Review of the laptop Acer Aspire 1 A114-21-R6NP: low price, deplorable performance and 14-inch TN matrix
We have not dealt with Acer laptops for a very long time (except for the very specific Acer Spin 7 device on an ARM processor under Windows), and we rarely get inexpensive models for tests, and the demand for them has always been and remains significant. Now there is an opportunity to consider a frankly budget device Acer Aspire 1 A114-21-R6NP . It cannot be said that we started work with great interest, but we bring to your attention our impressions of it and the test results in the hope that they will be useful to readers who need a laptop, and just a little extra bills in their pockets: prices for it at the time writing a review began with $419.
We anticipate a lot of comments in advance that you can buy better and cheaper on AliExpress. We won’t argue, we’ll just remind you: the first one will have to wait (and not a couple of days), the second one will be sent a “pig in a poke”, and if this beast turns out to be lame on three paws or not a cat at all, but a rabbit, then you will have to spend time and nerves to return the money (and not the fact that it will turn out). In addition, there will be complete uncertainty with a guarantee; however, today there may be problems with imported goods purchased in the Russian Federation in this regard. Finally, our review will help you weigh the pros and cons for this model in advance and make an informed choice, and with regard to orders from China, you often have to rely on the seller’s statements and reviews like “received quickly, did not turn it on yet, very satisfied with the purchase, the seller thanks . ”
Configuration and equipment
The laptop is not the most recent: it does not appear in the list of new products on the company’s website, we could not find information about the date of its appearance on sale. Indirect signs allow us to talk about 2021 (but without a month or at least a quarter), and the processor used in it was announced at the beginning of 2020, that is, by no means a “dinosaur”, and there are also new models with such a CPU.
In the Aspire 1 A114 series, Acer offers inexpensive laptops with a 14″ screen (resolution can be 1920 × 1080 or 1366 × 768), with AMD or Intel processors (but all from budget lines), integrated graphics, RAM from 4 to 8 GB , 128 GB eMMC drive, no operating system, or with Windows 11 Home.
Review of the Acer Aspire laptop – Acer Aspire 1 A114-21-R6NP
Our instance has the following configuration:
| Acer Aspire 1 A114-21-R6NP | ||
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Athlon Silver 3050U (14 nm, 2 cores/2 threads, 2.3/3.2 GHz, 12-25W) | |
| RAM | 8 GB (4 GB soldered + 4 GB DDR4-3200 module in SO-DIMM slot), 12 GB maximum | |
| Video subsystem | integrated AMD Radeon Graphics | |
| Screen | 14″, 1920×1080 (16:9), TN (CMN N140HGA-EA1), 60Hz | |
| Sound subsystem | Realtek ALC255 codec, 2 speakers | |
| Storage device | 1 × eMMC 128 GB (Kingston A29128) have free M.2 slot |
|
| card reader | No | |
| Network interfaces | wired network | Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek RTL8168/8111) |
| Wireless network | Wi-Fi 5 (Intel AC 3168, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4 and 5.0 GHz) | |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth 4.2 | |
| Interfaces and ports | USB | 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A 1 x USB 3.0 Type-A |
| RJ-45 | there is | |
| Video outputs | HDMI | |
| Audio connectors | 1 combo for headset (minijack) | |
| Input Devices | Keyboard | without backlight |
| touchpad | clickpad | |
| IP telephony | Webcam | 640×480 |
| Microphone | there are two) | |
| The fingerprint scanner | No | |
| Battery | 36.7 Wh Lithium Ion | |
| Dimensions | 328×236×23.3 mm (case thickness 20 mm excluding feet) | |
| Weight without power supply | 1.47 kg | |
| Power adapter | 45.1 W (19 V/2.37 A), weight 0.28 kg (with cable) | |
The device comes without an operating system, its drive is divided into two parts: the larger one is free, and the smaller one (about 2.7 GB) contains drivers for Windows.
The product is packed in a cardboard box without a carrying handle.
In addition to the laptop itself, the kit includes only a power supply with a detachable input cable 0.95 m long (the output cable is soldered, its length is 1.5 m) and several printed instructions.
Appearance and ergonomics
The body color is a very dark grey, almost black. The cover and both panels of the case are plastic, the surfaces are matte, fingerprints are hardly visible on them. The exterior is unsophisticated, but this is not a reproach: the brevity of design is perceived by many as a virtue.
