This Acer Aspire E 15, 15.6" Full HD, 8th Gen Intel Core i3-8130U, 6GB RAM Memory, 1TB HDD, 8X DVD, E5-576-392H was purchased for my wife to use. She doesn’t do video games or anything in any way computationally intensive. At the time of purchase (April 2019), the price was $329. I read a lot of the reviews and appreciated all the helpful information. People were recommending installing a solid state drive (SSD) to reduce boot time and increasing the memory (RAM) size to allow the computer to operate faster. I decided in advance of ordering this computer to do both of those things. I hope this review will be useful and maybe address some of the difficulties reported by others.
After receiving the computer and going through Windows setup, everything seemed to be working ok. It was extremely difficult to insert USB devices into the ports the first time. It took so much force, I was afraid something would break. That improved with continued use. I bought some USB flash memory sticks and created a Windows 10 Recovery USB drive. (SanDisk Cruzer CZ36 32GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive, Frustration-Free Packaging- SDCZ36-032G-AFFP for $6.99 each).
Some reviewers said they were not able to get into the BIOS, but I had no problem getting into BIOS by tapping the F2 key during boot-up. At least one reviewer said wifi performance was poor and replaced the wifi card. I did not have that problem, wifi reception was excellent, never dropped out, was ok waking from sleep. I had no wifi problems at all.
On the Acer website, I selected Support then chose Drivers and Manuals from that dropdown menu. I entered model E5-576-392H but that didn’t work. I found the SNID number on the label on the bottom of the computer and entered that, which took me to a list of the things available to download. I downloaded the User Manual PDF files. I did not download and install any device drivers or BIOS revision. One reviewer cautioned against installing the BIOS revision, so that made me cautious. On the web I found and downloaded a free DVD player program (VLC) and played part of a movie DVD to verify DVD operation. I downloaded Adobe Reader, PrimoPDF, and some other utility programs that I like. I signed my wife up for Microsoft Office 365 personal and downloaded those programs. (I have been a ribbon hater, but decided to finally master that and quit complaining…ordered latest copies of Word and Exel Bible – used from Amazon.)
After a few days of operating and testing, a memory upgrade was ordered. This computer came with one 2GB and one 4GB memory sticks as other reviewers have described. Some just bought a single 4 GB for a very low price to replace the 2 GB, but I decided to buy a 16 GB kit (two 8GB) of a brand I was familiar with for $87.98 (Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3/DDR3L 1600 MT/S (PC3-12800) Unbuffered SODIMM 204-Pin Memory - CT2KIT102464BF160B). That was easy to install and operated ok. There was a YouTube video of how to do the install.
After I installed the memory upgrade but before I ordered the SSD, I wanted to run a free memory test program (MemTest86). That required making a USB flash memory drive with the MemTest86 program on it and booting from it. I could see the USB drive in the BIOS and move it to the top of the boot order, but I could not get the computer to actually boot from it. And when I went back into the BIOS, it showed the boot order change had not been preserved. This not being able to successfully change the boot order was a worry. More about that, and how it turned out, later.
Reviewers were saying conflicting things about installing an SSD. Some reviewers replaced the HDD with an equivalent SATA SSD. Some reviewers said that a new M.2 type SSD could not coexist with the HDD that came installed in the computer. One reviewer claimed to have confirmed this with Acer tech support!! I found a YouTube video that seemed to contradict that and at least one reviewer said they had both drives operating simultaneously. I wanted to install an M.2 style SSD, which I had no previous experience with, and hoped I could use it for boot drive C and keep the 1TB mechanical drive as drive E for additional storage (the DVD drive is drive D). At that point in time, I didn’t know if that plan would work out or not.
From the reviews and Wikipedia, it seemed there are at least two types of M.2 style SSDs, one type with a SATA interface, the other type with an NVMe interface which is faster and also more expensive. One reviewer said, yes the NVMe interface is faster, but you will never see the difference unless you are doing something very heavy duty computationally. That had the ring of truth to it, so I bought Crucial MX500 500GB 3D NAND SATA M.2 Type 2280SS Internal SSD - CT500MX500SSD4 for $66.99. The connecter end of this M.2 SSD circuit board had two little cutouts, with a few connectors on left and right, and a wide section in the middle. The socket in the computer had only one interference nib. Temporary major panic quandary, which side of the M.2 SSD should be up!! Then I realized the small sections on each side of the SSD were not the exact same width, so it would actually insert only one way. Whew. When I powered up the computer, the new drive did not show up in the BIOS, but I clicked on the Windows button and in the pop-up menu I scrolled down to Windows Administrative Tools, selected Computer Management, then selected Disk Management and it was there as uninitialized disk 2. I didn’t do anything more at this point.
The YoutTube video I found for my exact computer (title “How to clone Acer Aspire E5 576 392H HDD to SSD make boot drive without reinstalling Windows 10”) used a program EaseUS Todo. Unfortunately, the free version of that program did not have the cloning feature. I would have to buy the program to get that feature. I found another YouTube video for a Dell laptop (title “How to Clone Windows from a Hard Disk to an M.2 SSD (and Keep It Bootable)”). It was beautifully made and used a slick free program Macrium Reflect, and when it was done it booted from the new SSD and the HDD had a different drive letter. In the container with my Crucial M.2 SSD was a little paper that said go to the Crucial website/clone and get a download there. That was Acronis TrueImage which is a program I am familiar with and has been around for years.
I installed Acronis and followed the prompts using automatic mode. When it finished, there was no second drive showing in File Explorer. Repeating the steps above to get back to the Disk Management window, the SSD was there and formatted. but had not been assigned a drive letter. I thought about doing something there, but did not. I decided to shut down the computer and take out the HDD, then reboot to see if it would boot off the M.2 SSD.
After removing the bottom cover, it was not obvious to me how to remove the HDD. I found another YouTube video title “Acer Install a Hard Drive and Do a Fresh Install of Windows 10” that showed I could just slide the HDD out, which I did. Then when I booted into the BIOS, the Information page showed no HDD0, and the SSD showed as HDD1. On the Boot page, Windows Boot Manager was showing the model number for the HDD1.
The boot time into Windows was much faster. All the programs were there and worked, so the clone was successful. In Windows Disk Management, the new SSD showed as drive C.
The question was, when the 1TB HDD was put back into the computer, how to achieve the computer seeing the new SSD as boot drive C and the old HDD as drive E? What determined which drive it would boot from, was it the BIOS? I put the old HDD back in. When I powered up the computer, I was slow to hit F2, so I missed getting into the BIOS. However, Windows booted fast to my surprise. I got into Disk Management, and lo and behold there was the new 500GB SSD as drive C and the old 1TB HDD as drive E. I didn’t have to do a darn thing. Windows and the BIOS figured it out by themselves. Windows File Explorer showed both drives. I powered down and back up a few times, always with the same good result. So I don’t know why some reviewers had a problem with having both drives in.
Very happy with this purchase.
| Standing screen display size | 15.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 Pixels |
| Processor | 2.2 GHz core_i3 |
| RAM | 6 GB DDR3 |
| Memory Speed | 3.2 GHz |
| Hard Drive | 1000 GB HDD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel HD Graphics 620 |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 2 GB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 13.5 Hours |
