This basic-looking machine isn’t likely to elicit looks of jealousy from your Apple MacBook Pro- or MacBook Air-wielding comrades, with its oddly textured plastic casing and basic black-and-white color scheme. But while it makes no attempt to hide its budget-notebook persona, appearances can be deceiving. The$799.99 price on the unit we tested matches its mainstream-at-best look, but the feature set includes a speedy dual-core Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, a 1080p display at 15.6 inches, and a game-friendly, if low-end, dedicated Nvidia graphics processor. Taken together, that bundle of hardware means that this pedestrian-looking Acer packs a lot of bang for the buck.
Our review unit had a distinctive white-and-black color scheme; we’ve also seen similar configurations of the Aspire E15 available with charcoal-gray plastic. This was the main aspect of the notebook that we found disappointing on the outside. The black lid of our test unit had an uncanny-feeling, cloth-like texture embedded in the plastic, creating something of a faux-linen finish.