Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P laptop review: office champion for $450

It’s the feature-to-price ratio that makes the Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P such an interesting device, because it doesn’t really offer anything interesting. It’s a boring office machine for basic tasks that has every chance of becoming a bestseller. It’s also almost perfect as a first laptop for a school or college student on a tight budget.

Specifications of Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P

Technical characteristics Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P
Screen	15.6″ IPS 1920×1080 60 Hz
Processor	Intel Core i3 N305 8 cores
RAM	16 GB DDR5 4800 MHz
Drive	512 GB PCI-E 3.0 x4
Video card	UHD Graphics Xe 32EUs
Wireless interfaces	Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1
Card reader	no
USB connectors	2 x Type A 3.2 gen1
	1 x Type C 3.2 gen2
Video connector	HDMI 2.1
Audio jack	3.5 mm jack
Camera	HD 720p
Audio	2 speakers
Power supply	65 W
Battery	50 W*h
Additionally	USB Power Delivery
	kensington / noble castle
Housing material	matte plastic
Weight	1.75 kg
Dimensions	363x240x19 mm
Operating system	without OS

Completeness and packaging

Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P has eco-friendly packaging and a minimal set. Inside the recycled cardboard box is a laptop, a 65W power supply (not Type C), and paper documentation. The laptop also does not have an operating system, which the owner will have to install after unpacking the laptop.

Design, interfaces

The front panel has only two advertising stickers, and the top lid has the Acer and Aspire logos. The surface collects fingerprints, but there are noticeably more of them on the bottom on the black plastic. If not for the large thickness, the Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P would look much more elegant.

The laptop looks as simple as possible. The case is made of affordable plastic, the build quality is average. You can feel the integrity, there are no gaps, but Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P cannot be called a benchmark. Holding it in your hands, you can hear the creaking of plastic.

It’s impossible to open the lid with one hand because the hinges are incredibly tight. You have to hold the laptop and lift it strictly in the center so as not to put unnecessary pressure on the thin screen bezel.

The set of interfaces includes an HDMI port, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, two USB Type A and one USB Type C with support for charging via power banks. All USBs are high-speed, 3.2 standard. There is no memory card slot. The Wi-Fi module allows you to transfer data at speeds up to 400 Mbps using an inexpensive router.

 

Keyboard, touchpad Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P

The full-size keyboard has a Numpad numeric pad, paired arrows, Shift is only slightly shortened, and there is no backlight. There are buttons for quick setup, including a dedicated Acer key that launches a proprietary utility.

The touchpad is relatively large, medium-sensitive, and works well with gestures. It can be locked with the FN + F10 key to avoid phantom taps. It’s a pleasure to work with it, and we didn’t find any nuances during use.

Display, camera, sound

The bezels around the screen are huge on all sides. The coating is matte and partially absorbs sunlight. The viewing angles are poor, as is the color gamut — the colorimeter showed results typical of the most affordable IPS matrices. The image is not terrible, but the color coverage is weak.

Work productivity

Benchmark / Mode	BATTERY	PSU
Geekbench Single	1244	1259
Geekbench Multi	4206	4966
CPU-Z Single	368	410
CPU-Z Multi	2013	2660
Cinebench 2024 Single	63	65
Cinebench 2024 Multi	285	291
Blender Benchmark CPU	49	58
Blender Benchmark iGPU	–	–
Corona 1.3  sec.	392	359
Speedometer 3	10,3	12,1
Google Octane 2.0	45408	51711
WebXPRT	176	193
Geekbench Open CL	6251	6351
Geekbench Vulkan	6622	7280
SSD Read MB/s	3544
SSD Write MB/s	3296

The strong point of the Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P is its stable battery life. The laptop hardly ever dips in battery life, performing equally well in all scenarios.

Of course, the N305’s processor power is not surprising after the flagships, but the performance is excellent for its class and power consumption.

It’s comfortable to work in the browser, although the heaviest web applications don’t run perfectly smoothly, but it’s not like the computer is thinking for a long time. Rendering in CPU-Z, Cinebench 2024, Blender, Corona is possible only on the processor. There is no Intel NPU neural accelerator here, so you have to rely on the video card (if there is software support) and the processor.

Local neural networks work, but relatively slowly. Gigapixel AI took as much as 15 minutes to upscale four images 6-fold, and Stable Diffusion took as much as 46 minutes to create 5 images. In this case, it is better to use cloud services, such as Copilot.

The integrated Intel UHD Graphics Xe 32EUs is also power mode independent. The power of such a video card is enough for hardware acceleration in the browser, it helps with photo processing, and also allows you to play a large library of games.

Relative to Intel Celeron/Pentium, the performance is excellent. The Intel Core i3 N305 is a direct competitor to the modern AMD Ryzen 3 7320U and 7330U. It is especially nice to see the same results of the Geekbench Single Core tests from the battery.

The power of the N305 hardly decreases, as is the case with top Intel models. We tested laptops 4–5 times pricier, which work no better than this Acer Aspire in the browser and office programs because they lose 40% of battery performance.

The RAM operates in single-channel mode, so the speed is relatively slow. It’s impossible to change the capacity because the RAM is soldered on the board. The drive is PCI-E 3.0, has as much as 512 GB, although the speed is not impressive. Its parameters do not depend on the laptop’s operating mode.