Thanks to the bevels at the front and side edges, the device looks quite “slender”, although the thickness is not extremely small: the value is 19.9 mm, closer to the trailing edge we got a similar value – 20.0 mm, and taking into account the rubber foot – 23 .3 mm. At the leading edge (not at the very edge, but before the beginning of the bottom rounding), the thickness is usually less, but in this case the measurement showed even a little more than at the back: 20.3 mm. A barely noticeable slope is provided by the front legs of a smaller height – with them you get 21.6 mm.
The design turned out to be not particularly rigid: the panels flex even with moderate pressure, but the torsional strength of the lid with the LCD screen is not bad – the small size affected.
The frame around the screen is wide by today’s standards: 8 mm on the sides, 13 mm at the top (there is a webcam with an indicator, but without a shutter, and microphone holes), and the outer plate of the cover adds another millimeter, which visually enlarges the frame. And at the bottom it turns out at all 32 mm to the bend of the lid, which hides the hinges.
On the bottom, in addition to oblong and rather hard legs, closer to the trailing edge, there is a large area with many narrow ventilation slots through which air is taken to cool the components, so you should not put the laptop on a soft surface. At the rear end of the case, slightly to the right of its transverse axis, there is a group of larger holes through which the ventilation system ejects heated air. But due to the wide lower part of the frame, there is no noticeable heating of the lower area of the screen even with significant loads on the processor, which in real operation rarely have a very long character.
The stereo speaker grilles are located at the bottom left and right, closer to the front edge.
The lid with the screen opens to an angle close to 180 degrees and is precisely fixed in any position, starting from about 20 degrees (and also closed). At angles greater than 150 degrees, its edge begins to touch the table, however, no elements are provided to prevent abrasion.
The force of the hinges is significant, it will not work to open the lid with one hand – you will have to hold the lower part. There are no special protrusions for which one could catch a finger, but this does not really interfere.
On the left side of the laptop there are connectors: a power jack, an RJ-45 with a spring-loaded cap, HDMI ports (full-size) and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A (blue).
On the right are a hole for a Kensington lock, two small status indicators – power (blue in working condition, blinking orange in sleep mode) and batteries (orange during charging and blue when finished), a USB 3.0 port (black) and a combo minijack for an audio headset. There is no card reader. Recall that “USB 3.0” is the same speed mode as “USB 3.2 Gen 1”.
A membrane-type keyboard with an island arrangement of buttons, without a numeric keypad (but numbers can be entered using a combination of Fn and some letter keys) and backlighting (but sometimes it is not enough). It is slightly recessed, and the upper planes of the keys are on the same level with the rest of the body surface. The indents along the edges are noticeable – 28 mm each.
Most of the keys have a size of 15.5 × 14.2 mm (in the letter rows, only the width “~ / E” is reduced to 10 mm), the functional keys are noticeably smaller (13 × 8.3 mm), the left and right Shift are wide, above the Enter is a large key for various slashes. Of the minuses, we note: the arrow buttons have half the height, and this block is supplemented with the PgUp / Home and PgDn / End keys of the same size; a common button is made for Insert and Delete.
Typing is quite comfortable, except that it will take some time to get used to the mentioned features of some buttons. Printing sounds are moderate. The full stroke when pressed is about 1.4 mm.
The function buttons are set to Fn Lock by default, which means that they control operations such as going to sleep, turning the wireless adapter on and off, adjusting the screen brightness, etc. In the Windows environment, these settings cannot be changed to return to familiar functions you will have to enter BIOS Setup, but by default the entrance is protected by a factory password, the methods for removing which are available on the Internet.
The indicators built into the buttons for displaying certain modes (Caps Lock, etc.) are not provided.
The Power button is on the right side of the function key row (next to Insert/Delete), which makes erroneous presses possible. There is no fingerprint scanner.
As mentioned above, the webcam and microphones are located above the screen. The quality is really sad – not even the usual 720p (1280×720) for inexpensive laptops, but only 640×480. There are no button shortcuts to quickly turn off the camera and / or microphones.
The 105×65 mm touchpad with a slightly recessed surface does not have dedicated keys, but the left and right near edges may well work as the corresponding mouse buttons. There are no special complaints about the convenience of working with the touchpad, a keyboard shortcut is provided to quickly disable it.
