Acer Aspire M5-583P-6637 Review

The desktop-replacement laptop category feels a little neglected these days, as slim, new ultrabooks and ultraportables hog the spotlight, but there’s still a lot of use for an everyday laptop with good all-around performance. The Acer Aspire M5-583P-6637 ($629.99) is just such a system, and it offers a decent overall package that costs less than several competitors, such as the Asus N550JV-DB72T($1,799.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window), our Editors’ Choice for midrange desktop-replacement laptops.

Design
The M5-583P-6637 looks a lot like last year’s Acer Aspire M5-583P-6428( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window). That’s because it utilizes the same overall design, and even a similar selection of hardware. The chassis measures 0.9 by 15 by 10.1 inches (HWD), and weighs 5.3 pounds, making it reasonably portable for a 15-inch system. Brushed metal covers the lid and palmrest, while the underside of the chassis is made of sturdy plastic. The result is a lightweight system that feels solid when typing or when picked up with one hand.

The system’s 15.6-inch display boasts 10-finger touch capability, with standard 1,366-by-768 resolution. The screen is a little disappointing, given that the Asus N550JV-DB72T offers 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, but I wouldn’t expect that sort of resolution at this price range. The touch capability is a must-have for Windows 8 systems, with edge-to-edge glass, and the hinge supports the display reasonably well when touched, with only a bit of screen wobble. The screen colors are slightly muted, and the glass-covered display is a bit reflective, but those are my only real complaints. Joining the display are four built-in speakers with Dolby Home Theater sound that offer enough volume to fill a small room, but don’t have much bass to speak of.

The system’s chiclet-style keyboard has Acer’s standard keyboard layout, which has the quirk of a combined Backslash and Enter key. It’s otherwise comfortable and quiet, with white LED backlighting and a 10-key numeric pad. The accompanying clickpad has two clickable zones in the lower right and left corners instead of discrete buttons, and the entire surface is clickable and supports multitouch and Windows 8 gesture controls. The wide touchpad is centered just below the spacebar.

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Features
The M5-583P-6637 is outfitted with a fair selection of ports and features, but it’s all about location. On the right of the system you’ll find a single USB 2.0 port, a headset jack, and an SD card slot. On the left is another USB 2.0 port, and the Power button—which may not be the most convenient location for a power button, but it didn’t seem to cause any unwanted power downs or similar issues, so it’s a minor complaint. On the back of the system you’ll find a compact Gigabit Ethernet port (the port itself is hinged, opening up to accept a standard RJ-45 plug), one USB 3.0 port, an HDMI-out port, and a proprietary Converter Port, which can be used for VGA, USB, or Ethernet via an Acer Converter Cable ($34.99, sold separately). A Kensington case lock slot provides some physical security, and you get 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 + HS for wireless connectivity.

The system’s 500GB hard drive is a
common capacity at this price range, and should offer enough room for all of your documents. In addition to Windows 8.1, the system comes with several preinstalled programs and apps, including a 30-day trial of the McAfee LiveSafe security suite, and a 30-day trial of Microsoft Office 365. The rest covers a wide range, with proprietary apps like AcerCloud and Acer Docs for Web-based storage and sharing files over your home network, and a collection of shopping apps from Ebay, Amazon, and Booking.com. You’ll get entertainment apps, like Netflix, HuluPlus, Spotify, and Music Maker Jam, and a few sample games from WildTangent. Acer covers the M5-583P-6637 with a standard one-year warranty.

Performance

Equipped with an Intel Core i5-4200U processor—the same dual-core CPU used in the Acer M5-583P-6428—the system offers decent everyday performance, as seen in PCMark 8 and Photoshop. In PCMark 8, the M5-583P-6637 scored 1,662 points, putting it ahead of both the Core i3-equipped Dell Latitude 13 Education Series (3340), which scored 2,268 points. The system completed the Photoshop CS6 test in a respectable 5 minutes 11 seconds, making it well suited to not only regular document and spreadsheet entry, but also some light photo editing.

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With only Intel’s integrated graphics solution—Intel HD Graphics 4400—the M5-583P-6637 will definitely meet the demands of Web browsing and streaming media, but gaming is largely out of the question. The Aspire M5-583P-6637’s 3DMark scores of 4,223 points in CloudGate and 276 points in Fire Strike Extreme are decent, but are easily topped by the Asus N550JV-DB72T or the Acer Aspire V5-573PG-9610, which boast discrete graphics cards.

The slim laptop also boasts some pretty good battery life. It lasted 7 hours 39 minutes in our battery rundown test. This is nearly long enough to take you through a full 8-hour workday, but it’s not the longest we’ve seen recently. Both the Acer Aspire V5-573PG-9610 (9:17) and the Dell Latitude 13 Education Series (10:17) outstripped it by an hour or more on the test.

Conclusion
The Acer Aspire M5-583P-6637 is a decent day-to-day laptop with a fair feature set and adequate performance. The biggest thing going for the system, however, is the price, which puts it at the inexpensive end of the midrange desktop-replacement category. It may not offer the most impressive performance numbers or tout the latest features, but it will provide a decent touch-enabled system for a list price of $629.99, where competitors are frequently priced higher. For the best in the category, however, consider the Editors’ Choice Asus N550JV-DB72T, which offers a full HD display, better sound quality, and more powerful processing and graphics hardware, but has a list price of $400 more.