Pay $794, get $30 cashback.
Full Specs. I assume the RAM is NOT upgradable and I couldn't find any specs on the webcam.
Aside from that, it's a pretty good price for the specs (11th gen i5 processor etc).
Stack with AMEX cashback for a further $20 off.
it says that because there's an sku with i7 16gb soldered 1tb ssd etc.
I purchased multiple units with the Ryzen R3-5300U for a job last week for a similar price. They are good little unit for the money, for every day computing or school.
Some gripes:
1. The keyboard keys are silver, so if the keyboard backlighting is on under bright lights you can't see the letters properly. F8 turns the backlight off and then the keyboard is perfectly readable. It seemed that the backlight could only be on of off, there was no levels of brightness as far as I could tell. I only had them for 24 hours so didn't look into it too much.
2. No full size ethernet port (but you can use a usb->ethernet dongle)
3. Soldered ram but it can kind of be forgiven at this size and price point.
4. The webcam was quite noisy and wasn't great to be honest, but with lights on it was usable and I probably prefer it to smeary, blurry webcams.
5. The biggest gripe, the Acer bloatware was bad, as in, I've never seen such persistent bloatware, bad. Even after uninstalling their apps as an admin, they we re-installed for new user accounts afterwards. This was solved by reinstalling Windows from scratch using the Windows 10 media creation tool to create USB installation media. Windows 10 Home activated afterwards without any assistance and the Windows 11 upgrade was available.
The rest was all good as far as I could tell. Decent IPS display that felt a bit brighter than 250nits (I only used it inside but it never felt dim), good feel to the keys, touchpad was fine, battery was really very good, still had 7-8 hours left on one from a full charge after watching 3 hours of a TV series. It never got hot, the fan made a nice whooshing noise when it spun up and not a whine or rattle and Windows was very responsive. Not bad for a budget laptop.
Great review thank you. Your username doesn't do you justice :)
Thanks! Picked one up - should be ideal as a home laptop for my mum. Thanks to @chasethesun for suggestion to purchase HN gift cards via the shop back app for 7% cashback too :)
How long do the HN gift cards usually take to come through from Shopback? Considering doing the same but waiting to see if any better deals for Cyber Monday (potentially elsewhere) but want to avoid doing it last minute and then missing out if the gift cards are not quickly received.
Any thoughts on this vs the Ryzen?, can't see much difference apart from the trade off of no Thunderbolt with the Ryzen for slightly better battery life.
https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/acer-14-sf…
saying "RAM Maximum Capacity 16 GB" on OW
But all the teardown shows they are soldered.