels have a 157 ppi density, and their dimensions are 0.161 x 0.161 mm. When seen from a distance of at least 56 cm, the screen may be deemed Retina (at this distance, the typical human eye cannot discern the individual pixels).It has decent viewing angles.

Sound

The speakers on the Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22) can create sound of reasonable quality. It doesn’t deviate in the low, mid, or high tones.

Battery

More than 7 hours and 9 minutes of web surfing and movie playing are possible on the Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22).

CPU

The AMD 3020e, AMD Ryzen 3 3250U, and AMD Ryzen 5 3500U CPU choices are available for the Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22). These AMD Zen and Zen+ models are a little antiquated, but if you pair them with at least 8GB of RAM, they can still provide decent performance for casual everyday work.

GPU

Whether you like it or not, AMD RX Vega 3 or AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 (Ryzen 2000/3000, 15W) are the only graphics processors available here.

Take Away

For the amount it asks, the Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22) is a respectable purchase. The AMD Ryzen 5 3500U is the obvious pick if you want a system that is a little more future-proof. Despite having a 4-thread CPU, it is enough for Web surfing and playing videos. Given the cost of laptop, the upgrade choices are excellent.

Yes, there are some issues with the Acer Aspire 3 (A314-22). Its whole construction is made of plastic, the lid jiggles when you release it, the keyboard is bendy when you’re typing, and it lacks a backlight and a NumPad region.

The simple cooling system of Aspire 3 laptop can maintain decent rates when under stress, but the CPU is always warm and the fan is noisy practically all of the time. Unfortunately, the I/O only has a few ports. And sure, the Full HD IPS display has a poor sRGB coverage, but if you don’t use it for anything that requires attention to color, that’s not a major concern.