Screen
The Acer Aspire 1 notebook (model code A114-21-R6NP) uses a 14.0-inch TN panel with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels ( edid-decode report ).
The outer surface of the matrix is black, hard and semi-matt (the specularity is well expressed). There is no special anti-reflective coating or filter, and there is no air gap. When powered from the mains or from the battery and with manual brightness control (there is no automatic adjustment by the light sensor), its maximum value was 220 cd / m² (in the center of the screen on a white background). The maximum brightness is low. However, if you avoid direct sunlight, then this value allows you to somehow use the laptop on the street, even on a sunny summer day.
To evaluate the readability of the screen outdoors, we use the following criteria obtained from testing screens in real conditions:
| Maximum brightness, cd/m² | Terms | Readability score |
|---|---|---|
| Matte, semi-matte and glossy screens without anti-reflective coating | ||
| 150 | Direct sunlight (more than 20,000 lux) | unreadable |
| Light shadow (approximately 10,000 lux) | barely readable | |
| Light shade and light clouds (no more than 7500 lux) | work is uncomfortable | |
| 300 | Direct sunlight (more than 20,000 lux) | barely readable |
| Light shadow (approximately 10,000 lux) | work is uncomfortable | |
| Light shade and light clouds (no more than 7500 lux) | work comfortably | |
| 450 | Direct sunlight (more than 20,000 lux) | work is uncomfortable |
| Light shadow (approximately 10,000 lux) | work comfortably | |
| Light shade and light clouds (no more than 7500 lux) | work comfortably | |
These criteria are very conditional and may be revised as data accumulate. Note that there may be some improvement in readability if the matrix has some kind of transreflective properties (part of the light is reflected from the substrate, and the image can be seen in the light even with the backlight turned off). Also, glossy matrices, even in direct sunlight, can sometimes be rotated so that they reflect something quite dark and uniform (on a clear day, for example, the sky), which will improve readability, while matte matrices need to be blocked from Sveta. In rooms with bright artificial light (about 500 lux), you can work more or less comfortably even with a maximum screen brightness of 50 cd / m² and below, that is, in these conditions, maximum brightness is not an important value.
Let’s return to the screen of the tested laptop. If the brightness setting is 0%, then the brightness is reduced to 20 cd/m². In complete darkness, the brightness of its screen can be lowered to a comfortable level.
With a strong decrease in brightness from the maximum, backlight modulation appears, but its frequency is very high (26 kHz), so there is no screen flicker visible to the eye, it is not detected in the stroboscopic effect test either. Here are graphs of brightness (vertical axis) versus time (horizontal axis) at various brightness settings:
Illumination at the top and bottom is due to the fact that even with a slight deviation of the gaze from the perpendicular to the screen, the black field is strongly highlighted. Therefore, in real use, the contrast is very low, black is seen as black only in a small area to which the view is perpendicular at the moment. It’s good that the black field, when deviated, at least remains conditionally neutral gray.
The screen has very poor viewing angles. When horizontally deviated by small angles, the picture is still not very much distorted, but with a slight downward deviation, dark shades are strongly inverted, and when deviated upward, light shades are inverted. The photographs below, taken at an angle of approximately 45 degrees to the plane of the screen, demonstrate this. First, for comparison, perpendicular to the screen:
The response time for the black-white-black transition is 13ms (9ms on + 4ms off), the transition between grayscales in total (from hue to hue and back) takes an average of 31ms. The matrix is not fast, but not the slowest either. There is no acceleration.
We determined the total output delay from switching pages of the video buffer to the start of displaying the image on the screen (recall that it depends on the features of the Windows OS and the video card, and not just on the display). At 60Hz refresh rate, the latency is 12ms. This is a small delay, it is absolutely not felt when working on a PC, and even in very dynamic games it will not lead to a decrease in performance.
In the screen settings, only one refresh rate is available – 60 Hz. At least at native screen resolution, the output is at a color depth of 8 bits per color.
Next, we measured the brightness of 256 shades of gray (from 0, 0, 0 to 255, 255, 255). The graph below shows the increase (not an absolute value!) in brightness between adjacent halftones:
Let’s summarize. The screen of this laptop has a low maximum brightness (about 220 cd / m²), so it will be difficult to use the device outdoors on a bright day, but in complete darkness the brightness can be lowered to a comfortable level (up to 20 cd / m²). The advantages of the screen include low output latency and no flicker. The downside is everything else. In general, the screen quality is very poor, even on a TN-matrix the screen can be better.
