Pros:
* Fast, cool, and quiet. After hours of gaming with Stalker 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and BG3, max temp hit by the CPU was only 79 degrees C, and that only for a very brief time. My old ASUS Tuf would be at least ten degrees hotter after such a test. Also of note, at the end of that test, the fans do not sound like Blackhawk helicopters under military power, an annoying characteristic that both my older Asus and older HP Omen had. Test was done "vanilla" with no external cooler fans, repasting, etc.
* Nicely configured hardware. The 5060, Ryzen 7, and WD SSD drive all work well together.
* WD SSE drive, very high quality, reads at 6300 mbps.
* Second SSE slot is open.
* Caser very easy to open, well organized.
* Good build quality. The Acer feels very solid and can be opened with one hand. The unit has no "flex".
* Good gaming performance. Cyberpunk 2077 at 2K / high detail can hit 65 fps with ray tracing on and can reach well over 100 FPS with ray tracing off.
* Reasonable price and good component value. Costs $100 more than similarly configured laptops selling with 4050 GPUs, 16 GB RAM, and 512 GB HDs, machines much worse in all ways.
Neutral:
* FHD screen, fast but dim. Typical of midrange laptops. I suggest using an external monitor anyway, but if you plan on playing all the time off the laptop, you may want a better screen option, which will likely cost a lot more.
* Port selection is adequate. 3 3.2 USB As, 1 USB 4.0 C, 1 HDMI, SD card reader, headphone jack. Decent, but a Thunderbolt port and / or additional C port would be welcome.
Cons:
* Front of lid seems to be easily smudged and seems a fingerprint magnet.
* Usual annoying bloatware that needs deletion, including world's worst AV software (McFluffy).
* Need to set up / sign into MS to launch the operating system. Owners should have the option to bypass this annoying step.
* Documentation is close to non-existent, both in terms of what's in the box and what's online.
* 32GB RAM comes as two 16 GB chips, so upgrading to 64 GB means having to buy two new chips instead of one. Every PC maker seems to do this, which does not make it any less annoying. Give me one 32 GB chip, charge me $20 more.
Note: Make sure to purchase directly from Amazon. Third party sellers often void mfgr warranties by adding components themselves and some will ship returned machines as new. Amazon is the only PC seller I'd buy from on their site.
Bottom Line: Well balanced, well made, and reasonably priced for high value components.
