This is pretty much a cut and paste from my review of the Acer V5-473p-6459 which I bought for my son - I kept the 5602 for myself. The 6459 and 5602 are exactly the same laptop except that the 5602 has a1920x1080 IPS screen. I added 4GB of ram and an msata card to both laptops without any problems. The IPS screen on the 5602 is excellent.
Outstanding laptop under 650 bones once a 128GB msata card and another 4GB of ram are added (Microsoft has a good deal on this laptop).
Pros: I was looking for a 13.3-14 inch laptop, less than 4 lbs, touchscreen, at least an i5, sata drive, 8 GB ram, overall above average functionality for less than $700 and this laptop fit the bill (weighs in at just over 4 lbs). The build quality is quite excellent, and the fans are barely noticeable. Battery life has been better than 6 hours with moderate to heavy use. The touchscreen is responsive, and I have had no issues with it. The sound quality is also excellent for a laptop (although that ain't saying much). The backlit keyboard is a nice bonus. I was surprised at the small amount of bloatware loaded on the computer - I was expecting more.
I like having the 500GB hard drive for data storage - typical speed for a 5400 rpm hard drive. The i5 and the intel graphics will not wow any gamers. The bios is very vanilla. To add the msata card, extra ram, or to remove the battery requires the user to remove the entire back of the laptop - not a big deal, just be careful not to lose any of the dozen+ little screws. I was a Windows 8 skeptic, but since I have been using it a lot the last few months, it actually isn't bad. I still like Win 7 better, but 8.1 is certainly not Vista, and the touchscreen is probably more functional and useful with 8.1. I have not had any driver issues with 8.1.
As far as negatives, I had to play around with the touch pad settings to get it close to the way I like - and it still is little bothersome. The range of the wireless card is slightly below average under AC power and under battery power the default balanced setting reduces the range to below average. I changed the balanced setting under battery power for the wireless card to max performance which increased the range comparable to when under AC power.
All-in-all, this laptop has superior value with performance levels and quality well above much more expensive laptops.
EDIT: 3 Oct 2015. Bought another one of these and still loving it. The keyboard went bad on my son's 6459 (still under warranty). Acer did not have any backlit keyboards, so they replaced the entire laptop with the 5602 model. Now we have three of these bad boys. All have been updated to Windows 10 with no problems. By the way, I like Win 10 much more than 8 other than the auto updates and info being sent to MS.
Conserves energy compared to similar products.
As certified by
EPEAT
EPEAT certifies electronic products based on sustainability impacts across their lifecycle including requirements for energy efficiency and end of life management. An EPEAT registered product can also meet optional more ambitious criteria including reduction of fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-GHGs). Products meeting 50% - 74% optional criteria are "Silver" and those meeting 75% or more are “Gold".
Certification Level
SILVER