Most importantly, the laptop has a well-tuned BIOS that boots up in 3.6 seconds. It’s faster than flagship laptops costing $3,000. By the time a top-of-the-line desktop computer with AMD Ryzen 9 7900 shows the motherboard splash screen, this laptop will have booted up long ago.

Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P gaming performance

The integrated UHD Graphics Xe 32EUs performed well in games, especially in offline mode. The laptop allows you to run popular hits of past years and modern online shooters.Conventional notation:

• ULTRA — maximum graphics settings;
• MED — medium graphics settings;
• LOW — low graphics settings;
• COMP — esports graphics settings;

Civilization VI with maximum textures works well. 30 FPS is not a hindrance to a turn-based strategy game.

Portal 2 runs on ultra settings. It’s a pleasure to play, the gameplay is smooth.

Tomb Raider with minimal graphics goes well. In closed locations, you can get up to 60 FPS.

Titan Quest allows you to set medium settings and play for up to three hours on battery power.

Valorant with eSports parameters (high-quality textures, and everything else to a minimum) allows you to get more than 60 FPS in any conditions.

Autonomy, cooling, power consumption, noise

The laptop holds a charge well in economy mode. When working with office programs and the maximum brightness level, we get more than 10 hours of autonomy. This figure can be increased to 13–14 hours by lowering the brightness.

Watching 4K videos on YouTube will take about 5 hours because in this mode the processor receives a certain load. In games, the laptop lasts longer than most gaming models. You can play Titan Quest for almost 3 hours. The laptop will charge to 80% in 60 minutes, and to 100% in 90 minutes.

Power consumption in the Aida64 stress test is 24-25 W. The power supply consumes 67-68 W when charging if the battery is empty, and after replenishing it by 80%, the power drops to 38 W.

The case heats up only to 40 °C. Above the keyboard, we recorded 35-36 °C, and at the back 37-38 °C. The sensors in the Aida 64 stress test showed only 60 °C on the processor. The maximum power consumption of the CPU from the mains is 15 W, from the battery is 2-3 W less.

The hardware is indeed incredibly economical and cool, but such low temperatures came at the cost of noise. When the laptop is idle, the fans always turn on. They run at low speeds but have low-quality bearings.

Despite the value of 33–37 dB, it doesn’t feel quite that way because of vibrations. It seems that a hard disk is installed here, not an SSD drive. This is the case when you can not only hear the cooling system, but also feel it with your hands.

The manufacturer should have used less aggressive fan behavior. It makes no sense to turn them on when the processor temperature is 40 °C. This is what spoils the experience the most.

Software

Acer’s proprietary utility has minimal functionality. Here you can view the battery status, system utilization, adjust the sound, charging mode, screen settings, and more. A separate key is dedicated to launching this program.

The laptop does not have an operating system. You will have to install the OS yourself. We tested the device with Windows 11 Pro, although you can install Ubuntu, Debian, Chrome OS Flex, etc. without any problems. During use, we encountered minor bugs (for example, the brightness control does not work for the first 30 seconds after switching on), but you can’t complain about them in a computer for this money.

The biggest problem for the user will be the already mentioned malfunction of the fans in Windows 11 Pro. This nuance is quite individual because new problems may appear when using a different operating system, and some may disappear.

Experience of use

It’s nice that the battery holds well, and the processor power is two heads higher than the Pentium/Celeron series. Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P does not keep you waiting and works at the level of an average modern PC for «office plankton».

According to personal impressions, the Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P has a screen at the level of Thomson Neo N15is no better, although here IPS versus TN. In the dark, working with Aspire Go is difficult because of the already mentioned dynamic contrast.

But this is nothing compared to how annoying the noisy fans were. The manufacturer should set a higher temperature threshold for activating the cooling system because listening to the humming of bearings when the processor has reached 40 degrees is unpleasant, to say the least.

In general, Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P will suit an undemanding user, if you don’t pick on the nuances. For me personally, this is far from the best option, despite the fact that its capabilities are sufficient for journalism.

Price and competitors

Acer Aspire Go 15 AG15-31P costs only 18,000 UAH for the 16/512 GB version. Its $450. A model with 8 GB of RAM is cheaper by a thousand hryvnias. The competition in this segment is extremely strong, so let’s look at just a few close analogs that are no pricier than UAH 22,000 and have a 16/512 GB memory subsystem.

Asus Vivobook 15 OLED X1505ZA is one of the most affordable OLED laptops on the market. It’s a good option, though a bit pricier. 

HP 255 G10 offers higher performance and has less weight, although this is reflected in the price.

Acer Extensa 15 EX215-23 — an internal competitor of the review hero based on AMD Ryzen 5 7520U. The disadvantage is a smaller battery and potentially weaker battery life.

You can find something more profitable if you catch a mega-discount on sale (for example, -40%), but among stable, fixed prices, the Aspire Go 15 is really profitable, one of the best on the market. Against the background of a more compact Acer Chromebook 314which costs the same, is particularly successful.

Used laptops with 8th-generation Intel Core i5 are no match for it in terms of performance because not all Core i7s from 5 years ago can compete with the Intel Core i3 N305. It’s not worth mentioning the battery life among used garbage — at best, we get twice as bad as the hero of the review.