The Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL is a decent laptop that places itself squarely in the budget range of laptops. While there are other laptops within the said price range with better features and gaming chops, it still stands its ground as a great home office laptop. Originally, it stems from the Acer Aspire F5-571T Series of laptops released by Acer sometime in 2017.
Pros
- Large 15.6-inch screen. Great screen estate to work with.
- Sleek and great build.
- Great battery life
Cons
- Slow processing speed at 1.7GHz.
- Lacks a backlit keyboard.
The Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL is a great laptop that sports a variety of attractive features for home/office customers. It boasts of a great large 15.6-inch screen, decent resolution (1366 x 768), Intel Core i5 i5-4210U, 8GB DDR3L SDRAM coupled with 1TB of HDD and a sizeable graphics card. All these make for a great mid-performance laptop for work and play. The only tradeoff is the price considering other laptops in its rage cost less and have similar specs.
Update 10th Aug 2019: the Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL is currently not available on Amazon. We’ve therefore updated to a better mainstream laptop with almost similar features. Check out the Acer Aspire R5-471T-78VY laptop.
Design and Features
The Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL is definitely a looker with its all-black industrial design. From a distance, the construction looks like carbon fiber but it really is plastic. To be fair it is handsome with a finish between shiny and matte which gives it a heavy-duty high-quality hardware look. There are no metal accents or touches to it, so that is something you will have to get I touch with.
The 15.6-inch screen works with a 1366 x 768 16:9 resolution which is a common resolution at this price range. We saw almost similar specs on the Acer Aspire E5-471-59RT and the Lenovo Z40. Full HD display doesn’t exactly run a circle around 1080P video but is a great resolution to have. Images and videos on the screen are bright and vivid too; nothing like a close to a Retina display like the Apple MacBook Pro but it works reliably well. It’s high enough for 720p HD video which we played on YouTube. The videos and the picture were rather respectable.
Dimensions
Even at its thickest point, the Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL is thinner and smaller than the Acer Aspire E15 E5-575-33BM (15.02 x 10.2 x 1.19 inches, 5.27lbs). It measures 15 x 10.1 x 1.1 inches and weighs 5.3 pounds while the Acer Aspire E5-575G-53VG Laptop measures 10.2 x 15.02 x 1.19 inches and weighs 5.27 lbs which isn’t so different. While still o similarities it compares similarly in features and specifications with the Dell XPS 11 but is heavier and less sophisticated. The Dell XPS 11 is svelte and lighter than the bunch at just 2.5 pounds and 11.8 x 7.9 x 0.4 inches.
Like many other laptops, the Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL isn’t touchscreen or hybrid 2-in-1. The hinges are stiff and only crawl back so far so don’t expect to lean them flat to 180 degrees. Lack of touch capabilities is a drawback with such screen estate. It would have been splendid to scroll and pinch images and text but I guess you will have to contend with that too. Still, despite that, it has no effect on its bottom line performance so not a deal-breaker yet.
Ports
The port selection on the Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL is pretty top of its game. At the sides of the machine, you’ll find three USB 3.0 Ports, one USB Type-C connector, an HDMI port, an Ethernet port.
At the front, there is an SD card reader and the side a writer DVD drive for all your program and software DVD installation.
Other connectivity options include a Bluetooth – IEEE 802.11ac, Wireless LAN – Gigabit Ethernet.
Performance
On the performance section, the Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL is equipped with Intel Core i5 i5-4210U (Haswell) which is a common CPU for laptops in this price range. Also, it brags of Dual-core (2 Core) which is another feature common on most Core i3 and some Core i5. FYI, some Core i5 processors are sure dual-core while some are quad-core. This laptop is dual-core and works similar to the Lenovo Flex 2 and CPUs found in the Lenovo Edge 15.
This processor also offers a decent integrated graphics with Intel HD Graphics 4400 which paired with 8 GB DDR3L SDRAM RAM. Thanks to the higher RAM allotment on this machine, you can expect some noticeable frame rates per second while gaming. We tried a few games like Heaven and Valley in our gaming test and the RAM cranked out a few extra frames. None of the games were pitch-perfect performance gaming levels but the RAM does really help get that extra work done.
Each core offers a base speed of 1.70GHz which isn’t exactly perfect or bearable, but for the price is acceptable. This would have been above all its largest Achilles heel if Turbo Boost had nothing to do with it. You see with Turbo Boost, speed dynamically increases up to 2.7 GHz for 1 active core or 2.4 GHz for 2 active cores.
Unlike the reviewed Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL, the Dell XPS 11 pulls away with a faster Core i5 chip and SSD that runs circles around Acer’s 5400rpm HDD. The system is HDD, lacks an SSD option to go with for faster saving but in the end, the 1TB HDD alleviates the loss.
Acer Aspire F5-571T Battery life
We ran a battery test on the Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL which involves web surfing over Wi-Fi and the results came in shortly after 9 hours 23 minutes. This is very impressive considering that it was more an average workday on a 15-inch laptop (large laptop screens and high resolutions are known to drain battery). For most users who travel and don’t mind the weight, it could be a great asset for domestic flights and some international flights.
Keyboard
The keyboard sits still with a neat display of keys displayed in rows and columns; almost somewhat inviting. The keys have a 1.65mm of key travel and 58-gram actuation which is perfectly good for a productivity laptop. I used the keyboard while writing this review and finally rested on a decision that they weren’t the best but comparable to the Acer F555UA (the keyboard was fairly uncomfortable).
I, however, was able to hit 96 words per minute o the TypingTest.com with a few errors which weren’t so bad. In the long run, typing for long periods might be a problem for word processing users but only until you get the hang of it.
The trackpad comes in a 4.1 x 3.0-inch package. It is left aligned which places it just perfect for use. The pad itself is a little rubbery, which makes the cursor move slower than ordinary but two, three and four-finger gestures work with confidence.
Things we loved
- 1TB storage is helpful especially for students and home/office use for saving video, images, and data.
- Brags of a DVD writer which while making it a little traditional, to say the least, is a welcome feature for playing DVD movies, adding software and programs to your line up.
- The 15-inch screen is wide and immersive. Watching movies and streaming videos is a joy.
Conclusion
Apart from the uncomfortable keyboard and trackpad, the Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL is an attractive laptop capable of providing value to home/office users. It looks good, performs modestly and has respectable battery life. Its only drawback is the pricing which is higher than its rivals in the industry. In comparison, Acer Aspire E5-575G-53VG Laptop, Acer Aspire E15 E5-575-33BM and 2016 Newest Dell Inspiron 15 5000 leaves it wanting in many respects but chiefly pricing. So, while we recommend it for general low task home use, it is worth noting those few exceptions before adding to cart.
Update 10th Aug 2019: the Acer Aspire F5-571T-58AL is currently not available on Amazon. We’ve therefore updated to a better mainstream laptop with almost similar features. Check out the Acer Aspire R5-471T-78VY laptop.
