"The Acer Aspire 5552’s in-built speakers only produce a metallic, brittle sound, so you will have to invest in decent headphones to fully enjoy its video playback qualities"
Matthias Scherer
The Acer Aspire 5552 is part of Acer’s budget consumer range but, with a 15 inch display and very decent graphics specs, it is slightly angled at people who enjoy watching TV series and films on a laptop. How well does it stack up in terms of performance and functionality?
What we like best
Users browsing for laptops in this price range usually encounter fairly small screens, so the Acer Aspire 5552 is a very nice surprise in this regard. Watching video content on this laptop is a very satisfying experience, thanks to the glossy screen and its sharp colours, good viewing angles as well as the inclusion of a DVD drive. The ATI HD graphics card further enhances the viewing experience, and there is a HDMI output if you want to connect the 5552 to a television screen.
Along with the large screen, the Acer Aspire 5552’s keyboard is pleasantly big – all keys, apart from the arrow keys, are full-size and offer decent, if not great, feedback.
Users can plump for hard drive options of up to 640Gb, but even the 320Gb version should be enough for most people’s music collection and documents.
What we like least
To keep the price down, Acer had to save somewhere, and, by going for an AMD Athlon II dual-core CPU, they might have chosen the wrong area to cut costs in. Everyday admin tasks are supported, but anything going beyond that (e.g. media editing, gaming, multi-tab browsing) will be a bit of a slog.
The laptop also does feel and look like an affordable laptop, i.e. slightly plastic-y and not very robust. There is too much yield for comfort around the keyboard, and the lid doesn’t inspire confidence, either.
Since the Acer Aspire 5552’s in-built speakers only produce a metallic, brittle sound, you will have to invest in decent headphones to fully enjoy the video playback qualities.
The glossy screen becomes an annoyance in brightly lit surroundings, meaning it won’t be much cop if you’d want to use it to bash out a presentation in an airport lounge, on a park bench or even in an office.
The Acer Aspire 5552’s main benefits are its price, its screen size and its good visual performance. It performs better than a netbook and makes for a great video playback device, but it falls slightly short in key areas such as build, overall performance and portability. A good choice if you’re in a budget and not looking for an all-conquering office monster.
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Processor Speed
2.1 GHz
Processor
AMD Athlon II dual-core
RAM
up to 8 Gb
Screen Size
15.6 inch
Graphics
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
Hard Drive Storage
up to 640 Gb
Battery
6-cell Li-ion
Multimedia
DVD drive
Microphone jack
Headphone jack
1.3 MP Webcam
Ports
3 x USB 2.0
1 x HDMI 1 x VGA
1 x RJ045
1 x MMC/SD card reader
Weight & Size
381mm (W) x 25mm (H) x 253mm (D)
2.6 kg
Connectivity
Bluetooth
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Gigabit Ethernet
Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
The Acer Aspire 5552 is a 15 inch laptop with a focus on video entertainment. It’s one of Acer’s more affordable laptops, but while it’s not the allrounder we would have liked it to be, it’s no cheap knock-off latop either.
One of the Acer Aspire 5552′s most alluring features is its large screen, and its combination with a good graphics card. Together, these specs make for rewarding viewing of video content. The 5552 also comes with a DVD drive, so you can enjoy films from your collection on this laptop.
Acer Aspire 5552
The Acer Aspire 5552 comes with in-built speakers, but they aren’t up to much – you will have to buy seperate headphones or hook the laptop up to some external sound system.
To read more about the Acer Aspire 5552 and its features, check out the PC Site review here.
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