Acer Aspire M5-583P-6428 Pro Reviews

Fans of large laptop touchscreens will appreciate the Aspire M’s roomy display, slim profile, and excellent battery life. The price-to-performance isn't bad either.

Gamers will want to look elsewhere, but those seeking to run everyday applications in a package that's both sturdy and slim will find Best Buy's $649 price a tempting deal.

The Acer Aspire M5-583P-6428 laptop gets a giant boost in performance and battery life, and does it without budging on the reasonable price.

The revised Acer Aspire M5 is an excellent example of what Intel’s new 4th-gen processors make possible. Little change has come to the chassis, and most other hardware is unchanged, so the improvements can generally be attributed to the laptop’s Core i5-4200U. And boy, are there improvements. Battery life in our Web browsing benchmark has increased by 30 minutes, while light-load endurance improved by almost four hours. Compute performance is about the same as before, but 3D performance has improved dramatically. Fan noise and external temperatures are lower, too. There are still a few problems, however, and the display is chief among them. Consumers don’t expect a great panel on an inexpensive laptop, but the Aspire M5’s display is literally among the worst in the industry, and halfway decent screens can be found on laptops sold for a couple hundred more. We also found the touchpad to be a chore at times, and storage performance is also a sore point. Acer’s rush to offer one of the first low-cost Haswell laptops has paid off. Compared to the hordes of competitors still sold for between $600 and $800 with 3rd-gen processors, the new Aspire M5 offers superior battery life, better game performance, and cooler operation. Buyers should keep a keen eye on upcoming laptops, however. The M5’s weaknesses may hold it back when the competition catches up to its hardware.