Acer Aspire 7 (A715-75G) review – an office laptop… for gaming?

Acer Aspire 7 is your ticket to incognito gaming. Its design characteristics haven’t changed in years (with the exception of some minor details here and there), but what has improved is the hardware. This particular model comes with Intel’s 10th Gen processors, and up to the GTX 1650 Ti. Indeed, not the most powerful combo out there, but it definitely has the potential to be your go-to device for both work and gaming.

Actually, the Aspire 7 has been historically similar to the Nitro 5 gaming series. However, unlike the latter, the Aspire shows a more grown-up appeal, that omits the gamer-centric RGB and Red accents in favor of a more business-relateable white backlight, and industrial package.

The unfortunate thing about that is that you won’t be getting a fast refresh rate display. In our opinion, this shouldn’t be an exclusive feature for gaming devices. Thankfully, companies like Apple, Lenovo, and Microsoft have already started diverting to such panels, and we hope that we see the others follow suit.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-7-a715-75-a715-75g/

Contents

Specs Sheet

What’s in the box?

Besides the notebook, in the package, you will find some paperwork, a 135W charger, and a CD with drivers and applications.

Design and construction

Here, we have a plastic lid and body, which has a pretty strong chassis. The design features of the device reveal its business-centric nature, and we find that awesome. In terms of measurements, the device weighs 2.15 kilos and has a profile of about 23mm.

Surprisingly, the lid opens easily with one hand. This reveals a matte display with about an 82% of screen-to-body ratio. With that said, the top and bottom bezels are a bit thick. But on the bright side, the former houses an HD Web camera.

Then comes the keyboard. It is a backlit unit with a NumberPad section and small “Up” and “Down” Arrow keys. The key travel is not the longest out there, and the feedback could have been clickier, but it certainly serves the purpose.

Then, you have the touchpad. It has a decent size, glass surface, and an embedded fingerprint reader. Thankfully, the latter doesn’t mess up the touch-sensitive area, as you can easily glide above it, and the software will register your input.

This device has a huge ventilation grill on the bottom panel. Additionally, there are two speaker cutouts (the speakers are not amazing on this thing). Then again, the heat exhaust happens through one side vent and a pretty large vent on the back.

Ports

On the left side, you will find a Kensington lock slot, a LAN port, an HDMI connector, a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports. Switch sides, and you will see the power plug, and a lonely USB Type-A 2.0 port.

Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

You need to undo 13 Phillips-head screws to access this laptop’s internals. After you remove them, pry the bottom panel, and lift it away from the device.

The battery here has a capacity of 50Wh.

This notebook supports up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM thanks to its two SODIMM slots. Storage-wise, you get one M.2 PCIe x4 slot.

For cooling, there are two heat pipes shared between the CPU and the GPU, and one more dedicated to the graphics card only. Then, there are two fans and two heat sinks, one of which is pretty long.

Display quality

Acer Aspire 7 (A715-75G) comes with a Full HD IPS panel, model number LG LP156WFC-SPD5 (LGD065А). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 142 ppi, their pitch – 0.18 x 0.18 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 60 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

The viewing angles are good. We offer images at different angles to evaluate the quality.

The maximum measured brightness is 300 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 276 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 13%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6250K (average) – slightly warmer than the 6500K optimum for sRGB.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 52% Brightness (White level = 143 cd/m2, Black level = 0.12 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is good – 1180:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Acer Aspire 7 (A715-75G)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display is limited just to 52% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Acer Aspire 7 (A715-75G) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 28 ms.

Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Acer Aspire 7 (A715-75G)’s backlight does not use PWM at any brightness level. This ensures comfort to the eyes in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Acer Aspire 7 (A715-75G) configurations with 15.6″ LG LP156WFC-SPD5 (LGD065A) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/8336?b=1

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This laptop’s 50Wh battery pack delivered 11 hours and 18 minutes of Web browsing or 8 hours and 20 minutes of video playback.

CPU options

Currently, this device is sold with either the Core i5-10300H or the Core i7-10750H.

GPU options

And for graphics, you get to choose from the GeForce GTX 1650 and the GTX 1650 Ti.

