Refurbished Acer Aspire E5-411 14" Laptops £100 (€130) delivered

Atlantic Dawn

Spotted this on HUKD, looks a decent spec laptop for €130, free delivery to Ireland, Acer Aspire E5-411-C5Z7, it has USB 3, HDMI Slot, Up to 7 hour battery life. Comes with 2 GB RAM but is upgradable to 8GB. Not a machine for gaming but a grand job for general use.

Grade A Refurbished Products

Sold in perfect working order & have passed a thorough testing process
These products are in "AS NEW" condition & come complete with all packaging & accessories (unless otherwise stated)
May have some minor cosmetic blemishes
With 1 Year warranty

Features

Windows 8.1 operating system with
14" display
Laptop has a 500GB hard drive
2GB RAM
Intel® Celeron® processor
up to 7hr battery life



http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/refurbished-acer-aspire-e5-411-c5z7-14-laptop-99-99-ebay-luzerntech-2411149

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Looks grand for the basic stuff. For €130, a steal certainly when compared to what some retailers over here (ahem *currys* ahem) charge for Celeron machines.

Kenny Logins

Do I need a €130 laptop?

...and an 8Gb stick of RAM.

...and a 240gb SSD.

Atlantic Dawn

Kenny Logins wrote: »

Do I need a €130 laptop?

...and an 8Gb stick of RAM.

...and a 240gb SSD.

I'm so tempted to buy it but don't actually need it :pac:

Kenny Logins

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

I'm so tempted to buy it but don't actually need it :pac:

Same.

Hendrickp

I owned an Acer laptop a few years ago and had nothing but trouble with it almost from day one. I would avoid this manufacturer like the plague. Terrible products and even worse customer care

Kenny Logins

Hendrickp wrote: »

I owned an Acer laptop a few years ago and had nothing but trouble with it almost from day one. I would avoid this manufacturer like the plague. Terrible products and even worse customer care

I have an Acer projector and when the lamp failed after about 17 months I contacted them with a picture of a "24 month warranty" sticker on the box (after original contact said 12 months). They sent a courier to pick it up and had it back to me within a week.

tuckermax

i have an Acer laptop with 5 years, run a lot of software on it and not a problem

Gadgetman496

Have 2 ACER's here over 6 years and never an issue.

ronanc1000

Has anyone ordered one? Seems great value for the money. Worthy laptop for college work? How easy is it to upgrade the ram?

stdidit

ronanc1000 wrote: »

Has anyone ordered one? Seems great value for the money. Worthy laptop for college work? How easy is it to upgrade the ram?

I just ordered one. Seems like a great deal, thanks OP. I have had an Acer for 5/6 years and its still going strong, had to replace the charger once but that was it.

Ghost Train

Looks like good deal although might be bit slow for most if they want it as their main computer

Processor performance isn't much higher than typical budget tablet netbook and even bumping up memory mightn't mask that

Comparing some of the common low end cpus (atom vs celeron vs i3)
Intel Atom Z3735F @ 1.33GHz Intel Celeron N2840 @ 2.16GHz Intel Core i3-4005U @ 1.70GHz
Price $78.39 BUY NOW! Search Online Search Online
Socket Type UTFCBGA592 FCBGA1170 FCBGA1168
CPU Class Laptop Laptop Laptop
Clockspeed 1.3 GHz 2.2 GHz 1.7 GHz
Turbo Speed Up to 1.8 GHz Up to 2.6 GHz Not Supported
# of Physical Cores 4 2 2 (2 logical cores per physical)
Max TDP 4.4W 7W 15W
First Seen on Chart Q2 2014 Q4 2014 Q1 2014
# of Samples 280 289 612
Single Thread Rating 333 558 963
CPU Mark 905 1052 2463

ronanc1000

Will it improve upon upgrading the ram? So taking out the 2gb for an 8gb stick??
https://www.mrmemory.co.uk/memory-ram-upgrades/acer/aspire-notebook/e5-411

Also, how easy is it to install ram on a laptop?

notharrypotter

ronanc1000 wrote: »

Will it improve upon upgrading the ram? So taking out the 2gb for an 8gb stick??
https://www.mrmemory.co.uk/memory-ram-upgrades/acer/aspire-notebook/e5-411

Also, how easy is it to install ram on a laptop?

