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Last year’s Snapdragon X-powered Acer Aspire 16 AI is the best entry-level Windows laptop I’ve tested. If you’re looking for an affordable, well-specced computer with a fantastic battery life and a big, smooth display — and you need something peppier than a Chromebook — this one is tough to beat. Plus, it’s quite portable for its size.
Note: The 2026 Acer Aspire 16 will be configurable with new Intel Core Ultra Series 3 and AMD Ryzen AI 400 Series processors. It will be available in Q2, but we don’t know its pricing yet.
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Out of all the laptops on this list, I think this one punches the most above its price point. Truth be told, it almost feels slightly underpriced for all that it brings to the table.
Internals-wise, it comes with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage — double that of the base MacBook Air — and a competent Snapdragon X chip. In Geekbench 6’s CPU benchmark, our main performance test, that processor earned a multi-core score of 9,802. (That tells us how well it can handle multitasking and more intensive apps. The higher the score, the better.) Out of all the laptops we’ve tried that cost less than $900, that’s the highest score we’ve seen. Notably, that makes it significantly speedier than two of the snazziest Chromebooks on the market, which cost about the same: the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 (7,680) and the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 (7,187).
As an aside, I want to point out that the Snapdragon X chip is an ARM-based CPU. Without getting too in the weeds, that means it’s not compatible with certain specialty apps. (This is also something that afflicts the Zenbook A14, below.) This is mainly a problem if you need a budget laptop for college coursework or light gaming, but since the Aspire 16 AI is more geared toward general everyday use, I consider it a non-issue here.
The bigger takeaway is that the Snapdragon X chip doesn’t guzzle too much juice. In our video rundown test, the Aspire 16 AI lasted 17 hours and 22 minutes before dying. Our current median battery life for Windows laptops is 14 hours, so it’s an overachiever. This tracks for most laptops with Qualcomm’s first-gen Snapdragon chips.
I think most buyers will appreciate the Aspire 16 AI’s display, which has an anti-glare finish, touchscreen capabilities, and a variable 120Hz refresh rate. It could still be brighter and crisper, but those specs are decidedly decent for $700. (The M4 MacBook Airs still have a mediocre 60Hz refresh rate.)
This is a 16-inch laptop, so you get a good amount of screen real estate, but not at the cost of extra heft. At 3.42 pounds, the Aspire 16 AI is pretty darn light for its size and not too heavy to haul around. Apple’s current 16-inch MacBook Pro weighs 4.7 pounds, for reference.
The Aspire 16 AI’s “budgetness” is most apparent in its gnarly speakers and middling webcam. (I thought its picture looked crisp, but it dulls and flattens its subject in a way that almost makes it seem posterized.) Its hinge is also a little wiggly.
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