Acer Aspire 14 AI review: a good price can’t mask some real disappointments

There’s just one Aspire 14 AI configuration available today, with an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 14.0-inch FHD+ IPS display. It’s $750 at Costco, and $890 direct from Acer.

The keyboard has slightly smaller keycaps and the layout is the tiniest bit cramped. Acer could have used up a little more space and made for more comfortable key spacing. But, the switched are reasonably light and snappy, with a bottoming action that isn’t harsh or fatiguing. I do like some other keyboards better, such as Apple’s Magic Keyboard and HP’s version it uses on its latest OmniBook laptops. But, I was able to type this review at nearly full speed without too many mistakes, so I’d rate the keyboard as pretty good.

The touchpad is large enough (although there’s space for a larger version), and for a mechanical touchpad, it’s fine. I don’t expect haptic touchpads on laptops in this price range, and in fact the Aspire 14 AI’s touchpad is quite responsive and its button clicks are quiet and confident. That makes it better than some other lower-priced laptops I’ve used.

Acer includes a touch display, which I think is great at the price. It won’t matter to every user, but there’s no downside.

There’s just one 8-core/8-thread Intel Lunar Lake (Core Ultra Series 2) chipset offered with the Aspire 14 AI, specifically the Core Ultra 5 226V. Like all Lunar Lake chipsets, it runs at a base of 17 watts, and it has the slowest clockspeed in the lineup. Intel designed the new chipsets to focus on efficiency, with performance that’s faster than the older 15-watt U-series Meteor Lake chipsets but slower than those running at 28 watts.

Looking at our benchmarks, the Aspire is as fast as other comparable chipsets and slower than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chipsets that are also aimed at efficiency. The MacBook Air 13’s M4 chipset is also a lot faster. The Core Ultra 5 226V also equips the slower Intel Arc 130V integrated graphics, but the Aspire 14 AI did surprisingly well here compared to other Intel Arc 130V chipsets. However, these scores generally aren’t good enough for all but light gaming, and integrated graphics don’t help much with speeding up creative tasks.

The ThinkPad X9-14 will be fine for general productivity tasks. Gamers and creators won’t be too excited, though.

The Aspire 14 AI has a 65 watt-hour battery and a low-resolution IPS display. Combined with the energy-efficient Core Ultra 226V chipset, I expected very good battery life.

There was a time when laptops priced less than $1,000 generally had inferior displays with low brightness, narrow and inaccurate colors, and low contrast. Over the last several years, though only the least expensive laptops have had less-than-average IPS displays — and that average is much better than it used to be. When I powered on the Aspire 14 AI, I could instantly tell that the display would be one of this laptop’s biggest compromises to reach a price that isn’t really all that low.

The colors are muted and don’t look very natural, and that display doesn’t get all that bight by modern standards. It just didn’t look great to me, and that’s setting aside the spectacular OLED and mini-LED displays I’ve looked at lately. Even compared to the typical IPS display, this one just wasn’t great. And at 14.0 inches and FHD+ (1920 x 1200), the display wasn’t particularly sharp, either.

According to my Datacolor SpyderX Elite colorimeter, the display didn’t benefit from objective measurements either. While it was brighter at 331 nites than our standard of 300 nits, that just demonstrates that we need to establish a new standard. Most displays are closer to 400 nits today, making this one seem too dark by comparison. The colors were very narrow at 62% of sRGB, 46% of AdobeRGB, and 46% of DCI-P3. That’s well below the 100%, 75%, and 75% averages, respectively, of today’s typical IPS displays. OLED displays come in at 100%, 95%, and 100% and mini-LED are somewhere in between, making this display look even worse. And those narrow colors weren’t very accurate either, at a DeltaE of 2.59, above the 2.0 that’s preferred for productivity work and where most displays fall. Contrast was good at 1,200:1, above our still-relevant 1,000:1 baseline.

Ultimately, this just wasn’t a very good display. It’s okay if all you’re doing is browsing the web and working in productivity applications. But it’s not very good for streaming media, which will look muted, and certainly not for any kind of creative work. It’s a corner that I hate to see cut on a laptop like this one.

The audio was pretty average, though. Two downward-firing speakers provide good enough sound for YouTube videos and system sounds, with enough volume and reasonably clear mids and highs and the usual lack of bass.

If you buy the laptop from Costco, you’ll pay $750. That’s not a bad price for a 14-inch laptop with decent productivity performance. It’s not the best-built laptop with the most elegant design, but you don’t expect that for the price.

However, the display simply isn’t very good, with narrow and muted colors and low brightness. Given that I’ve seen laptops with OLED displays at this price, that’s not great. And the battery life is disappointing. Ultimately, I think you can get a much better laptop for the same price if you shop around. Spend a couple of hundred dollars more and you’ll be a lot happier.