Acer Aspire 15.6" NX.JJJAA.004 2025, Ryzen 5 7520U, 8GB, 512GB SSD, Pure Silver

A budget touchscreen laptop that handles the basics without breaking a sweat, or the bank. Just don't ask it to do anything fancy.

The Ryzen 5 7520U surprised us a bit. It's not going to set any records, but for web browsing, streaming, and juggling a dozen Chrome tabs, it holds its own. The 8GB of LPDDR5 is the real bottleneck here. It's fine for light multitasking, but open too many apps and you'll feel it start to wheeze. The 512GB SSD keeps boot times snappy, which is a nice touch at this price.

Stacked against the MacBook Air M4 or ASUS Zenbook, the Aspire Go 15 looks like a budget understudy. Those machines crush it in performance, build quality, and battery life, but they also cost two to three times as much. The Lenovo ThinkPad X9-14 and Surface Laptop 7th Edition are in a different league entirely. If you're comparing this to those, you're shopping in the wrong aisle. The Aspire Go 15 competes with other sub-$600 laptops, and in that crowd, it's a reasonable pick.

At $467 to $569 depending on the vendor, this is a fair price for what you get. The best deal we're seeing is at the lower end of that range, so shop around before you commit. It's not a steal, but it's not a ripoff either. For a touchscreen laptop with a Ryzen 5 and 512GB SSD, you could do a lot worse.

The Acer Aspire Go 15 is a budget touchscreen laptop that nails the basics and skips the frills. The one thing to know: you're getting a responsive Ryzen 5 and a 512GB SSD for under $570, which is a solid deal for students or anyone who just needs a reliable daily driver. Just don't expect it to flex beyond everyday tasks.

If you're looking for a gaming machine or a workstation for video editing, this isn't it. Go grab something with a dedicated GPU and at least 16GB of RAM instead. And if you care about build quality and longevity, the reliability scores here are rough, so you might want to look at a ThinkPad or a MacBook Air if your budget allows.

If you need a cheap, lightweight laptop for school, browsing, and streaming, the Aspire Go 15 gets the job done. The touchscreen is a nice bonus, and the Ryzen 5 keeps things moving. But if you can stretch your budget even a little, you'll find better build quality and more RAM elsewhere. This is a fine budget buy, not a hidden gem.