Sound
As noted above, the stereo speaker grilles are located on the left and right on the bottom, closer to the front edge, and partially go into the side bevels of the case – probably, sound reflection from the surface on which the laptop is installed is implied.
When listening to music, watching movies and playing games, the sound is quite acceptable, without significant distortion, and quite loud, although the volume margin is clearly designed only for individual use.
The loudness of the built-in speakers was measured while playing an audio file with pink noise. The maximum volume was 78.3 dBA, so among the laptops tested at the time of this writing (median 74.5 dBA), this laptop is louder than average.
| Model | Loudness, dBA |
|---|---|
| MSI P65 Creator 9SF (MS-16Q4) | 83 |
| Apple MacBook Pro 16″ | 79.1 |
| Acer Aspire 1 A114-21-R6NP | 78.3 |
| MSI Alpha 15 A3DDK-005RU | 77.7 |
| Dell Latitude 9510 | 77 |
| Apple MacBook Air (Early 2020) | 76.8 |
| MSI GE65 Raider 9SF | 74.6 |
| Asus ZenBook 14X OLED | 74.4 |
| Honor MagicBook Pro | 72.9 |
| Huawei MateBook D16 (2022) | 72.4 |
| Asus ZenBook UX425J | 67.5 |
| Lenovo IdeaPad 530S-15IKB | 66.4 |
Battery operation
The declared battery capacity is 36.7 Wh, utilities report a slightly different value:
The results are average: even for office applications, the charge is not enough for the whole working day, and with a very moderate brightness and a “cutoff” of a very small value of 1 percent. The reason for this is a very modest battery capacity, and if you make it bigger, it will inevitably increase the weight of the laptop, which can’t be called small for such a diagonal screen anyway. For comparison: the HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur device we studied earlier with a 15.6″ screen and a 41 Wh battery weighs only 110 grams more, but in the same tests it worked for 9 and 6.5 hours, respectively.
In this case, there are no settings that allow you to limit the level of charge and, accordingly, affect autonomy.
The official materials do not mention the charging time either, we measured it ourselves: we discharged the battery to a level of 1% in the test with watching a video, then with the laptop turned on, we recorded the time, controlling the charge using the appropriate Windows snap-in. Readings of 50% were reached in just 39 minutes, a charge of 60% was displayed in 48 minutes, and 80% in 1 hour and 13 minutes. As usual, things went more slowly from there: it took 1 hour 44 minutes for 90%, and the last ten percent were replenished the longest – the full charge was displayed after 2 hours 29 minutes.
The average time for two measurements turned out to be almost the same: 2 hours 27 minutes. If the laptop is turned off, then the charge goes a little faster.
Now a few words about the standard adapter: it is very compact – 94 × 39 × 27 mm, excluding the output cable, but the removable input uses three wires of 0.75 mm 2 and three-pin plugs, so its weight, with a length of less than a meter, turned out to be quite comparable to the weight of the PSU itself (including a one and a half meter output cord) – 132 and 143 grams, respectively. Of course, one can say that certain standards require the use of just such a cable, but this does not make it easier.
Working under load and heating
First, a little about the design features.
A little more than half of the inside of the case is occupied by the motherboard. 4 GB of RAM are soldered on it, and four more in the form of a SO-DIMM module are installed in the slot; if desired, you can increase the volume to 12 GB (as the laptop specification says), but only by replacing the existing module.
You can see a wireless adapter on the board, and on the right there is an M.2 slot for installing an SSD (there are also places for fastening with a screw for two sizes).
The rest of the internal space is occupied by a lithium-ion battery, consisting of two cells. There are speakers on the sides.
The cooling system contains only one radiator with a fan and a single heat pipe. As already mentioned, air is sucked in through slots in the bottom and thrown back to the bottom of the screen.
The fan speed is not displayed in any of the utilities we use; by ear, it either has a smooth adjustment, or there are at least three steps.
