Are Acer laptops any good?

[LordVincent]

Okay so a bit of backstory: Less than a year ago my work laptop's fan went to shit near christmas times. Tired of laptops shitting themselves on me in the worst of moments, I decided to buy a new one on short notice and went for a Lenovo Legion Y520.

It was faulty from the start, but I deal. Until just this last week when the usb-c port started overheating to the point that smoke came from it and the outer layer near it melted. I never use the usb-c port.
I've handed the laptop in on the warranty, but given the circumstances I doubt they'll try to claim the fault was mine so I should get replacement or refund...

Bringing me to my current situation. The Lenovo I had has been a struggle for me to use as it only has 8GB of RAM and I am a fast worker with low failure patience. Being back on my backup laptop/old work laptop which has 16GB of RAM I can work sooooo much faster and meet those deadlines much easier... So I am considering trying to convince them to let me add a few hundred bucks to the refund amount to get a pc with better processor and RAM.

The option I can afford to upgrade to right now is the Acer Aspire 7. What I'm basically wondering is if anyone here has any experiences with Acer and if there are any common malfunctions? I know that no brand is perfect (considering I had a lenovo which are supposed to be super good and still ended up with a fucking fire hazard) but I just wanna know if the brand is ridiculously bad compared to others or if it's good to go

[J.Lovelace]

My Acer is from the eMachines line and it lasted 9 years. And it will last longer, I just have to replace the malfunctioning fan.
My only issue with the good old boi is that it started to overheat at some point (year 5 maybe), but it's nothing a cooling pad can't solve. And the monitor started to glitch out lately too. But that's like after 8 years of use, working 12 - 16 hours a day, everyday.

I don't know about the new Acers produced now. If they still have that kind of lasting durability, I recommend getting one.

[LordVincent]

So the main problem is that the fans have a tendency to malfunction? (assuming the overheating issue has to do with that..?)

Sounds like my lil' HP, so no problemo as fas as I'm concerned. I would rather have the occasional fan problem than a spontaneous fire hazard problem lololol

[Shanny8]

When I first bought a laptop I was gonna get an Acer, but I ended up snagging a Compaq that they had on sale...I now I have a Dell. Like the other post, I'm not sure now; a lot of laptops that used to be quality have become "meh" now.

[sararosebr]

I had an Acer 2 in 1 one from 2014 to last summer and it was always reliable until there was a major software glitch that caused it to Max out the CPU at boot up. I got it to work for a few months after that, but then it got worse and had to take out the hard drive and get a new one. I would say it either works better than the HP I have now, or get one that is a total bust, but 90% it is a pretty good brand.

[grimnir]

I also had an Acer 2 in 1. It lasted... maybe 3 or 4 years? And it had few problems in that time.
The hinge broke, it had a number of weird glitches (sometimes the touch screen or rotation would just stop working for a few days, if you closed the lid while it was on the screen brightness would get stuck in its current setting, etc.), it would periodically just blue-screen on me right after startup. I think there were probably other issues too, but those are the ones I remember. Towards the end it started having minor problems with the screen, and then the wi-fi (and bluetooth and all other wireless connections) stopped working, which was when I finally gave up on it.
So decent computer, but far from perfect. You get what you pay for, and Acer computers tend to be on the cheaper side of things.

[joannekwan]

I had an Acer laptop that I only used for gaming, and I can count how many times it crashed on me mid-game on one hand. I used it for 4 or 5 years I think? I believe it still runs fine, but I've upgraded to a real PC set up now and it's currently sitting in the closet.

[Merle]

I do my comics on an Acer. I´ve had this laptop for almost 2 years, and so far (artwise), it has worked out perfectly. The only Issue I ever had was that really early on for some reason my microphone broke (and that´s the story behind the robbo-chan - voice). I´m still really glad I got it; and I´m sure it´ll last me for a few more years!
(it also very conveniently fits into most backpacks...)

[MissionFailure]

As a person who builds computers and repairs laptops. It's a meh system but a better buy than mac products. Now, I myself prefer HP laptops to Acer or Lenovo's simply because it's way easier to find replacement parts.

Right now the largest problem with laptops is overheating due to poor design of heat sinks, fan placement, and cheap fan hardware. Having a ventilated laptop riser can help with that issue since most laptop designs place the air intake on the bottom of the laptop and the blower facing a side. Taking a can of air to your laptop every 3 months or so to blow out dust, food particles, and clean the fan is also a good way to prevent overheating.

Some basics to keep in mind while shopping: HDDs are cheaper and have more storage space. You want as much RAM as you can get, 16GB should be your start point since so many programs run background services on RAM versus CPU. It's also the reason that Adobe products tend to crash so often and people don't know why.

edit correction: I said it didn't have a dedicated GPU, but a second look on Newegg shows that it does have an Nvidia, so yes, it will run as a gaming laptop as well.