Acer Aspire 3 15.6" 2026, Ryzen 5 7520U, 16GB, 256GB SSD, Silver

The Acer Aspire 3 is a budget touchscreen laptop with 16GB of RAM and a decent FHD IPS display. It's fine for everyday tasks but has weak storage, a low reliability score, and a CPU that's near the bottom of our rankings. Worth considering at $535, but not a penny more.

The Ryzen 5 7520U is fine for web browsing, streaming, and office apps. Four cores at up to 4.3GHz won't blow anyone away, but it handles everyday multitasking without much drama. The 16GB of DDR5 RAM is the real bright spot here, giving you plenty of headroom for browser tabs and light productivity. The integrated Radeon Graphics are what they are, fine for video playback, useless for gaming. Our database puts the CPU in the bottom fifth and the GPU even lower, so keep expectations modest. The 256GB SSD boots Windows 11 quickly, but you'll soon be juggling storage space.

Stacked against the MacBook Air M4 or Surface Laptop 7th Edition, the Aspire 3 looks like a toy. Those machines crush it in performance, build quality, and battery life, but they also cost two to three times as much. The ASUS Zenbook UX3405CA is a closer rival in spirit, offering better build quality and a sharper screen for a bit more cash. The Lenovo Legion 5i and MSI Creator A13V are in a completely different league for gaming and creative work, but they're also much heavier and pricier. For pure budget productivity, the Aspire 3 holds its own, but it's not competing with the big names.

At $535 to $600, the Aspire 3 is priced like a budget laptop and mostly delivers budget performance. The 16GB of RAM and touchscreen help justify the cost, but the 256GB SSD and weak reliability score make it a tougher sell. If you're shopping in the US, the lower end of that price range is the only way this makes sense. Paying $600 for this feels like overpaying when you can find better-built options for similar money. The Amazon listing at $535 is the one to grab if you're set on this model.

The Acer Aspire 3 is a budget touchscreen laptop that gets the basics right and not much else. You get a Ryzen 5 7520U, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 15.6-inch FHD IPS touchscreen for somewhere between $535 and $600. That's a decent spec sheet for the money, especially with the touchscreen thrown in.

But the storage situation is rough. 256GB fills up fast, and the reliability score in our database is near the bottom of the pile. One reviewer already reported a charging failure within a month. This is a laptop for light daily work, not a long-term workhorse.

Skip this if you need reliable long-term hardware or more storage. The reliability score is one of the worst we've seen, and 256GB is a joke for anyone with a media library or large apps. If you do any gaming or creative work, look elsewhere because the integrated graphics and weak CPU will frustrate you within a week.

This laptop is for students or anyone who needs a cheap touchscreen machine for writing papers, browsing, and streaming. The 16GB of RAM means it won't choke on a dozen Chrome tabs, and the touchscreen is genuinely handy for note-taking or casual use. Just don't expect it to last for years or handle anything demanding. If you can live with the small SSD and a bit of risk on reliability, it's a reasonable buy at the lower end of the price range.