Gaming tests

Far Cry 5	Full HD, Normal (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)	Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Average fps	71 fps	65 fps	61 fps

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)	Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)	Full HD, Medium (Check settings)	Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average fps	104 fps	82 fps	43 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands	Full HD, Medium (Check settings)	Full HD, High (Check settings)	Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average fps	55 fps	52 fps	47 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-10750H (45W TDP)	0:02 – 0:10 sec	0:15 – 0:30 sec	10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer Aspire 7 (A715-75G)	3.45 GHz (B+33%) @ 83°C	3.56 GHz (B+37%) @ 87°C	3.19 GHz (B+23%) @ 83°C
Lenovo Legion C7 (15)	3.76 GHz (B+45%) @ 81°C	3.79 GHz (B+46%) @ 89°C	3.62 GHz (B+39%) @ 84°C
HP ZBook Power G7	3.71 GHz (B+43%) @ 87°C	3.60 GHz (B+38%) @ 95°C	3.13 GHz (B+20%) @ 79°C
HP Omen 15 2019 (15-dh1000)	4.03 GHz (B+55%) @ 96°C	3.87 GHz (B+45%) @ 97°C	3.65 GHz (B+40%) @ 96°C
MSI GF65 Thin 10Sx	3.59 GHz (B+38%) @ 95°C	3.48 GHz (B+34%) @ 95°C	3.08 GHz (B+18%) @ 91°C
HP Pavilion Gaming 16 (16-a0000)	3.74 GHz (B+44%) @ 97°C	3.17 GHz (B+22%) @ 88°C	2.98 GHz (B+15%) @ 78°C
HP Omen 15 2020 (15-ek0000)	3.55 GHz (B+37%) @ 71°C	2.88 GHz (B+11%) @ 62°C	2.81 GHz (B+8%) @ 70°C
Acer Predator Helios 300 (PH315-53)	3.56 GHz (B+37%) @ 76°C	3.52 GHz (B+35%) @ 85°C	2.98 GHz (B+15%) @ 75°C
Dell G5 15 5500	3.82 GHz (B+47%) @ 75°C	3.63 GHz (B+40%) @ 99°C	3.01 GHz (B+16%) @ 81°C
ASUS ROG Strix G15 G512	4.16 GHz (B+60%) @ 81°C	3.99 GHz (B+53%) @ 95°C	3.52 GHz (B+35%) @ 87°C
Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-55)	3.02 GHz (B+16%) @ 82°C	3.04 GHz (B+17%) @ 92°C	2.67 GHz (B+3%) @ 92°C
Lenovo Legion 7 (15)	3.78 GHz (B+45%) @ 80°C	3.69 GHz (B+42%) @ 83°C	3.51 GHz (B+35%) @ 83°C

Given the fact that the Aspire 7 isn’t a purists gaming device, the cooling management seems pretty okay. In this case, the frequencies can’t match those of the Legion 7 (15) for example, but they are still higher than these of the Nitro 5 (AN515-55).

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti	GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)	GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)	GPU frequency/ Core temp (Turbo mode)
Acer Aspire 7 (A715-75G)	1598 MHz @ 71°C	1583 MHz @ 72°C	–
Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-55)	1628 MHz @ 74°C	1601 MHz @ 81°C	–
Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-52)	1581 MHz @ 70°C	1551 MHz @ 78°C	1673 MHz @ 66°C
ASUS TUF A15 (F506)	1566 MHz @ 68°C	1549 MHz @ 69°C	–

Here you get a relatively cool chip with decent clock speeds. Pretty much on the same level as gaming notebooks at the same price. Also, it maintains its 50W TGP without an issue.

Gaming comfort

You have to keep in mind that this machine won’t be quiet when you play games. However, it’s not too loud either, and on top of that, it is not too warm as well.

Verdict

As we said, this is not exactly a gaming notebook. It aims at a more broad audience, where neutral visuals are preferred. And Acer has definitely succeeded in providing this to their customers. The design is super incognito, there is no RGB, and you won’t get any of the gamer bloatware. On the downside, this prevents you from customizing your performance preferences, but you can always do that (even more efficiently) with some third-party software.

What is good, is that you get more than 11 hours of Web browsing or more than 8 hours of video playback. In addition to that, you can upgrade your notebook down the line thanks to the two SODIMM slots for memory expansion, and the single M.2 PCIe x4 slot for storage.

Ultimately, the display is not groundbreaking. Instead, Acer relies on a rather affordable 1080p IPS panel that has comfortable viewing angles, and a good contrast ratio. Indeed, it covers only half of the colors on the Web, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t flicker at any brightness level.

So, content creation will be out of the way, if you don’t get yourself an appropriate external display. Also, you won’t be getting SD card support either. On the other hand, the I/O is quite sufficient, and the cooling is on point with what the hardware offers.

Amazingly, we would actually recommend this laptop. Although at this point in time, you can find an RTX 3050-equipped device for nearly the same amount of money. However, the compromises on this model are definitely less obvious, and the quality of the build is surprisingly good.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-aspire-7-a715-75-a715-75g/