Pros
- Optimal balance of screen size and laptop weight
- Incredible battery life
- Comfortable keyboard and roomy touchpad
- Crisp 1440p webcam
- Excellent external expansion options
Cons
- Design can’t be described as «exciting»
- So-so speakers
On the road to finding your next laptop, settling on a size is one of the first forks you come to, where you must choose between getting a bigger display or prioritizing portability and going with something smaller. With its generous 16-inch screen and sub-3.5-pound weight, the Acer Aspire 16 AI provides a best-of-both-worlds situation. It’s like a cheaper Windows version of Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air, which offers an optimal balance of screen size and system weight for my money. You’ll need to squint a bit to view the Aspire 16 AI as a budget Air, however, because its overall look can’t match the high style of the Air. But at just $700, I wasn’t expecting Apple elegance.
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The Aspire 16 AI’s performance is merely adequate, and the display is more serviceable than stunning, but this budget Acer has the 15-inch Air beat in one important category: battery life. Based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor, the Aspire 16 AI lasted more than 21 hours in battery testing — almost 4.5 hours longer than the long-running 15-inch Air. If you are looking for an affordable and portable productivity machine, the Aspire 16 AI checks a lot of boxes. So many, in fact, that it won itself an Editors’ Choice award.
Acer Aspire 16 AI
| Price as reviewed | $700 |
|---|---|
| Display size/resolution | 16-inch 1920×1200 120Hz IPS LCD |
| CPU | Qualcomm Snapdragon X X1-26-100 |
| Memory | 16GB LPDDR5-8448 |
| Graphics | Qualcomm Adreno X1-45 |
| Storage | 512GB SSD |
| Ports | 2 x USB-C USB4, 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, HDMI 2.1, microSD card slot, combo audio |
| Networking | Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 |
| Operating system | Windows 11 Home |
| Weight | 3.45 lbs (1.56 kg) |
At the time of my review, the Aspire 16 AI is a series of one. The lone model features a Qualcomm Snapdragon X X1-26-100 CPU, 16GB of RAM, integrated Qualcomm Adreno X1-45 graphics and a 512GB SSD. The 16-inch display features a 1,920×1,200-pixel resolution and a variable 120Hz refresh rate. It’s available direct from Acer for $800, but it’s $100 cheaper at Amazon where it’s only $700.
The Acer Aspire 16 AI costs 699 in the UK and AU$1,499 in Australia.
Acer Aspire 16 AI performance
The Snapdragon X X1-126-100 is the entry-level chip in Qualcomm’s lineup of Arm-based laptop processors. It sits one rung below the Snapdragon X Plus series and two rungs below the Snapdragon X Elite series. It has the same 8-core CPU count as the lower-end Snapdragon X Plus processors but runs at a slightly slower clock speed — 3GHz versus 3.2GHz — with no boost frequency. But it has the same neural processing unit capable of 45 trillion operations per second, qualifying it as a Copilot Plus PC.
In testing, the Aspire 16 AI turned in competitive results on our multicore application benchmarks of Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024 but struggled on the single-core version of each test. It also posted a poor result on 3DMark Time Spy for graphics performance, but it must run it through emulation because there isn’t a version that runs natively on Arm, highlighting the potential for Windows-on-Arm compatibility issues. Before purchasing the Aspire 16 AI or another Copilot Plus PC powered by a Snapdragon X series chip, be sure to check that the applications you use are compatible with Arm for the best performance.
The Aspire 16 AI didn’t set the world on fire in lab testing but it’s up against more expensive laptops in the charts below. I found that general Windows use felt zippy, even when I reached that point in the afternoon where I had an embarrassing number of Chrome tabs open. I wouldn’t recommend the Aspire 16 AI for media editing or serious data analytics work, but it has enough performance for general home, office and school tasks.
Perhaps the biggest attraction of a Snapdragon X-powered laptop is the chip’s efficiency. The Aspire 16 AI lasted longer than 21 hours on our YouTube streaming battery drain test. That’s nearly 4.5 hours longer than the 15-inch MacBook Air. Compared to two recent Intel-based laptops, its battery life was more than 2 hours longer than that of the 14-inch Acer Aspire 14 AI and almost nine hours more than that of the Acer Swift 16 AI.
Sleek with some surprises
The Aspire 16 AI comes outfitted in a dull gray chassis, and while it might not turn heads, it’s a step above the usual budget fare. It has aluminum top and bottom panels that add some rigidity to the build, and the plastic keyboard deck is fairly firm, too. And the whole thing is very thin and light for a 16-inch laptop. It’s just 0.6 inches thick and 3.5 pounds. That puts it in MacBook Air territory. The larger Air has a slightly smaller 15.3-inch screen and is a hair thinner at 0.5 inches and a smidge lighter at 3.3 pounds.