To evaluate how the operating parameters of the system components (temperatures, frequencies, etc.) change under different load scenarios, we will give a table (the maximum / steady values are given through a fraction), while the fan automatically increases or decreases speed as needed.
| Load scenario | CPU frequencies, GHz | CPU temperature, °C | CPU consumption, W | GPU frequency, GHz | GPU temperature, °C |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inaction | 36-37 | 1-2 | |||
| Maximum CPU load | 3.2/3.2 | 74/73 | 16/16 | ||
| Maximum load on the video card | 3.2/2.0 | 73/58 | 26/14 | 1.1/1.1 | 62/56 |
| Maximum load on the processor and video card | 3.2/2.7 | 82/64 | 29/18 | 1.1/0.9 | 65/54 |
Now a little more.
When a load (powerMax program) is applied to the processor, it constantly operates at a maximum frequency of 3.2 GHz, the consumption is moderate and also constant – just over 16 watts. The temperature quickly rises to 74 degrees, after half a minute the fan is activated, which almost immediately reaches maximum speed (you can judge by the sound) and remains in this mode until the end of the test. The temperature slightly decreases and stabilizes, there is no overheating and throttling.
If only the GPU is loaded, it runs at its specified frequency of 1.1 GHz, its temperature first rises (but to a moderate value of 52 ° C), and then the fan comes into action at low speed, the temperature stabilizes. After about 4 minutes, periodic changes (up and down fluctuations) in temperature and consumption begin, which can rise up to 26 W, to which the fan reacts by changing the speed, reducing heat.
At maximum load simultaneously on the processor and video core, there is a short frequency jump (CPU up to 3.2 GHz, GPU up to 1.1 GHz) and consumption up to 29 W, the CPU temperature rises to 82 ° C, the fan reaches its maximum. Very soon, frequencies and consumption drop abruptly – to 3.0 / 1.0 GHz and 25 W, the temperature drops to 78 ° C. Nothing changes for about three minutes, then a more significant drop occurs: frequencies up to 2.7 / 0.9 GHz, consumption up to 18 W, the fan slows down, the temperature drops to 64 ° C, then the situation stabilizes.
Below are thermal images obtained after a long-term operation of the laptop under maximum load on the CPU and GPU. They clearly show that the heated areas are above the processor, as well as behind and slightly to the right, where the cooler heatsink is located:
Under maximum load, working with the keyboard is comfortable: the places under the wrists practically do not heat up, and the buttons located above the processor become only warm. Keeping a laptop on your lap is not very pleasant – the knees feel the heating of the bottom, besides, the ventilation grills located below can overlap. The power supply does not heat up very much, but when working with high performance for a long time, it is better to make sure that it is not covered with anything.
Noise level
We measure the noise level in a special soundproof and semi-dampened chamber. At the same time, the sound level meter microphone is located relative to the laptop in such a way as to imitate the typical position of the user’s head: the screen is tilted back by 45 degrees, the microphone axis coincides with the normal emanating from the center of the screen, the front end of the microphone is at a distance of 50 cm from the screen plane, the microphone is directed to the screen . The load is created using the, the screen brightness is set to maximum, the room temperature is maintained at 24 degrees, but the laptop is not specially ventilated, so the air temperature in the immediate vicinity may be higher. To estimate the real consumption, we also give (for some modes) the consumption from the network. The battery is pre-charged to 100%.
| Load scenario | Noise level, dBA | Subjective assessment | Consumption from the network, W |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inaction | background (16.0) | conditionally silent | 5 |
| Maximum CPU load | 39.8 | noisy | 24 (max 24) |
| Maximum load on the video card | 32.6 | clearly audible | 25 (max 25) |
| Maximum load on the processor and video card | 39.9/42.1 | noisy/very noisy | 25/41 |
If the laptop is not loaded at all, then its cooling system can work in passive mode, that is, silently. Under heavy load, the noise from the cooling system is not very high, but in some modes the noise (as well as consumption) can rise and fall with a period of tens of seconds, this is perceived worse than just a constant noise level, albeit at the maximum level for the period. The nature of the noise is smooth and does not cause irritation. The spectrogram obtained for the maximum fan speed is quite smooth, and in the frequency range where sounds can cause particular irritation, there are no high-intensity peaks (low-frequency peaks can be neglected):
For a subjective assessment of the noise level, the following scale is applicable:
| Noise level, dBA | Subjective assessment |
|---|---|
| Less than 20 | conditionally silent |
| 20-25 | very quiet |
| 25-30 | quiet |
| 30-35 | clearly audible |
| 35-40 | noisy |
| 40-45 | very noisy |
| 45-50 | loudly |
| Above 50 | very loud |
Below 20 dBA, the computer is conditionally silent; from 20 to 25 dBA, a laptop can be called very quiet; 35 dBA noise is clearly audible, 35 to 40 dBA noise exceeds the comfortable level for long-term work, 40 to 45 dBA the laptop is very noisy and needs to be masked by background music, for example, 45 to 50 dBA noise level is very uncomfortable, and 50 dBA and above, the noise is so loud that headphones must be used. The scale, of course, is very conditional and does not take into account the individual characteristics of the user and the nature of the sound.