Very easy if you know what to do.
Typically unscrew bottom casing of laptop.
push clip holding current ram aside.
replace with new stick.
replace clip.
Screw back cover.
Ten minutes.

Search youtube for video showing how.
on Mobile so cant link.

duridian

I ordered one yesterday.

The Celeron N2840 CPU is a Baytrail-M processor, so essentially it is a member of the Intel Atom family and not very powerful, but it should be good enough for the purpose for which I want it; mainly watching videos and web surfing.

I intend to have a go at bumping the RAM up to 8GB. Info doesn't seem to be too abundant online on this, but the bit I did find said the following:

Memory upgrade procedure:
1- Remove the battery
2- Remove the dummy ODD (1xscrew)
3- Unscrew the lower case ( 17xscrews) - bottom -
4- You'll normally see the dimm connector

(ODD=Optical Disc Drive The laptop has a large piece of plastic filling the place where a DVD drive might go, as this laptop has not got a DVD drive. Don't know yet whether it has the actual connectors for a real DVD drive or not, but it doesn't worry me too much as I don't really want a DVD drive anyway.)

Apparently some of the Acer Aspire laptops with more powerful CPUs have been more difficult than average to replace the RAM because for some unknown reason Acer decided to put the RAM slots on the upper side of the motherboard. This required one to remove the palm rest and disconnect everything on the topside of the motherboard, such as touchpad, keyboard, Wi-fi card etc., just to add RAM.
I am hoping that this is not the case with this laptop, but some online say it is the same kind of chassis. I guess only time will tell, when it arrives.

gustafo

price gone up

£116 now for this laptop

shnaek

ronanc1000 wrote: »

Has anyone ordered one? Seems great value for the money. Worthy laptop for college work? How easy is it to upgrade the ram?

I did too. Got it at 99 yesterday. Cheers, OP

andydurnin

Can you connect these to a TV and run kodi and Android app from bluestacks on this.

duridian

andydurnin wrote: »

Can you connect these to a TV and run kodi and Android app from bluestacks on this.

Yes, the laptop has a HDMI output connector. Kodi should work nicely on this.
I honestly don't know how well it will run Bluestacks, though the info on Intel's website seems to indicate it supports some Intel Virtualization Technology. http://ark.intel.com/m/products/82103/Intel-Celeron-Processor-N2840-1M-Cache-up-to-2_58-GHz#@product/specifications

1sttruth

Hi, can the CPU (Celeron N2840) be upgraded?
So many bad reports online about this product (E5-411) - upgrading RAM & adding a SSD just isn't gonna cut-it.

Update: The N840 is a FCBGA1170 socket type - The CPU is most likely soldered directly to the board.

beauf

Check out the CPU scores for the the CPU and see if your happy with similar rates CPU's in other machines. If you think you need to upgrade it to be usable I'd avoid it. Its fine for like browsing and office work. Thats about it. It wouldn'#t be any quicker then my 9yr old laptop. But it would have, WIFi N, USB 3.0, Windows Licence, decent battery which my old laptop won't.

oneweb

Hendrickp wrote: »

I owned an Acer laptop a few years ago and had nothing but trouble with it almost from day one. I would avoid this manufacturer like the plague. Terrible products and even worse customer care

Similar here, sent mine off for official repair with a faulty usb port/controller. Ham-fisted idiots is how I described the repair people at the time. I was the best part of three months without my laptop, even after numerous infuriating phonecalls. When I eventually got it back and looked at the repair docket, they'd managed to break two other parts, one of which was the dvd drawer, hence some of the delay in getting it back. Swore I'd never buy another and warn anyone else against Acer. They're fine machines when they work, but feck, ya better just hope it never goes wrong! (granted that was years ago so they may have improved since).

Hendrickp

oneweb wrote: »

Similar here, sent mine off for official repair with a faulty usb port/controller. Ham-fisted idiots is how I described the repair people at the time. I was the best part of three months without my laptop, even after numerous infuriating phonecalls. When I eventually got it back and looked at the repair docket, they'd managed to break two other parts, one of which was the dvd drawer, hence some of the delay in getting it back. Swore I'd never buy another and warn anyone else against Acer. They're fine machines when they work, but feck, ya better just hope it never goes wrong! (granted that was years ago so they may have improved since).

