Acer Turns To AMD Ryzen 7020 CPUs For Its Latest Aspire 3 Laptop Refresh

AMD's Ryzen 7000 processors have been available for desktop PCs for a while now, but AMD only recently unveiled its 7000-series mobile products, starting with the low-powered 7020 family. The 7020 lineup consists of three SKUs, ranging from the dual-core, quad-thread Athlon Gold 7220U featuring 5 MB of cache, to the quad-core Ryzen 3 7320U and Ryzen 5 7520U. Both the Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 SKUs feature multi-threading, bringing them up to eight threads. The only difference between the two top-end 7020 series CPUs is the clock speed: While the Ryzen 3 runs at a base frequency of 2.4 GHz and a boost clock of 4.1 GHz, the Ryzen 5 clocks in at 2.8 GHz base with a 4.3 GHz boost clock. 

All of the AMD 7020 CPUs feature Radeon 610M graphics, which is an RDNA 2-based integrated graphics solution with two compute units that operate at up to 1900 MHz. None of the CPUs in the AMD Ryzen 7020 CPUs offer overclocking support, and they all operate at a claimed TDP of 15 W, which makes them a good fit for budget thin-and-light devices. Acer is a manufacturer of such budget laptops, serving as somewhat of a treasure trove for anyone looking for sleek designs and dependable performance at a reasonable price — and the company looks to be repeating that trend with its refreshed Aspire 3 laptop.

Acer's refreshed Aspire 3 (A315-24P) aims to meet the needs of people doing day-to-day computing, while maintaining long battery life and fulfilling the needs of budget-conscious consumers. Acer claims the newest Acer Aspire 3 has up to 11 hours of battery life and delivers ample performance for everyday tasks. 

The Aspire 3 is available with up to an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U processor, up to 8 GB of shared LPDDR5 RAM — which means no RAM upgrades, unfortunately — and up to 512 GB of PCIe storage. Nothing earth-shattering, but certainly more than acceptable for anyone doing mild spread-sheet wrangling, handling the occasional Zoom call, or watching an odd movie. The devices are thin and light, coming in at only 0.74 inches, and will feature 15.6-inch, 1080p IPS displays — with some SKUs offering touchscreen capability. These devices should strike a good balance between size and usability. 

The Aspire 3 features an HDMI 2.1 port, two USB Type-A ports, and one 10 Gbps Type-C port that supports DisplayPort over USB-C and charging. Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax also make it to the party, while Acer's nifty AI-powered Purified Voice and Temporal Noise Reduction software help improve webcam performance. Acer also improved the cooling performance by increasing fan surface area by 78%, which should help reduce noise levels and improve performance. The new Acer Aspire 3 laptops are available in select retailers in the U.S. and Canada, with a recommended retail price of $399.99.