Is it as reliable as The Captain himself?
ACER just released three Avengers-themed laptops in time for Avengers: Infinity War, and the Aspire 6 is one of the three that received the special edition treatment. Designed to be fit for The First Avenger, the Aspire 6 is decked in Captain America’s trademark navy blue and silver colors, alongside detailing that’ll remind you of The Captain himself.
Armed with an 8th-generation Intel i5 Processor, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA MX150 Discrete GPU, and a 1TB HDD, the Aspire 6 Captain America edition aims to be a reliable workhorse. Does it live up to its name?
ACER Aspire 6 Captain America edition Specs
- Intel Core i5-8250U processor
- 4GB of DDR4 RAM
- 15.6-inch Full HD IPS Display with ComfyView; 1920×1080 resolution
- 1TB HDD
- NVIDIA GeForce MX150 with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM
- 1280 x 720 Webcam
- Stereo speakers with ACER TrueHarmony
- 1x USB Type C 3.1, 1x USB 3.0 with always-on charging, 2x USB 2.0, Ethernet Port, SD Card reader, HDMI port, Headset jack
- 4-cell 3220 mAh 48wH Li-Polymer Battery
- 65W adapter
Flashy-yet-premium looks
Staying true to Captain America’s uniform, you get a premium treatment with the Aspire 6 Captain America edition. You get a navy blue brushed aluminum with The Captain’s star logo in silver for the top lid, and a navy blue brushed aluminum top case with a superimposed Avengers logo on the top case’s right side. Both parts are not fingerprint or smudge magnets, giving it plus points for avid Captain America fans who want to keep this laptop as clean as possible.
What’s nice about its design is that it balances between being a premium laptop and a collectible gadget made with avid Marvel fans in mind. Opening the laptop can be done using one hand, and its hinge is sturdy enough that the display has very little flex.
The Aspire 6 Captain America edition comes with a good number of ports, which include a full-size HDMI port, USB Type-C, USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, Ethernet port, and a combo headset jack. Given its premium price, it would have been better if the Aspire 6 Captain America edition came with two USB 3.0 ports, especially since the lone USB 3.0 port doubles as an always-on charging port.
Decent display but speakers need a little oomph
As a multimedia device, the Aspire 6 Captain America edition gets the job done with a 15.6-inch Full HD display with ACER’s ComfyView and stereo speakers with ACER’s TrueHarmony tech.
Having a matte finish display, the Aspire 6 Captain America edition has decent viewing angles and good color rendition, especially in viewing Full HD videos. Brightness is sufficient enough at 50%, and you can max it out to make it viewable even while working under the sun.
As for the Aspire 6 Captain America edition’s speakers, they are a bit so-so in the lows and good in the mids and highs. The speakers maintain their clarity at around 70% and going beyond 70% results in sound distortion in the highs.
The full-sized keyboard gets the job done
Being a 15-inch laptop, you are treated to a full-sized keyboard that includes a numeric keypad—a rare sight in laptops these days. The keyboard has a built-in backlight, which is useful for working in dim lighting. It can be activated manually or via its ambient light sensor, which is accurate by default. We do wish that the backlight’s brightness is adjustable depending on our working environment, then again its default brightness is sufficient enough for most work situations.
Using the chiclet keyboard felt good. We wrote this review using the notebook and typing felt good with the keyboard delivering good tactile feedback overall. The keys were also well-spaced. If there is something ACER can improve on, it would be resizing the up and down keys, as we find them disproportional in size especially if you use them for games.
The trackpad’s whole surface is clickable and can be programmed with gesture and click controls according to your preferences. Tactile feedback is good, though the trackpad can be overly sensitive at times, which is why making a few adjustments in the trackpad settings is recommended before you start using it. If you plan to use this for serious photo and video editing or a few gaming sessions, using a mouse is recommended but it for casual use the trackpad gets the job done.
More of a daily driver and not a heavy gaming machine
Equipped with an 8th-generation Intel i5 Processor and 4GB of RAM, the Aspire 6 Captain America edition has specs designed more for regular daily use and not for heavy gaming. While it gets some help with an NVIDIA MX150 GPU it does have its limitations when it comes to gaming, which it wasn’t really designed for. It is capable enough when it comes to editing photos – in our test using Lightroom 6, the Aspire 6 Captain America edition took around a minute to convert, process, and export 20 photos from RAW to JPEG.
With its specs, multitasking should not be a problem with the Aspire 6 Captain America edition, though we suggest limiting the number of open tabs in Google Chrome, as it can cause occasional lags. Also worth noting is that the Aspire 6 Captain America edition comes with a 5400RPM hard drive, which plays a factor with its relatively slow bootup time. This is also noticeable when you put the laptop to sleep, so we suggest to wait for a minute or two for the Aspire 6 Captain America edition to go into sleep mode.
While the upside of the Aspire 6 Captain America edition is that it comes with a discrete GPU, its application is best for light to medium graphics usage. This was evident in FurMark’s GPU benchmark test, where the temperature went up to as high as 80 degrees Celsius when it is pushed to maximum GPU rendering. At that temperature range, the laptop is warm and can become uncomfortable with prolonged usage especially at the upper portion of the keyboard, near the silver hinge.
Aside from the high temp levels, the MX150 manages an average FPS of 21, making it not suitable for AAA games.
Here’s a benchmark score we got with the MX150 using FurMark:
Given the stats we got, the Aspire 6 Captain America edition is best for light-to-medium photo editing, light video editing, and light gaming.
Battery life is above average
The Aspire 6 Captain America edition comes with a non-removable 4-cell 3220 mAh 48wH Li-Polymer Battery that can last for around five and a half hours of casual use that includes web browsing, word processing, a few photo editing, light gaming, and video watching. If you are heavy on photo/video editing or gaming, expect the battery life to dip to around a little under three hours.
The Aspire 6 Captain America edition’s 65W charger is compact, and can fully charge the laptop in around 2 hours.
Verdict: A decent workhorse, but we wish for more RAM
Just like Captain America himself, the Aspire 6 Captain America is a reliable workhorse if you will use it for daily work and some photo and video editing. The MX150 GPU is a big help especially in handling large RAW files in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom but has its limitations when it comes to heavy-duty gaming.
For its asking price of Php 54,999, it is a nice laptop for the avid Marvel fan especially if you are going to talk about its overall design. However, we wished that the Aspire 6 Captain America Edition came with more RAM on board to compensate for the 5400RPM hard drive. While the 4GB RAM can get through most tasks, expect a few hiccups along the way, especially with multiple tabs in Google Chrome open.
Check out our reviews of other ACER laptops:
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