Many manufacturers take certain steps toward making their eco friendly and sustainable. This is usually done by shrinking the packaging or removing essentials like the charger in the box.
Acer, on the other hand, took the sustainability mission to another level by making the Acer Aspire Vero AV15 52 out of PCR plastic.
And apart from the recycled nature of the laptop, there’s a lot to like about the Acer Aspire AV15 52, so let’s take a closer look at it.
Specs at a Glance
CPU: Core i7 1255u | GPU: Intel Iris Xe Graphics | RAM: 16GB DDR5 | Display: 15.6” 1920×1080 | Storage: 1TB SSD Gen4 | Battery: 56Wh | OS: Windows 11
Build and Chassis
The Acer Aspire Vero AV15 52 stands out with its unique chassis. The body of the Aspire Vero remains unchanged from its previous model. 30% of which is made out of PCR plastic.
The chassis has a unique feel that stands out from your traditional aluminum or plastic chassis. The color of the chassis is grey with a little sprinkle of green particles and accents.
And Acer hasn’t shied away from branding it as a recycled laptop. There’s a logo on the bottom right of the chassis, indicating that the laptop is made out of recycled materials.
Though the laptop feels solid for the most part, there’s a noticeable flex in the chassis. So that’s something to keep in mind.
The Aspire Vero AV15 52 weighs around 3.31 lbs (1.5kg), which is light and pretty much on par with what the competition has to offer.
I/O Ports
The I/O is pretty good on the Acer Aspire Vero AV15 52. We have three USB 3.2 Type-A ports, USB C 3.2 port which also has Thunderbolt.
It l full-size HDMI 2.1 port and an Ethernet port, both of which are getting rare on premium laptops. And you have your usual audio combo jack and a proprietary charging port.
As for wireless comms, it has WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. So you are pretty much covered on that end too.
Keyboard & Touchpad
Keyboard
The Acer Aspire Vero also stands out with its keyboard when it comes to sustainability branding. All the keys are made with recycled PCR plastic. Furthermore, the R and E letters are reversed with a yellow accent to further hint at the branding.
The typing experience is not disappointing either. The keys have a nice amount of travel with every keystroke ending with nice and satisfying feedback.
The key themselves are also well spaced out and quite big which adds to the overall typing experience.
And the numpad keys don’t feel cramped as they usually feel on some gaming laptops. So you can work on your numbers without making any typos.
What bothers us is the positioning of the power button. I personally don’t like how the power button is located in the main keyboard row.
As there’s a chance of accidentally hitting it and causing the device to go to sleep.
I would have much preferred if the power button was placed on the top right side of the keyboard with the embedded fingerprint reader. Instead of it being placed on the touchpad.
Touchpad
The touchpad is spacious and thankfully centered which I highly appreciate. Though the taps feel loose and it would have been better if the touchpad was a bit more firm. As for tracking and accuracy, it is as you would expect and works great.
Speakers & Webcam
Speakers
Speakers are not the strongest suit of the Acer Aspire Vero AV15 52. They sound bland and lacking with no bass whatsoever. I would have preferred if they include up-firing speakers, but Acer decide to keep the 2022 Vero the same as the 2021 one.
Webcam.
If you just take casual zoom meetings, then the 1080p webcam would just serve you fine. To get the most out of this webcam you would need to provide it with enough light. Or else it would just be a grainy mess.
Display
The 2022 Aspire Vero holds up quite well with its display. Its 1080p IPS display covers the entire sRGB color gamut while also covering 78% of Adobe RGB, putting the competition like the HP Pavilion 15 to shame.
Though the display still doesn’t get bright enough it still packs in a 16:9 display whereas many laptops have moved on to a 16:10 display. The black chin really makes the Aspire Vero feels dated. It would have been better if they had utilized the chin space for more display.
Something like the Lenovo Slim 7i includes a color accurate 16:10 display which would be great for productivity thanks to larger screen real estate.
Performance
The performance is one of the biggest changes in the 2022 Aspire Vero. The new alder lake intel chips give a significant bump in performance.
When it comes to single-core performance, we see a minor improvement in single-core benchmarks with a significant boost in multithreaded workload.
In Geekbench 5, single-core performance is 1562 which is barely 2% faster whereas in the multi-core score, it got 6104 which is 14% fastest than the previous Tigerlake processor.
The Cinebench R23 single-core performance is also where we see an improvement. The new alder lake CPU is 18% faster with a score of 1761. And in the multi-core score, it got 7545 which is 40% faster than the previous model.
This performance is pretty much on par with what the competition has to offer. The Acer Aspire Vero is fully capable of getting the daily basic tasks done such as web browsing and working word documents while also being powerful enough to do moderately intensive tasks such as code compiling and light video editing.
Though something like the Lenovo Slim 7i would be more feasible for you if most of your usage consists of CPU-intensive workloads such as video editing or coding. This is thanks to the much more powerful Core i7 12700H which shreds in multi-threaded workloads.
Battery
The battery life is one of the strengths of the Aspire Vero AV15 52. The 2022 Vero AV15 52 can be your daily driver with its 8 to 9-hour battery backup. This is much better than some HP laptops which are cheap with a 42Wh battery that barely lasts an entire day.
And thanks to the whole sustainability branding, the battery is also easily replaceable.
Expandability & Upgradibility
Now weirdly enough, a laptop that is all about sustainability and environmental friendliness comes with soldered 8GB RAM. Though it has one extra RAM slot that can be used to futureproof the device.
Also, the 1TB SSD is also replaceable and upgradable. So that is welcomed too. The WiFi and Bluetooth modules are also upgradable which is nice too.
Though the HP Pavillion 15 beats the Aspre Vero with its amazing upgradability thanks to it’s dual M.2 slots and dual RAM slots.
Conclusion
Overall, the Acer Aspire Vero AV15 52 is a solid everyday laptop with sustainability in mind. It has good performance and great battery life.
Though where it falls apart is with its dim display and subpar speakers and webcam. Despite that, the Aspire AV15 52 ends up being a solid laptop.
