Acer A515-51 Screen Settings to Improve Appearance?

before purchasing this laptop I was aware the screen wasn't the best and there were limitations to this screen. My specific model is the Acer A515-51-563W. It has a TN screen which I never owned before.

I have been working with this laptop extensively for a week and the screen is bothering me a lot. The colors and text have a washed-out quality that is annoying.

My drivers are up to date, and have ClearType text on and went through the ClearType text tuner. But still, that didn't do the trick.

So my question is are there any tips or custom settings to improve the appearance of the screen?

Accepted answers

AceFan

Too late to return. I got it at Walmart which has a 15-day return policy. Everything else I like about the system especially after upgrading with an M.2 NVME. Now, this thing runs super fast. And starting tomorrow I have to travel a lot and need a laptop.

Beyond the washed out colors my other big problem was reading anything in the File Explorer which was both blurry and light. Yes I know you can change DPI Scaling but that changes everything which I didn't want.

Today I found a solution to the specific font problem in the video below which talked about changing specific font sizes and having a bold option using an app called System Font Size Changer. I installed it, changed the font to bold so now the text in the File Explorer is much easier to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odI8vhrQ0_A

I probably can't do anything about the washed out colors but at least now the text in the File Explorer is easier to read.

All comments

JackE

TN laptop screens have been around a long time and quite common. So maybe you've had them but didn't know it.

Sounds like you need to try adjusting for more contrast and less brightness. Jack E/NJ

AceFan

You are right, I never really checked before if my previous laptops were TN screens. Yet again never had a problem with the screens in the past so never looked into it. Before purchasing this Acer that was the biggest complaint from others was the screen. I understand subliminal influence but after having this laptop for a month my biggest complaint is the screen.

There is just something off about screen where it's washed out and nothing is crisp. I don't have eye problems but the screen strains my eyes.

Sometimes there are different settings that can fix the problem, yet sometimes the fix will make it worse.

JackE

@AceFan Well, if you've tinkered with the settings, calibrated colors etc and are still unhappy, I'd return the system to the vendor ASAP for a refund or exchange for another machine with an IPS screen if possible. Or follow the advice of the solution for related models in this link
https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/490446/#Comment_490446 Jack E/NJ

AceFan

Too late to return. I got it at Walmart which has a 15-day return policy. Everything else I like about the system especially after upgrading with an M.2 NVME. Now, this thing runs super fast. And starting tomorrow I have to travel a lot and need a laptop.

Beyond the washed out colors my other big problem was reading anything in the File Explorer which was both blurry and light. Yes I know you can change DPI Scaling but that changes everything which I didn't want.

Today I found a solution to the specific font problem in the video below which talked about changing specific font sizes and having a bold option using an app called System Font Size Changer. I installed it, changed the font to bold so now the text in the File Explorer is much easier to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odI8vhrQ0_A

I probably can't do anything about the washed out colors but at least now the text in the File Explorer is easier to read.

AceFan

I solved another annoyance today. That is when I'm online using chrome the text was significantly lighter than my Toshiba laptop and hard to read. There is a Chrome Extension called Font Rendering Enhancer that I have found today and have been using it for a few hours. Now everything is much easier to read. Here is a link to this Chrome Extension.

iaj92

AceFan said:

before purchasing this laptop I was aware the screen wasn't the best and there were limitations to this screen. My specific model is the Acer A515-51-563W. It has a TN screen which I never owned before.

I have been working with this laptop extensively for a week and the screen is bothering me a lot. The colors and text have a washed-out quality that is annoying.

My drivers are up to date, and have ClearType text on and went through the ClearType text tuner. But still, that didn't do the trick.

So my question is are there any tips or custom settings to improve the appearance of the screen?

AceFan said:

before purchasing this laptop I was aware the screen wasn't the best and there were limitations to this screen. My specific model is the Acer A515-51-563W. It has a TN screen which I never owned before.

I have been working with this laptop extensively for a week and the screen is bothering me a lot. The colors and text have a washed-out quality that is annoying.

My drivers are up to date, and have ClearType text on and went through the ClearType text tuner. But still, that didn't do the trick.

So my question is are there any tips or custom settings to improve the appearance of the screen?

Late reply but I've been doing a lot of research on the Aspire 5 line and the screen has come up in reviews as being a great budget IPS display to not great at all. I will leave here all that I've found.

- The screen is an LED-lit IPS display. IPS displays shoot white light through coloured pixels to produce an image.
- The Acer Aspire 5 laptops have a "matte" screen meaning the front material is non-glossy and does a poor job at reflecting light.
- It also suffers from poor brightness, especially noticeable in outdoor/sunlit areas.

What I assume is happening is that people will naturally want to max brightness on this poorly lit screen, resulting in more washed out colours as this is effectively increasing the white balance whilst not increasing the contrast. Whenever you increase white light, other colours get washed out unless you adjust lighting levels to match colour saturation where neccessary (you can see this in Adobe Photoshop). My solution was to have the "night light" feature native to win10 always on. This feature increases the amount of red light and effectively gives the screen a richer, if more "rose-tinted" colour gamut.

It's still not great but it's better than nothing. Still looking for more fixes via software to increase colour saturation.

I recently purchased for A515-52g-52kn for $700 CAD which seemed like a good deal. It has the slightly beefed up 2019v chipset with an i5 gen8 4-core and MX 250 dedicated graphics. This ultraslim beast can run 2019 games at low on 720p without skipping a 60fps beat. Going to follow suit and upgrade my 256g SATA SSD to an NVME SSD and upgrade from 8g to 16G of ram as this version has 2 RAM slots.