Acer Aspire 14 AI Review – Budget laptop with big performance tested

The Acer Aspire 14 AI is one of the first Copilot+ enabled laptops in their midrange Aspire series line-up that combines surprisingly good specifications including the latest Intel Lunar Lake family processors albeit with some modest concessions here and there to keep the price point down. 

Acer Malaysia graciously loaned us a unit for field testing and review- here’s our Acer Aspire 14 AI review where we suss out if it’s worth your paycheque.

Acer Aspire 14 AI review – build and design

As the latest addition to their affordable Aspire line, the Acer Aspire 14 AI aims to offer as much bang for the buck as possible. At first blush, it looks suitably premium with a dark gunmetal grey finish, cleancut lines and gently rounded corners. 

The top lid of our Acer Aspire 14 AI review sample is made of aluminium with a brushed metallic finish and the Acer wordmark emblazoned in the corner along with the AI PC icon in the opposite corner. 

There’s a bit of give in the centre portion and some degree of flex in the panel corners though it holds up well to normal use. Bar the aluminium top lid, the rest of the chassis is made of plastic as a concession to cost and weight.

Belying its mostly plastic build, the laptop is fairly hefty at 1.46kg. On the bright side, the whole finish is quite fingerprint resistant which is a bonus especially for mobile workers.

Another concession to keep prices down is that the laptop itself lacks any MIL-STD resistance rating so it’s not as resistant to adverse scenarios like drops or extremes of temperature which means that it will require some degree of care when transported and in use but no more so than what you would expect of a normal laptop. 

As long as you don’t use it as a frisbee, drop it or otherwise mistreat it and accord it the respect due to a laptop, you’ll do just fine. Across the duration of our review period for the last several days, we toted it about all day in a backpack, put it out for use on a variety of surfaces including wood, glass and even metal tables too without any significant nicks or scratches.

Befitting its role as a workhorse laptop, the Aspire 14 AI has a variety of ports evenly spaced around its left and right sides.  The left side of the laptop comes with a pair of new USB 4 ports using a USB-C connector that offer faster data transfer feeds and compatibility with USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 standards while offering up to 100W charging and a DisplayPort Alternate Mode for outputting to an external display. 

In addition to the new USB 4 ports, the Acer Aspire 14 AI also has a single USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port and one HDMI 2.1 port on its left side. The right side of our Acer Aspire 14 AI review unit features another USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, a 3.5mm audio jack as well as a Kensington lock to secure it to a table or some other large object.

The base sports a series of ventilation grilles for the CPU and downward firing stereo speakers, a set of rubber feet for elevation and nine Phillips screws that keep the bottom secured.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much to upgrade with the laptop as the RAM is integrated into the chipset and it only has one SSD port so the only upgrade you can perform after purchase is to upgrade the SSD to a larger capacity model.

Closer inspection of the hinge assembly of our Acer Aspire 14 AI review unit revealed that it allows for full 180-degree angle opening in the off-chance you want to share your display with someone.

While it is wobble-free and sturdy when placed at the desired angle, it’s also rather stiff and opening the laptop is a two-handed affair which detracts from what is otherwise a premium look and feel.

Popping the lid open reveals a 14-inch IPS LCD with 1,900 x 1,200 pixels resolution and a matte finish framed by fairly thick side, top and bottom bezels to offer up a 16:10 aspect ratio.

The display itself isn’t intended for gaming as it has a modest 60Hz refresh rate and has about 100% sRGB colour gamut which is adequate for normal use but insufficient for content creators while having a fairly modest 300 nits peak brightness which means it is best used indoors. 

On the bright side, the chunky bezels offer plenty of protection for the 1080p webcam that also has an IR camera for Windows Hello biometric authentication. Unfortunately, the camera array itself lacks a privacy slider which may be a matter of concern to more security conscious users.

Display aside, the keyboard tray on our Acer Aspire 14 AI review unit noticeably uses plastic while featuring moderately sized palm rests and a large touchpad. The keyboard itself is fairly standard with white LED backlighting, a dedicated Copilot key as well as an AcerSense shortcut button that directly accesses their laptop management app.

In terms of overall build quality, the Acer Aspire 14 AI is considered satisfactory for a productivity laptop with sufficient durability to hold up to normal use in the office, at home and in class as well as the odd coffee shop or two.

It lacks any military-grade durability certification as well as any splash resistance though this isn’t a deal breaker unless you’re one to work in extreme conditions or are extremely butter fingered. To further add to its value, Acer is also bundling a free copy of Microsoft Office 2024 desktop and a free 100GB of cloud storage for a limited time.

Acer Aspire 14 AI review – Specifications and Performance

In terms of hardware, our Acer Aspire 14 AI review unit features a respectable Intel Core Ultra 7 258V series 2 processor from Intel’s Lunar Lake family intended for slim designs with a max turbo 4.8GHz clock speed, a quoted maximum 37W TDP and up to 47 TOPs from the built-in NPU which is more than the minimum 40 TOPS needed to support Microsoft Copilot+ AI.

The provision of Copilot+ makes the laptop a more capable AI assistant beyond the standard Copilot seen in many other competing designs.

Paired with the chipset is 32GB LPDDR5X RAM and a 1TB M.2 NVMe 4.0 SSD for storage as well as Intel Arc 140V integrated graphics; this configuration which is our review sample and the highest end variant available in Malaysia clocks in at RM4,999. 

