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One of the best budget laptops I’ve tested also has a battery that lasts days on end

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I went hands-on with Acer’s Aspire Go 15 last year, and praised it as one of the best cheap laptops you can get, priced at around $280. This year, one of the latest additions to Acer’s Aspire line, the Aspire 14 AI Acer Aspire 14 AI

Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

During my testing, I brought the Aspire 14 AI into the office on a full charge and used it intermittently throughout the day. It was still above 90% by the end of the workday, and when I closed it up and brought it back out the next day, it hadn’t dropped a single percentage point.  

The next day, I brought it back in and used it quite a bit more aggressively: holding multiple videocalls, doing more sustained multitasking, and keeping the display jacked up. It finally started to dent the battery life, but by the end of the day, it was still just right around 30%. 

Acer Aspire 14 AI

Kyle Kucharski/ZDNET

Depending on how it’s configured, the Aspire 14 AI comes with either a 14-inch WUXGA IPS touch display or an OLED. The IPS display is functional but not particularly noteworthy in terms of brightness or color gamut. The OLED, on the other hand, makes it feel more premium. 

The Aspire 14 AI is well-stocked in terms of memory, with up to 32GB of LPDDR5x RAM and 1TB of PCIe Gen 4 SSD, making it a solid option for any mainstream workflow. As its name suggests, the Aspire 14 AI is expressly designed for AI tasks, delivering up to 40 TOPS and the usual suite of AI-specific features that come with other Copilot+ PCs. 

Also: This budget Lenovo 2-in-1 I recommend to students and professionals is cheaper than ever

Additionally, the Intel Arc GPU supports up to 53 TOPS, with upscaling technology for gaming and better performance when it comes to graphics rendering and video editing.

That being said, while gaming on the Aspire 14 AI is well-supported by the hardware, the IPS display may hold back the experience. Therefore, I’d suggest opting for the OLED configuration if you have any notions about gaming on this laptop.  

ZDNET’s buying advice

Acer’s Aspire 14 AI

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