Sounds like you had an almost identical issue to mine, except my issue was the speaker. Sent it back 2 times to get "fixed" and when i eventually got it back the whole keyboard area of the laptop had a big bump on it were they obviously battered a new speaker into it. Then i noticed my Blu Ray drive would not work anymore as well as the fact that the speaker still wasnt working properly. Never again.

duridian

^^Ye are frightening me lads.

Still haven't heard anything about my laptop being dispatched yet. Anyone know where they send it from? They seem to have bases all over Europe.

1sttruth

Just won {Pyrrhic victory?} a bid for one of these. £96.00 Ebay.
I'll get 8Gb RAM and a SSD - Will post results here - If there's any particular type of test one would like just list it & I'll do my best to accommodate.

shnaek

duridian wrote: »

^^Ye are frightening me lads.

Still haven't heard anything about my laptop being dispatched yet. Anyone know where they send it from? They seem to have bases all over Europe.

Mine is coming from Poland. Got the dispatch mail today.

duridian

1sttruth wrote: »

Just won {Pyrrhic victory?} a bid for one of these. £96.00 Ebay.
I'll get 8Gb RAM and a SSD - Will post results here - If there's any particular type of test one would like just list it & I'll do my best to accommodate.

Nice price. I'd say these will be usable enough for light usage like web browsing etc. once we have bumped the RAM, and yours especially so if you are gonna put in a SSD as well.
I was initially drawn to this deal because I hope this CPU will allow the battery to last longer than more powerful "Core i" derived processors. Also the fact that it has bluetooth will be handy, as I have become so used to using BT headphones, with my Android devices, that it would feel strange and awkward having to use wired headphones now.

shnaek wrote: »

Mine is coming from Poland. Got the dispatch mail today.

Thanks. Hopefully since I bought on the Friday eBay deal also, I'll hear from them soon.

1sttruth

@ duridian:
Anything at this stage is an improvement on my modified old workhorse D610 lol - Will be doing 6700k build soon, esp. if the £ continues it's course coupled with AddressPal.ie.

Crucial 8GB DDR3-1600 SODIMM part # : CT6082270 €31.99ex. VAT
Crucial BX200 240GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal SSD part # : CT7550333 €57.99ex. VAT

stdidit

For anyone thinking of ordering extra RAM before the laptop arrives or without opening it up, I believe (seen it in a comment on tesco website where they used to sell it) that it has only 1 RAM slot so make sure and get a 1 x 8gb stick (as opposed to 2 x 4gb).

duridian

Well, I got the despatch notice earlier for my laptop. Seems to be in transit via UPS. It's out of Poland and currently somewhere around Langenhagen in Germany. I presume that maybe it will go as far as the Netherlands by land and then come by air to Dublin, but who knows. At least it's getting closer!

stdidit

duridian wrote: »

Well, I got the despatch notice earlier for my laptop. Seems to be in transit via UPS. It's out of Poland and currently somewhere around Langenhagen in Germany. I presume that maybe it will go as far as the Netherlands by land and then come by air to Dublin, but who knows. At least it's getting closer!

Same as that, mine left Langenhagen about half hour ago. Hopefully have it by end of the week

Timmaay

stdidit wrote: »

For anyone thinking of ordering extra RAM before the laptop arrives or without opening it up, I believe (seen it in a comment on tesco website where they used to sell it) that it has only 1 RAM slot so make sure and get a 1 x 8gb stick (as opposed to 2 x 4gb).

Much price difference between 8gb and 4gb, and would the 4gb be much of a drop in performance? I'd be using this for the usual website browsing, and then bit of light enough excel work, with office 2010.

stdidit

Timmaay wrote: »

Much price difference between 8gb and 4gb, and would the 4gb be much of a drop in performance? I'd be using this for the usual website browsing, and then bit of light enough excel work, with office 2010.

Had a quick look on amazon and can get 8gb stick for 27pound and a 4gb stick for 15pound, both before delivery. Obv, id be shopping around a bit more for better prices before I buy but that's a rough idea.

Hard to know how much better 8gb will be compared to 4gb, someone else might know better but I'd recommend trying the laptop, as it is, for a week or 2 and see if you find it fine/okay/slow/terrible before deciding on upgrading.. Thats my plan anyway.

Timmaay

http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RUQZN1H9D55KB/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00K2U3CLW very useful review/guide to setting it up and removing all the crapware etc when ya get it!

fawlty towers

Anyone get one yet?

Any reports good or bad.

