Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC eco-friendly laptop review and testing: how dare you?

Solving environmental problems in the modern world is a priority for humanity. This applies to absolutely all areas of its activity, and in particular the processing of waste (primarily plastic) for the reuse of materials from them. Following the trends of the times, Acer was the first to release a new mid-range laptop that uses recycled plastic, as well as other innovations that can reduce the so-called ecological footprint (by the way, this is not an abstract concept, but a quite measurable value – the area of ​​biologically productive territory and necessary for the production of human-consumable resources and the absorption of waste).

 

 

 

 

We are talking about a relatively compact model Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC with a 15.6-inch matrix and an Intel Core i5-1155G7 processor. Let’s get acquainted with the novelty and analyze all its advantages and disadvantages.

⇡#Box and accessories

The packaging of the Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC uses a box made from recycled paper (up to 85%). In addition, the box is recyclable, and its design uses a minimum of paint.

Inside this box, the laptop is additionally protected by cardboard inserts and wrapped in a fabric envelope. On one end of the box there is a sticker with brief characteristics of the laptop and a serial number.

In addition to the laptop, the box contains a power supply unit with a power cable, instructions, a warranty card and a set of eco-friendly stickers.

The Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC is made in China and comes with a 1 year warranty. The retail price of this model is $1,000.

⇡#Specifications

⇡#Hull design and ergonomics

Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC is almost completely made in gray, only black keyboard keys, a black fingerprint scanner and a black display frame stand out. The design of the laptop can be called calm and restrained, no abrupt transitions or flashy decisions.

The surface structure of the case looks very interesting: it consists of compressed crumbs of recycled plastic, so yellow, dark gray and even dark blue blotches come across in this texture.

This is precisely the result of Acer’s commitment to reducing its environmental footprint by using up to 30% post-consumer recycled plastics in laptop cases, which (according to the company) can reduce CO₂ emissions from laptop manufacturing by 21%.

The inscriptions on the laptop case look interesting. They are not made with paint, as is most often the case, but are stamped into the body panels.

The build quality of the Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC case is high. The panels fit tightly to each other, do not deform when pressed and do not creak, and are also tactilely pleasant. We add that the dimensions of the laptop are 364 × 250 × 20 mm, and its weight is 1843 grams.

At the base of the case there is a large ventilation grill, a pair of small acoustic grilles at the edges, and a sticker with marketing information.

Here, too, it was not without another mention of technologies for the processing of materials. We can say that the environmental friendliness of the laptop can be traced in every detail. The case is supported by four bright yellow rubber feet with a height of no more than 1.5 mm. On the surface, the laptop stands evenly and does not slip when it is tilted.

The acoustic speaker grilles of the laptop are located on the sides below and go a little on the bevels of the ends of the case.

There is a small notch on the front end of the case, which makes it easier to grab the display panel when opening.

However, the laptop cannot be opened with one hand: the hinges are quite tight, and the base is light and rises simultaneously with the screen, you have to hold it with the other hand.

In order for the laptop case not to be scratched when the display is opened, two rubber inserts are cut into its end, which rest against the table.

All ports and connectors are displayed on the side ends of the case Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC.

On the left there is a power connector, an 8P8C power outlet, an HDMI video output, three USB 3.1 Gen1 ports (2 Type-A and 1 Type-C), and on the right there are charge and drive activity indicators, a universal mini-jack for a microphone / headphones, a USB port 2.0 and thin Kensington lock. Pretty good set for a compact mid-range laptop.

The measured opening angle of the panel with a laptop display is 135-140 degrees.

⇡#Input Devices

Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC developers equipped with a membrane keyboard with a block of numeric keys. In other words, the keyboard is formally full-sized, but in reality it looks tiny due to the reduced keys and the lack of space between the main block and the digital one. By the way, the keys are 50% made of recycled plastic, which once again emphasizes the environmental friendliness of this model.

The size of the alphanumeric keys is 15 × 14.5 mm, and the functional keys are generally small – only 12 × 8 mm, which is terribly inconvenient, as are the reduced up and down arrows. But the enter key, both Shift and Backspace are increased in size, so there are no inconveniences in working with them.

The English characters “E” and “R” on the keys are deliberately reversed and printed in yellow. So Acer emphasizes three modern postulates of environmental friendliness: REduce, REuse and REcycle.

The key travel is 1.5 mm, the keystrokes are silent and very soft, and there is practically no feedback.

The laptop keyboard is equipped with a white backlight without brightness control. If you do not touch the keys for 15 seconds, the backlight turns off.

The dimensions of the two-button touchpad are 126 × 78 mm. Its surface is smooth and moderately sensitive, it is convenient to work with it.

The fingerprint scanner is located in the upper left corner of the touchpad.

The display’s top bezel is 14mm high, allowing for a 720p (30 FPS) webcam and two microphones.

The laptop power button is located in the upper right corner, above the NumLock key.

