Acer AS5253-BZ602 15.6-Inch Laptop

Acer Aspire AS5253 BZ602 15.6″ LED Notebook E 350 1.60 GHz Black LX.RD502.005 Laptops & Notebooks

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of five stars Great value for light (ie non gaming) use, May 4, 2011
By Mojoman See all my reviews () This review is from: Acer AS5253 BZ602 15.6 Inch Laptop (Personal Computers) I looked for a laptop/notebook to connect to my 60″ flat screen TV. A just total of research led me to decide this unit as it was low priced (350), offered hard graphics performance in the dual core AMD E 350 APU, integrated HDMI output connection, decent sized hard drive and running Windows seven (64 bit). Only minor negative related with this unit is it only has 2Gb memory installed. But, that 2Gb is on one stick and unit has a second slot available.

I bought a stick of Crucial CT25664BC1067 2GB 204 PIN PC3 8500 SODIMM DDR3 Memory Module for 20 bucks to deal with this shortcoming. Installing it was a breeze. Just remove the two screws securing the hard drive/memory access panel and put a flat blade screwdriver at the indentation of door and work it around the panel. The panel is retained by a group of small tabs spaced about an inch or so separately around the perimeter of the panel. Just work the flat blade screwdriver around the panel, twisting the screwdriver as you come to each tab to produce it to disengage from the body of the laptop. Open memory slot will be on the bottom right under a clear film sheet. Lift the sheet, align the second memory stick in the open slot, put it , then press down on the stick till the metal clips engage the stick to keep it in position. Reinstall the panel and the two screws to finish the job. Takes 5 10 minutes and you’re good to go.

I didn’t decide to upgrade it, but replacing the hard drive could be pretty easy to achieve also.

Keyboard is island style keys with open space between them. Easy to type on, but I do not recommend eating while using as the open keys are conducive to to get crumbs and such in between them.

Screen is clear, bright and sharp. Weight is a bit heavy to be a daily carry unit, but that isn’t what I use it for. I have a light weight 14″ laptop for that job.

Upon initial start up you may want to create restore discs or a driver disc if you plan on doing a clean Windows seven install. Then start removing the common crap ware you get on any pre built unit. This unit wasn’t particularly better or worse than I encountered before on other laptops. You may be able to manually delete those programs you do not want, or just download and run “PC Decrapifier” if you are not familiar/comfortable with removing unwanted software or want to speed the procedure up. I chose to manually remove the things I didn’t want.

After removing the things I didn’t want, I downloaded and installed the new variant of Microsoft Security Essentials (free anti virus), ran Windows Update, and downloaded and installed the new variant of Catalyst Control Center and driver. Installed a couple of other applications and updates to finish the job. All total, it took a couple of hours to finish all the hardware/software tasks to get the unit just the way I wanted it.

Since then I used it for outputting Hulu/Netflix/etc. To my flat screen TV via the HDMI port, web browsing, and office type applications. It performs all these flawlessly. I haven’t tried to run/play any games on the unit as I have a hard desktop system for that use and this unit most likely won’t run any serious game well. Flash based net games and older games shouldn’t be a problem.

I haven’t run the unit on battery power for any expanded period so I can not speak to battery performance/duration.

After a couple weeks use, I haven’t experienced any issues with the unit and am pleased with the price/performance.

If you need a hard laptop/notebook for home use (web browsing, e mail, office apps, etc.), you may want to certainly give this unit consideration. Good value for the price.

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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of five stars Acer AS5253, March 19, 2011
By FarvaSCW See all my reviews () This review is from: Acer AS5253 BZ602 15.6 Inch Laptop (Personal Computers) Great laptop, battery life is about five hours for normal use. Easy to type on and the number pad is a big plus. The AMD E350 apu is still good for many gaming I can play left four dead two and fallout new vegas with no lag. Defiantly not a high end laptop but for only 400 its a great deal, but I do recommend to get another 2gig stick of ram as it runs many better on 4gig.

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15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of five stars Acer as5253, March 14, 2011
By zaneil777 See all my reviews () This review is from: Acer AS5253 BZ602 15.6 Inch Laptop (Personal Computers) This computer is a steal at its price it came packaged but had alot of programs preloaded on to it.A lil cheaper construction but well made calm playing games like dragon age two good graphics rate them 4 5 had it on high settings too good wireless good sound all in all way worth the price for what ever you want to use it for.

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