Have a Dell inspiron 6400 about 8 years running XP used mainly for browsing. Would this be a suitable upgrade for small enough money

duridian

fawlty towers wrote: »

Anyone get one yet?

Any reports good or bad.

Have a Dell inspiron 6400 about 8 years running XP used mainly for browsing. Would this be a suitable upgrade for small enough money

Haven't received mine yet. Last account of it was leaving Tamworth in UK yesterday during the small hours. St. Patrick's day probably didn't help it get here any faster either.

If you really intend to use it for light use such as browsing, watch a few videos, word processing & that sort of thing then yes, it should suffice. But if you want to do anything more intense, e.g., edit & encode video, Photoshop, CAD, then this Acer would not be too good a choice.

Personally I am aiming to use it as a kind of non-touch "Windows tablet" with a physical keyboard attached and better battery life.
I am guessing your Dell has a Core2 Duo CPU of some sort. The Atom based Celeron in the Acer probably won't even be as strong as that.

cuculainn

So I went with one of these......its for parents so they shouldnt put it under too much pressure! I got 8 gb of ram also for 40 euro...it puts it into a price where its probably just about still a good deal......maybe!

looks like a pain to get the ram in (cant believe you have to dismantle the whole laptop to get at it

anyway its due to arrive tomorrow so I'll post back on what i think of it

i will be upgrading to Windows 10 for a start, but will probably end up putting some light version of linux on it to try to optimize performance

shnaek

Mine is here but I haven't put it to any sort of test yet. I'm still getting rid of bloatware and updating to windows 10 right now. Lovely looking machine though, and not a scratch on it. Looks brand new.

duridian

Got mine earlier. It is absolutely new and spotless. Colour is beautiful.

I've the 8GB of ram in.
It isn't as big a job as we were fearing, but the entire bottom cover has to be unscrewed. RAM, HD etc are easy to work on as they are on the underside of the main board, so not as tricky as those sites I linked earlier in the thread seemed to indicate.

Here are some tips/confirmations from my own experience so far.

There is only one memory slot as expected.

The clip for battery removal is kind of recessed so unless you have long nails you'll probably need a small screwdriver to push it aside.

There are 17 screws holding on the base cover and a single screw holding in the dummy DVD drive. I would recommend you keep track of where each screw came from. I did this simply by sticking each screw to an A4 sheet in a position corresponding to its position on the base. I used blutack, but tape could also do the same. Most of the screws seemed similar, but I want taking any chances. The hinge corners in particular are an area where this is most important, as the two pairs of screws in these corners seemed to go in at different depths.

Remove battery first, and second remove the dummy DVD drive. (Single screw near the branding/manufacturers label.)

Before attempting to take off the base, please be aware that there is a small cable connecting the SD card reader in the base to the main board. So I'd advise to leave the corner containing the reader and headphone socket til last, and separate all the rest first.

Also, there are two little plastic lugs, a few inches to either side of where the battery makes electrical connection. They are just outside the most recessed area which contains the battery contacts. These will need to be released by a small screwdriver or tweezers before you can really begin to remove the base. I recommended that you begin by slightly separating the base from the hinge corner at the "DVD side", work a fingernail or guitar pick a little closer to the nearer of the two lugs and release it.

With the lugs released work around the outer edge, where the seam of the base cover runs, taking care around the ports and connections, and approach the SD reader corner. Gently lift the cover away, leaving the SD reader corner as close as possible so as to avoid straining the cable.

It you prop up the base cover vertically, it is now very easy to change the RAM etc.

Reassembly is straightforward, just make sure you press all around the edges to snap the various fastenings back into place. I'd also recommend not tightening any of the base cover screws completely until you have managed to get all of them threaded in most of the way, as this can give you a little bit of wiggle room.

Hope this will help some more of you who may also be receiving these around now.


Oh and lastly. It has Windows 8.1 with Bing which I think entitles us to a Windows 10 Home upgrade.

Skill Magill

Duridian, is it any use though, after the upgrade of ram? Is it noisy? Are you happy with it? By the way, great post above.

duridian

Skill Magill wrote: »

Duridian, is it any use though, after the upgrade of ram? Is it noisy? Are you happy with it? By the way, great post above.

To be honest don't know yet as I am going to wipe it, and clean install Windows 10, so I haven't really done much with it yet.