Performance
The installed AMD Athlon Silver 3050U processor (14 nm manufacturing process according to the manufacturer, but various utilities report 12 nm) is designed for low-cost office-class laptops. It has only two cores capable of running in one thread at frequencies up to 3.2 GHz, a three-level cache – 192 KB / 1 MB / 4 MB. The nominal TDP is only 15 W, but can vary between 12-25 W.
During testing, we saw that in this case, consumption can exceed the upper limit for a short time, it can linger at this limit for several minutes, but at longer intervals it still approaches the base level, being within 14-18 watts.
The processor contains integrated AMD Radeon Graphics (2 cores, clocked at 1100 MHz, no discrete graphics card) and works with DDR4-2400 RAM in dual-channel mode; four out of eight gigabytes are soldered on the board, and another four are implemented by the SO-DIMM DDR4-3200 module, which does not operate at its maximum frequency. Naturally, part of the memory is given to the needs of the graphics core.
Test utilities confirm the dual-channel mode of memory operation, and the high-speed mode is displayed as follows:
It was difficult to choose a device that was close in configuration from among the not-quite-old ones: in addition to our reference system, we only chose the just-mentioned HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur with an AMD Athlon Gold 3150U processor (14 nm, 2 cores / 4 threads, 2, 4 / 3.3 GHz, 15 W), integrated graphics, 8 GB of RAM and a full (though far from the fastest) 256 GB SSD.
| Reference result (Core i5-9600K) |
Acer Aspire 1 A114-21-R6NP (AMD Athlon Silver 3050U) |
HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur (AMD Athlon Gold 3150U) |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Video conversion, points | 100 | 22 | 27 |
| MediaCoder x64 0.8.57 | 132.0 | 611.0 | 459.9 |
| HandBrake 1.2.2 | 157.4 | 756.5 | 654.9 |
| VidCoder 4.36 | 385.9 | 1723.2 | 1388.9 |
| Rendering points | 100 | 23 | thirty |
| POV-Ray 3.7, with | 98.9 | 465.9 | 355.8 |
| Cinebench R20 | 122.2 | 494.0 | 395.0 |
| Вlender 2.79, with | 152.4 | 687.7 | 483.0 |
| Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 (3D rendering), c | 150.3 | 655.5 | 522.8 |
| Creation of video content, points | 100 | 34 | 51 |
| Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2019 v13.01.13 | 298.9 | 1480.0 | 1305.9 |
| Magix Movie Edit Pro 2019 Premium v.18.03.261, c | 413.3 | 1773.5 | 1634.4 |
| Adobe After Effects CC 2019 v 16.0.1, with | 468.7 | 1507.3 | 393.0 |
| Digital photo processing, points | 100 | 37 | 47 |
| Adobe Photoshop CC 2019, s | 864.5 | 1566.8 | 1436.0 |
| Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC 2019 v16.0.1, c | 138.5 | 417.7 | 379.2 |
| Phase One Capture One Pro 12.0, c | 254.2 | 935.0 | 535.7 |
| Text recognition, points | 100 | 23 | 29 |
| Abbyy FineReader 14 Enterprise | 492.0 | 2101.6 | 1679.1 |
| Archiving, points | 100 | 26 | 33 |
| WinRAR 5.71 (64-bit), c | 472.3 | 1678.7 | 1515.4 |
| 7-Zip 19, c | 389.3 | 1614.4 | 1124.5 |
| Scientific calculations, points | 100 | 26 | 31 |
| LAMPPS 64-bit | 151.5 | 563.8 | 438.8 |
| NAMD 2.11, with | 167.4 | 672.7 | 618.7 |
| Integral result without accumulator, points | 100 | 27 | 34 |
| WinRAR 5.71 (Store), c | 78.0 | 396.0 | 58.3 |
| Data copying speed, s | 42.6 | 193.7 | 28.1 |
| Accumulator integral result, points | 100 | 21 | 142 |
| Integral performance result, points | 100 | 25 | 53 |
It is immediately obvious that the critically weak link in the Acer Aspire 1 A114-21-R6NP is the drive – in the corresponding tests, the results are so much worse than those of the second laptop and the reference system that the lag can be called dramatic. Therefore, we recommend that you immediately think about purchasing and installing an SSD, since there is an opportunity for this, and the costs will not be unbearable even for an economical owner, especially if you do not chase record volumes and speed performance.