The force of pressing it is no different from the force of pressing other keys. Perhaps this is a small minus in the karma of the developers.

⇡#Display

The screen size of the Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC is 15.6 inches. The width of the side bezels of the display is 9.5 mm, the top – 14 mm, and the bottom – 30 mm. According to these characteristics, the screen of this Acer laptop model is far from the current trends of frameless models.

The IPS-matrix of the screen was released by the Taiwanese company AU Optronics and has a matte finish.

The brightness of the display in the characteristics of the laptop is not declared at all, as well as its contrast. Only a resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels and a frequency of 60 Hz is known.

We checked the display quality of the Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC laptop with the X-Rite i1 Display Pro calibrator and the Argyll CMS software with the DispcalGUI graphical interface. All measurements were taken without additional display calibration. Let’s look at the results.

The average value of DeltaE*94 deviations of the laptop display was 5.78 units, which is almost 6 times higher than recommended, and the maximum exceeded 20 units. The subsequent calibration of the display managed to reduce these deviations by half.

The color temperature is slightly below the reference value of 6500 K, but not lower than 6000 K. In principle, not bad.

The gamma curve leaves much to be desired.

But the grayscale color balance of the Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC display looks almost perfect.

The calibration of the display made it possible to somewhat level out its shortcomings, but in general it still belongs to the average quality models.

The brightness of the display cannot be called outstanding either, which at maximum 100% is only 256 cd/m², and its minimum value was 20 cd/m².

But the Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC screen boasts a uniform backlight close to ideal.

In general, we would characterize the quality of the laptop screen as average or slightly below average.

⇡#Internal device and accessories

 

 

In order to remove the base of the laptop, you need to unscrew the screws around its perimeter and pick up the latches. Without the bottom panel, the Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC looks like this.

Inside it turned out to be relatively spacious, there is even a free volume to the left of the battery.

The motherboard is based on the Intel Tiger Lake-UP3 chipset.

The BIOS is dated June 9, 2021 and is version 1.02.

Judging by the Acer website, this laptop model can also be equipped with an Intel Core i7-1195G7 processor, but our modification of the laptop has a quad-core eight-thread Intel Core i5-1155G7 processor, manufactured using a 10-nm process technology.

Its base frequency is 2.5 GHz, and in turbo mode it can rise to 4.5 GHz.

The thermal package of the processor is limited to 28 watts, but in practice its limits are much wider, which we will demonstrate during the tests.

Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC is equipped with 16 GB of DDR4 RAM operating at an effective frequency of 3200 MHz. Moreover, 8 GB are soldered directly on the motherboard, and another 8 GB are added by one SO-DIMM module manufactured by SK-Hynix.

It can be replaced with a module twice as large, then the total amount of memory in the laptop will be 24 GB.

The memory works with rather high timings for DDR4-3200 22-22-22-52 2T.

Therefore, even in dual-channel mode, the results of its testing are not impressive.

Frankly speaking, the RAM here is not fast and it is impossible to speed it up because of the “anchor” in the form of microcircuits soldered on the board.

As a graphics core, the laptop uses the Intel Iris Xe “accelerator” built into the processor with a boost frequency in 3D mode of 1.35 GHz.

For drives, the Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC has one M.2 slot occupied by a 512 GB Kingston OM8PDP3512B-AA1 SSD.

The drive resource declared in the specifications should be at least 120 TBW, read speed up to 2100 MB / s, write speed up to 1700 MB / s, which is very modest by modern standards. Here’s what the Crystal Disk Info utility knows about the laptop drive.

The performance of the Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC SSD has been tested with the laptop running at maximum performance on AC power (screenshots on the left) and in optimum performance mode on battery power (screenshots on the right).

SSD действительно оказался средним по скоростям, зато он практически независим от режима работы ноутбука и не так уж много теряет в производительности при его автономной эксплуатации.

За температурный режим работы SSD беспокоиться не приходится: при повседневной нагрузке его температуры находились около отметки 40 градусов Цельсия, а в стресс-тесте утилиты AIDA64 Extreme максимальная температура достигла 59 градусов Цельсия.

Ноутбук оснащён не только беспроводным модулем связи, но и гигабитным контроллером Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet, обеспечивающим кабельные соединения. Это сейчас редкость в таких относительно компактных моделях ноутбуков. Беспроводные соединения обеспечивает модуль связи Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201NGW.

Он поддерживает протоколы Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) и Bluetooth 5.1, режим MIMO 2×2 и частоты 2,4 ГГц и 5,0 ГГц (полоса пропускания 160 МГц). К работе обоих сетевых контроллеров никаких замечаний у нас нет.

Звуковая система ноутбука реализована аудиокодеком Realtek и двумя стереодинамиками, встроенными в боковые скосы основания корпуса.

Громкость аудиосистемы достаточная, хрипов и дребезжаний нет, как нет и низких частот, что вполне ожидаемо. Тем не менее для просмотра фильмов или проведения видеоконференций такой акустики вполне хватит. Есть функция шумоподавления.