It doesn't seem noisy to me. The fan has only whirred up a little, once or twice. No louder than any other notebook/laptop I've encountered, but definitely audible.

I'd add any other info I can when I know more and have more hands on time with it.

1sttruth

Windows Experience Index benchmark 8.1 With 8Gb RAM:

CPU Score: 5
D3D Score: 4.2
Disk Score: 5.9
Graphics Score: 4.4
Memory Score: 5.5

Skill Magill

1sttruth wrote: »

Windows Experience Index benchmark 8.1 With 8Gb RAM:

CPU Score: 5
D3D Score: 4.2
Disk Score: 5.9
Graphics Score: 4.4
Memory Score: 5.5

Do you like it? I can look at stats all day, but I never get a real feel for the machine, for instance I'm running an I 7, on a solid state, with a 1tb storage, which is a quick as fúck,sounds great but the fan is on all the time and has started annoying me

stdidit

Got mine yesterday, looks really nice and tidy and not as much as a scratch or a mark on it.

Found it very slow and sluggish with Windows 8 initially (Im moving down from a higher spec laptop). There was fair bit of bloatware so first thing I did was upgrade to Windows 10 and I have to say its been fine since I did that.

All I want it for is browsing internet/watching the odd film etc so as long as your not doing anything too CPU intensive then I'd recommend it for anyone.

@skillmagill There is a little hum from mine but you have to go quite close to it to hear it so no issue there for me anyway. If you havent done so already, Id highly advise you to open yours up and clean the fan before giving up on it. I've done this on my laptop and my brother's before and it makes a massive difference, especially if its heating up as well as chances are, there is a lot of dust is clogging the fan.

1sttruth

It seems pretty silent but it's hard to tell over fans on other comp.
I haven't done a lot with it only the RAM & I'm updating to W10 at the moment. I've a SSD ready to go also (life's too short for HDDs) after the upgrade.
It would be handy if one could utilise the false disk drive bay for the HDD as a second drive - for another time.
I'll post more detail when I get a chance. If there's any particular type of test you want me to run I'll try my best to accommodate.

readyletsgo

1sttruth wrote: »

It seems pretty silent but it's hard to tell over fans on other comp.
I haven't done a lot with it only the RAM & I'm updating to W10 at the moment. I've a SSD ready to go also (life's too short for HDDs) after the upgrade.
It would be handy if one could utilise the false disk drive bay for the HDD as a second drive - for another time.
I'll post more detail when I get a chance. If there's any particular type of test you want me to run I'll try my best to accommodate.

There is space for second hhd? Good to know!

readyletsgo

Also, do you guys recommend installing the 8gb ram first? And removing the bloatware before upgrading to W10?

They still have one of these laptops for £99 at a different listing if anyone is on the fence

http://m.ebay.ie/itm/Acer-Aspire-E5-411-C5Z7-14-Laptop-2GB-RAM-500GB-HDD-Intel-Celeron-Blue-Grade-C-/401080698648?nav=SEARCH

duridian

readyletsgo wrote: »

Also, do you guys recommend installing the 8gb ram first? And removing the bloatware before upgrading to W10?

Yes, definitely pop in the RAM upgrade before doing anything, other than initially powering on to check the laptop you received is in working order.

Personally, I have now clean installed Windows 10 and most of the software that I use, including the Kaspersky 2016 that I got via a BA on here two days ago, and the laptop is for the most part flying.
It plays HEVC video files at 720p in VLC without any problem so I am delighted with that. Have not tried any 1080p yet.
The only time I encountered a big performance hit was last night. However it turned out that the problem was caused by Windows update which had automatically started downloading and installing things in the background. This pretty much sapped both cores of the CPU and made the laptop nearly unusable until the updating completed. This isn't really a problem with the laptop, but rather what MS has done in Windows 10, as I have seen similar happen to high powered desktops running Windows 10 when it just starts installing things unexpectedly.

Overall I am happy so far with the laptop.

readyletsgo

Cool thanks for that! Now I play the long waiting game......

Timmaay

Fan kicked in on mine the other day when I had it on my lap and trousers probably blocking the vent abit, it's noisy enough to be honest!

cuculainn

So mine arrived today. Currently updating to windows 10. RAM hasn't arrived yet so will have to plod along without it for now.

I'm pretty impressed with it. Perfect condition. Nice design.

Just wondering which of the Acer bloatware can be removed or if any of it is useful?