And in the existing configuration, other results turned out to be very sad: the Acer laptop lost (one might say – confidently lost, according to all tests) even to a weak HP device. With a sufficiently powerful reference configuration, it is better not to compare at all in order to save nerves.
It is clear that the laptop in question, even with a huge stretch, cannot be attributed to gaming, however, we still tested it with World of Tanks at two resolution settings and three available quality levels (without RT). The table shows the average (minimum in brackets) frame rates.
| Permission | Low quality | Medium quality | Maximum quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1920×1080 | 100 (43) | 22 (11) | 8(5) |
| 1280×720 | 146 (72) | 42 (23) | 15(9) |
The results were expectedly sad: in undemanding “tanks” comfortable values (from 60 fps on average and from 30 fps minimum) with the screen resolution declared for this model can only be obtained with minimal settings, and you won’t be able to play with at least average quality even at a very high price. significant reduction in resolution.
For obvious reasons, we did not try other games from our usual set.
Conclusion
The main and main advantage of the Acer Aspire 1 A114-21-R6NP laptop is an attractive price. Perhaps, this list of “strong arguments for” is exhausted, but it must be said that even one such “plus” sometimes becomes decisive.
The absence of a pre-installed OS will surely be considered a boon by someone. You can also mention the modest dimensions, but here we must take into account the small diagonal of the screen, which will not suit everyone. Moreover, the weight can be called not the largest, although, on the other hand, almost one and a half kilograms cannot be called a very small value for a 14-inch device with a battery capacity of less than 40 watt-hours.
Everything else falls into the category of minuses, perhaps with varying degrees of significance.
To characterize the screen, let’s choose the sparing term “antediluvian”: 10-12 years ago, most laptops from the budget and many from the lower-middle price segments were equipped with matrices similar to those used in this device, but in the third decade of the 21st century, even frankly cheap models often have better screens.
The processor is very weak, the memory is far from the fastest (and not enough by today’s standards), a flash drive (eMMC) is used as a drive, so the results in our performance tests turned out to be deplorable. However, in combination with a normal SSD, even this configuration could perform better. It’s good that it is possible to slightly increase the amount of memory by replacing the existing module and install a normal SSD in a free M.2 slot. Such operations can hardly be called prohibitive in price, but still they will give a noticeable increase in the cost of a laptop and, perhaps, at the stage of making a purchase decision, they will simply force you to look at other models.
We will respond neutrally about the set of interface ports: the presence of a connector for connecting to a wired network is rather a plus (but the connector itself is with a spring-loaded cover), the absence of USB Type-C (especially with the ability to be powered from a PD adapter) is rather a minus, three USB ports -A and another HDMI video output is quite normal. Only a very naive person can expect to see some modern interfaces like Thunderbolt in such a cheap device.
The keyboard of any laptop does not do without remarks, the same is true in this case. Of the most significant, we recall the buttons with half-height arrows and the Power button in the row of function keys, but all this is observed in at least half of the devices we have visited, including much more expensive ones. But the lack of backlighting (at least one-color; RGB is already an amateur) causes sadness, it has become the de facto standard in modern laptops.
The autonomy provided by the installed battery is rather mediocre than even good, although the results shown in our tests cannot be called very small.
True, we can also mention a positive point, which is the reverse side of low performance: when working in office applications and watching videos, the laptop is almost silent. Of course, on “heavy” tasks, the noise level increases to a significant (but still not annoying – the obtained values are comparable to those observed in business laptops and noticeably lower than in gaming laptops), however, the launch of these very “heavy” tasks for such a device will more the exception than the rule.
We foresee a flurry of negativity that readers will bring down on this model during the discussion. It cannot be said that we do not share such opinions at all, but nevertheless we urge, when evaluating, to focus on devices comparable in price.