⇡#Система охлаждения, эффективность и уровень шума

Холодный воздух в систему охлаждения Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC поступает через вентиляционную решётку в нижней панели корпуса ноутбука.

Passing through the radiators, the already heated air is thrown upwards above the keyboard, towards the bottom frame of the screen.

Heat from the central processor and its graphics core is removed by two heat pipes with a diameter of 8 mm, which transfer the heat flow to the radiator.

The radiator is cooled by two fans at once, and they work quietly even under stressful load, and when the laptop performs ordinary tasks, they are generally silent.

Notebook operating modes should be regulated using the VeroSense application, where four options are available to optimize the performance of the Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC, including two eco-friendly ones.

However, we were never able to run this application (including after reinstallation) to check all these modes, so we had to test the laptop in stress tests by changing the Windows 10 performance settings.

We used the powerMAX stress test in AVX mode to evaluate the efficiency of CPU cooling in a laptop. The HWiNFO64 utility version 7.17.4675 was responsible for monitoring all indicators. Testing was conducted under the operating system Windows 10 Pro x64 with the latest available drivers and updates. The ambient temperature in the room during the tests was 24.5 degrees Celsius.

Let’s look at the results (the parameters in the screenshot captions are given after stabilization).

At the beginning of the stress test, the processor frequency briefly rises to 4.5 GHz with a heat dissipation of 59 watts, but then gradually decreases and stabilizes at 3.2 GHz with a heat dissipation of 32 watts. The temperature of the processor after a sharp jump to 92 degrees Celsius and short-term throttling dropped to 74 degrees Celsius. At the same time, the fans of the Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC cooling system become audible, but nothing more. The laptop case does not get hot.

When powered by battery Acer Aspire behaves much more “modest”.

In this case, there are no jumps in the processor frequency and its heat dissipation at all, since when powered by a battery, the TDP level of the processor is limited to 15 watts, and the frequency is kept at 2.1 GHz. In this mode, the laptop remains silent and does not heat up at all.

⇡#Performance testing

To evaluate the performance of the Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC, we selected its rivals based on the cost of the laptop ($1,100.). So the testing included the new Honor MagicBook 16 HYM-W56 ($1100) with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H processor and the realme Book RMNB 1002 ($1000) we tested earlier with an Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor. We add that all laptops were tested in maximum performance mode when working from a power adapter connected to the mains. The test results are shown in the table.

Obviously, the hero of today’s testing lost to the new Honor in almost all benchmarks, but it is quite capable of competing with the realme Book, even despite the significantly faster RAM in the latter.

In addition, we provide screenshots of the results in 3D benchmarks, which also contain a lot of useful information.

⇡#Autonomous

Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC is equipped with a removable lithium-ion battery with a claimed capacity of 53 Wh.

According to BatteryMon, the actual battery capacity when fully charged is 51.5 Wh.

In other words, by modern standards, an Acer laptop battery cannot boast of a large capacity.

To charge the battery, the laptop comes with a Delta Electronics R-R-DVP-ADP-65DEB adapter with a power of 65 watts (19.0 V, 3.42 A) and a weight of 168 grams.

The built-in power adapter cable is 1.45 m long and the power cable is 0.84 m long. During testing, the laptop was fully charged at least four times. The average laptop battery charge time from 3 to 100% was 1 hour 35 minutes.

The battery life of the Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC was tested with the display brightness fixed at 200 cd/m². Testing was carried out using the PCMark’10 package in four modes. Network connections and sound were not turned off, no artificial optimizations were introduced.

In the modes of emulating office work, working with applications and watching videos, the laptop was able to work for 8-9 hours, and in the game mode, a full charge of the battery was enough for 2 hours and 12 minutes.

⇡#Conclusion

From an environmental point of view, the Acer Aspire Vero AV15-51-58JC is indeed, if not unique, then certainly a very rare product that makes extensive use of recycled plastic, minimal paint, recyclable cardboard packaging, and software with special Eco+ and Eco modes. So Greta should be happy with this Acer model (if, of course, she can be happy with laptops in principle).

If we consider the Acer Aspire Vero as a laptop for work or business, then, frankly, we did not find anything particularly outstanding in it. The screen of the laptop is quite average, with low brightness. The performance is satisfactory, enough for office tasks. The keyboard is not bad – with a number pad, pleasant tactile and quiet. But if it might be comfortable for a petite girl, then for an adult it may turn out to be narrow. Eight-hour autonomy today is unlikely to surprise anyone, and the sound and camera are the same as in most models of this class.

Of the advantages of the laptop, it is worth noting the quiet operation of the cooling system and the absence of any heating of the case. The set of ports can be called exhaustive, but ideally, one could replace the round power connector with another USB Type-C port and add a microSD card reader. Also, let’s not forget that the Acer Aspire Vero has a fingerprint scanner and a thin Kensington lock.