TLDR: The Acer Aspire 3 "A315-24P" is an office laptop that lacks performance, or upgradeability, but has excellent battery life, and has a useful multi-function USB-C.The longer versionExteriorThis Aspire 3's exterior shell is made almost entirely out of plastic. All panels, except the screen bezel are done in a bright silver finish.The chassis rigidity felt flimsy, although it's no surprise considering it is almost entirely made out of plastic. The rigidity feels good enough at the hinges, so I don't think cracking at the hinges would be a problem in the short term.ConnectivityOn the left side, you get 1x USB-C (10Gbps) port with PD and alt mode DP++, 1x USB-A (5Gbps) port, 1x HDMI 2.0 out, and the power jack. On the right side, you get 1x USB-A (5Gbps) port, and a 3.5mm audio out.For wireless, we get WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2The only thing that I feel is missing is an SD card reader, but I also don't think it is a huge loss.The USB-C (10Gbps) port on this laptop is very useful, as it can also do Power Delivery (PD) starting at 30W, and going all the way up to 65W. It can also do alt-mode DisplayPort out. This means that you can hook this laptop up to a monitor with the same USB-C features, and get video out and power in through a single USB-C data cable. It also means you can charge this laptop off of a 30W USB-C charger, reducing the amount of power bricks you need to carry around.PerformanceThis laptop uses a Ryzen 3 7320U quad core CPU. Although the number would make you think it is a "Ryzen 7000 mobile" series, in actuality it is a Zen2 architecture, and closer in performance to "Ryzen 4000 mobile from 2019/2020". And it is the lowest end Ryzen 3.One major difference from Ryzen 4000 mobile, is that the 7320U does feature newer LPDDR5 RAM.The overall performance out of this laptop is rather disappointing. It does feature 4 cores, 8 threads, and faster LPDDR5 Ram, but it doesn't feel snappy. That's not to say it is sluggish, but it does feel a little under-powered running Windows11.The gaming benchmark results were also underwhelming. You might think that having Radeon graphics would allow this laptop to handle light gaming, but the GPU performed worse than the "average" office laptop. I tried this using the latest available AMD Ryzen drivers, so this really seems to be a hardware limitation, rather than software.The 128GB SSD included on this laptop felt like it was very budget with regards to speed. I took some benchmarks of it, but the results weren't pretty.Sequential Read: 904MB/s, Write: 836MB/sRandom Read: 269MB/s, Write: 193MB/sMaybe if the SSD was replaced with something that had significantly better random read/write, the overall performance of the laptop can be improved?Power, BatteryThe laptop comes with a 45W power brick, and the laptop has a 41.76Whr battery.This laptop can also run off of a USB-C PD charger that can output at least 30W. The laptop does not seem to use more than 65W power over PD.The 41.76Whr battery seems to be a good match for the CPU choice, as the battery can keep the laptop running for quite a long time.As a test, I ran a 1080p video stream on edge using WiFi, with maximum screen brightness, and 100% battery charge. The laptop ran for 6hrs, before shutting down from loss of power. I think that is a pretty good result.Thermals, and NoiseI am not sure if the heatsink is undersized, or if the fan has a cheap bearing in it, but this laptop gets quite loud under heavy load. The fan produces a high pitched whining sound at max load, and it's quite annoying.Thankfully, this only happens while gaming, and this laptop cannot even handle light games, so the annoying fan noise only happens very rarely.ScreenThe screen felt better than what I had normally come to expect on these lower end laptops.For screen brightness, my best guess is 250nits at maximum brightness. I have a 220nit and 300nit screen, and the screen on this Acer felt like it was in between. 250nits is typical for office laptops, and meant to be used indoors.I don't have a way to measure Color Gamut, or Contrast Ratio, but they felt good enough that I was unable to notice any glaring problems with them.The panel did not exhibit any issues with "IPS glow", or any other defects.For Blur (Ghosting), it felt minimal enough that I did not notice anything while watching videos.Speakers, Camera, and MicThese all felt like they were "good enough". I would say that these were all at the bare minimum of expected performance, and if you wanted better quality, well that's what the USB ports and 3.5mm audio jack are for.The Camera does not have an internal privacy shutter, but acer provides a clip on cover.Keyboard and TrackpadThe keyboard felt okay. It's an average keyboard laptop. It had decent tactile feedback, and I had no issues with the keyboard not registering key strokes, even when the key was pressed on its corner.The keyboard has no backlight whatsoever, but it does feature a handy numpad.The trackpad is nice and large, and it's what I would expect from a 2023 laptop. It does seem to be made out of glass, as it is a very smooth, especially once it is lubed up with finger grease. The click on the trackpad gives a nice audible "click" and has a nice tactile feedback.Upgradeability and RepairabilityThe upgradeability of this laptop is very limited. All 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM is soldered on, and there is no expansion slot. Only the SSD can be upgraded.The bottom cover comes off quite easily. It's only held on with a bunch of screws, all of them the same length, and some plastic tabs around the edges that come loose easily.The insides are mostly easy to access. The CPU cooler, Battery, and SSD slot are all very easy to access.The CPU cooler being very easy to clean is an excellent feature, especially if you live in a dusty house hold.Software (Bloatware)This laptop comes loaded with "Win 11 Home in S-mode", which felt like both a blessing and a curse.What is "S-mode", and why would I say that?Succinctly, "S" is for "Security", and this feature locks the user out of installing all apps that are not in the "Microsoft Store". This is a useful feature for light users who don't need anything more than email, web browser, and MS office, so that they don't accidentally install malware. However, for power users, like myself, who want to run some 3rd party benchmarking apps, Win11 will make you go through some extra hoops to unlock this.For instance, this laptop doesn't even come loaded with Acer care center, and whichever free trial antivirus software that is normally included. Except, I wanted to use some of the features in acer care center.S-mode can be unlocked, but it's irreversible for some reason, so only do this if you need to.Concluding remarksI have mixed feelings with this laptop. On the one hand, it features a very useful USB-C DP w/ Alt-mode DP port, excellent battery life, and a decent screen that movies and streams can be enjoyed on. On the other hand, this laptop feels slightly under-powered with what is installed on it, and it lacks any upgradeability path, aside from having a better SSD.I think I would give this laptop an overall rating of 3.5/5. It's a very limited laptop, but not everyone will need more performance than this.