Compared to other 16-inch laptops, the Aspire 16 AI is refreshingly light. Take the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5i 16 Gen 9, for example. It weighs 4 pounds, which is more typical for this size of laptop.
The thin design results in shallow travel for the keyboard, but the keys have stable and firm feedback that I really liked. I’m less sold on the very narrow number pad, but I suppose it’ll do in a pinch if you find yourself facing a bit of data entry from time to time.
The touchpad below the keyboard is gigantic. Its generous size makes moving the cursor across the generously proportioned display feel easy and natural. Like the keyboard, it offers a shallow, steady and firm response when pressed. For a budget laptop that’s below the price threshold for a haptic touchpad, the touchpad is excellent.
Even though the Aspire 16 AI isn’t a two-in-one that can convert into laptop mode, it has a touch display, giving you another input option. The display also has another surprise in store, but it’s not the resolution, which is a standard 1,920×1,200-pixel resolution. Given the size of the display, I would have liked to see a 2.5K resolution that would result in sharper text and images. But the Aspire 16 AI is already a great value for what it offers, so I’m willing to accept the 2K panel. Text looks slightly pixelated, but not to the point of being distracting.
The other surprise the display offers is a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz. Most sub-$1,000 laptops provide a basic 60Hz display, and even the pricier MacBook Air has a 60Hz panel. Refreshing 120 times a second results in smoother movement, and the variability means it can lower the rate when a higher rate isn’t needed to help extend battery life.
The display is rated for 350 nits of brightness, which is about as bright as you can rightly expect in a budget laptop when most offer a 250- or 300-nit panel. And it proved to be a bit brighter than its rating. On my tests using a Spyder X Elite colorimeter, it reached a max of 365 nits. The Aspire 16 AI is a rare budget laptop where you won’t have the brightness always set to 100%.
The display also did well on my color accuracy tests. It covered 100% of the sRGB gamut and produced respectable coverage of the larger color spaces with 80% of AdobeRGB and 83% of P3.
Nestled notchless in the narrow bezel above the display is another surprise: a 1440p webcam. Many budget laptops still come with fuzzy 720p webcams, and the best I’ve seen at this price is a 1080p cam, so getting a 1440p webcam here is borderline shocking. It produces a clean, nearly noiseless image with accurate color and proper exposure. The webcam also has an IR sensor to use facial recognition for easy Windows Hello logins. Without a fingerprint reader, the IR cam is the only secure biometric feature on the Aspire 16 AI. But one is really all you need.
I’m still waiting for an AI laptop feature that I can’t live without, but Acer’s PurifiedVoice has been my favorite so far. It uses AI to detect background noise when you’re on a video call to isolate your voice and reduce any chatter in the background. I tested it by playing podcasts and music on a speaker behind me while I made voice recordings. PurifiedVoice did an amazing job reducing the background noise to the point of nearly eliminating it altogether. Really impressive.
Sadly, the speakers are no better than those of a typical budget laptop. They emit muddied sound that offers neither separation between high and mid tones nor any bass response.
Thankfully, there’s a headphone jack among the Aspire 16 AI’s wide port selection. There’s also a pair of speedy USB4 ports and, in another surprise, a microSD card slot. Such a slot is usually found only on higher-end models geared toward content creators.
Is the Acer Aspire 16 AI the best budget laptop?
It’s definitely the best, big-screen budget laptop I’ve tested in recent memory. And given its trim design and light weight, I’m willing to make the argument that it is one of the best budget laptops regardless of size. If your laptop budget doesn’t stretch as far as a MacBook Air (or you prefer Windows to MacOS), then the Aspire 16 AI is a great do-it-all laptop that nearly all can afford.
The review process for laptops, desktops, tablets and other computerlike devices consists of two parts: performance testing under controlled conditions in the CNET Labs and extensive hands-on use by our expert reviewers. This includes evaluating a device’s aesthetics, ergonomics and features. A final review verdict is a combination of objective and subjective judgments.
The list of benchmarking software we use changes over time as the devices we test evolve. The most important core tests we’re currently running on every compatible computer include Primate Labs Geekbench 6, Cinebench R23, PCMark 10 and 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra.
A more detailed description of each benchmark and how we use it can be found on our How We Test Computers page.