A more affordable variant also exists with a more affordable Intel Core Ultra 5 226V series 2 CPU, 16GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB for RM700 less. Both variants retain the same 14-inch WUXGA IPS LCD 60Hz display. Here’s how our Acer Aspire 14 AI review unit stacks up on paper:

Price	RM4,699 (Intel Core Ultra 7 258V), RM3,999 (Intel Core Ultra 5 226V)
Display	14-inch WUXGA IPS LCD, 1,920 x 1,200 pixels, 16:10 aspect ratio, 60Hz refresh rate
Processor	Intel Core Ultra 7 258V series 2
OS	Windows 11 Home
Graphics	Intel Arc 140V
Memory	32GB LPDDR5X RAM / 1TB M.2 NVMe 4.0 SSD
Battery	65Wh Li-Ion w/ 65W USB-C charging, 22 hours (quoted)
Size/Weight	318.9 x 225.1 x 16.9mm / 1.4kg

Like other laptops in their line-up, the Acer Aspire 14 AI features their own AcerSense management app to handle critical system updates, gain access to their own Acer PurifiedView and Acer PurifiedVoice apps to control the webcam and microphone settings, perform system diagnostics and, most importantly, modify performance settings.

 

By default, the laptop is set to Normal mode though it can also be set to Silent mode which lowers processor and fan speeds for scenarios like working in a library to a high-powered Performance mode when which ramps up processor and fan speed to maximum for demanding tasks though the laptop needs to be plugged in for this mode to work.

When plugged in and set to Performance mode to test it at its fullest potential, our Acer Aspire 14 AI review unit managed to score the following benchmarks:

3D Mark Speed Way	558
3D Mark Solar Bay	16,036
3D Mark Steel Nomad	619
3D Mark Steel Nomad Light	3,280
3D Mark Port Royal	1,530
3D Mark Time Spy Extreme	1,989
3D Mark Time Spy	4,370
3D Mark Night Raid	36,727
Geekbench 6 Single Core	2,636
Geekbench 6 Multi Core	10,819
Geekbench 6 OpenCL	29,295
Geekbench 6 Vulkan	32,051
Geekbench AI CPU (CPU, quantised, OpenVino)	7,806
Geekbench AI GPU (GPU, quantised, OpenVino)	26,149
Geekbench AI NPU (NPU, quantised, OpenVino)	24,201
Cinebench 2024 CPU (Multi core)	611 points
Cinebench 2024 GPU (Single Core)	120 points, 5.10x MP ratio
PCMark 10 Work 3.0 Extended	6,977
PCMark 8 Battery Life	10 hours 10 mins

In terms of performance and benchmarks, our Acer Aspire 14 AI review sample performed in a comparably excellent fashion to other laptops with a similar Intel Core Ultra 7 258V series 2 processor. For more mundane tasks like spreadsheets, light video editing or paperwork, the laptop is more than up to the task in standard mode and proved to be very capable in its intended role as a general computing workhorse.

In Performance mode, it was even able to tackle some casual gaming too including Cyberpunk 2077 in low settings. Fortunately, noise levels in Performance noise are well managed, with the built-in cooling fan keeping audible sound low without any obvious ramping up or down when the CPU performs demanding tasks.

The 14-inch WUXGA IPS LCD display isn’t particularly ideal  for content creation nor serious gaming. While the hardware can certainly keep up with video most video or photo editing tasks, the display itself maxes out at 100% sRGB colour gamut.

While it isn’t an apple to apple comparison, sRGB typically works out to about 72% of the preferred DCI-P3 colour gamut. This means colours aren’t as accurate as what a content creator requires. The modest 60Hz refresh rate also means that games will look less than ideal onscreen. 

The modest screen brightness also means that the display isn’t very viewable in direct sunlight conditions, which means that it’s best used indoors.

Even so, its display is vibrant, bright enough for indoors use and is more than sufficient for Netflix binging and web browsing with the accompanying stereo speakers offering decent volume for casual use.

In terms of battery life, the Acer Aspire 14 AI and its 65Wh battery is quoted to offer up to 22 hours of usage though PC Mark 8’s Work battery life benchmark got a more realistic 10 hours and 10 minutes.

In practical use web browsing, doing paperwork and writing with the WiFi on and Spotify running in the background along with the occasional video or two on YouTube, it was able to last the full 9-5 at work with its compact 65W power brick allowing for easy charging wherever you go.

Should you buy the Acer Aspire 14 AI?

The Acer Aspire 14 AI laptop is ideal for those seeking flagship-grade laptop performance at a modest price for productivity related tasks and general computing. It also offers good battery life and a decent array of ports to cover most use case scenarios. 

While it has excellent specifications for what you pay for, especially its Intel Core Ultra 7 258V series 2 equipped configuration, the plasticky chassis and middling display further pigeonhole it as a productivity oriented laptop rather than one intended for gaming or content creation.

Even so, these are small quibbles that do not detract from the fact that the Acer Aspire 14 AI punches above its price point and represents excellent value for what you pay for.

Acer Aspire 14 AI review unit courtesy of Acer Malaysia. For more details please visit https://www.acer.com/my-en/laptops/aspire/aspire-14-ai-intel