It’s not every day you find a massive 17.3-inch laptop on the pre-owned market for £300. It sounds like an absolute bargain. On paper, the ACEMAGIC AX17 Pro promises a full desktop-replacement canvas, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of fast NVMe storage on a shoestring budget.
Put it through real daily use, however, and the aggressive cost-cutting becomes glaringly obvious. When compared against used ex-business ThinkPads and ZBooks in the same price tier—or tested against modern budget bangers in real-world workloads—the AX17 Pro exposes significant compromises.
Hhow does the AX17 stack up?
| Category | Score | Summary Verdict |
| Display & Canvas | 6.0 / 10 | Massive 17.3-inch workspace, but non-touch, low max brightness (~220 nits), and washed-out colors. |
| Performance | 5.5 / 10 | 16 GB RAM prevents app crashes, but budget silicon chokes under background Windows tasks. |
| Build & Keyboard | 4.5 / 10 | Creaky all-plastic construction, noticeable lid flex, and no keyboard backlight. |
| Ports & Power | 5.0 / 10 | Decent USB-A/HDMI array, but ruined by barrel-only charging, no Ethernet, and combo audio. |
| Audio & Wireless | 4.0 / 10 | Tinny, bass-free speakers and weak Wi-Fi range/throughput. |
| Value (at £300) | 4.5 / 10 | Outclassed by refurbished enterprise machines (ThinkPads, Latitudes) in the same price tier. |
| OVERALL SCORE | 4.9 / 10 | Below Average (Niche Buy Only) |
The Pros
- Gigantic 17.3-Inch Display: The standout draw of the AX17 Pro is its sheer panel size. A 17.3-inch 1080p display gives you genuine room for side-by-side document editing, wide spreadsheets, and comfortable media playback without needing an external monitor.
- 16 GB RAM as Standard: While many sub-£400 laptops limit you to a restrictive 4 GB or 8 GB, the AX17 Pro packs 16 GB of DDR4 memory, providing decent breathing room for heavy browser sessions and background multitasking without immediate out-of-memory crashes.
- Decent Selection of Ports: It provides three USB-A ports, a full-sized HDMI output, and a micro-SD card reader, eliminating the immediate need for USB-C dongles when plugging in basic flash drives or external monitors.
The Cons
- No Touchscreen & Subpar Display Quality: On the contrary of the obtuse retail listings, this is a standard non-touch panel. The display has muted colour space coverage (~65% sRGB) and a dim backlight. It hankers back to the days of crappy Toshiba laptops from 2005. It’s even finished in silver and has status lights on the keyboard deck.
- Cheap, Plasticky Build & No Keyboard Backlight: The chassis is built entirely from hollow, creaky plastic with noticeable flex on the keyboard deck and lid. The mushy keyboard completely lacks backlighting, making typing in dim rooms a constant frustration.
- Sluggish Windows Responsiveness: Under Windows 11, the entry-level silicon frequently experiences micro-stutters, delayed context menus, and sluggish file indexing when background tasks or system updates kick in.
- Tinny Audio & Weak Wi-Fi: The bottom-firing speakers lack any low-end bass and distort heavily at higher volumes. Furthermore, the budget Wi-Fi card struggles with signal range and sustained throughput compared to higher-end Intel networking chips.
- Frustrating Port & Power Flaws:
- No USB-C Charging: While it features a USB-C port, it is strictly data-only. You cannot charge via standard 65W USB-C Power Delivery bricks and must carry the proprietary barrel-jack adapter.
- No Dedicated RJ45 Ethernet: Despite a massive 17-inch chassis with plenty of room, there is no built-in Ethernet port.
- Single Combo Audio Jack: It lacks split 3.5 mm headphone/mic jacks, requiring a Y-adapter if you use dual-plug desktop headsets.
Acemagic vs Hp: Legacy holds its spot against poor showing from newcomer
The budget tier is largely split between older Zen 2 silicon like the AMD Ryzen 3 4300U and newer 8-core efficiency chips like the Intel Core i3-N305. For context, the only two laptops I had to compare were the acemagic AX17 Pro and an HP Chromebook Plus, which has the aforementioned i3.
| Specification / Metric | AMD Ryzen 3 4300U | Intel Core i3-N305 |
| Cores / Threads | 4 Cores / 4 Threads (Zen 2) | 8 Cores / 8 Threads (Gracemont E-Cores) |
| Clock Speeds | 2.7 GHz Base – 3.7 GHz Boost | 1.8 GHz Base – 3.8 GHz Boost |
| Memory Bus | Dual-Channel DDR4-3200 | Single-Channel Bus Only |
| Graphics Engine | Radeon RX Vega 5 (5 CUs) | Intel UHD Graphics (32 EUs) |
| Media Engine | H.264 / HEVC / VP9 | Full AV1 Hardware Decode + Quick Sync |
| Compute Strengths | Higher burst single-core & bandwidth | ~30% higher multi-threaded raw compute |
While the i3-N305 leads in heavily threaded CPU benchmarks and 4K AV1 video playback efficiency, Intel’s platform hard-locks the memory to a single-channel memory bus. The Ryzen 3 4300U’s dual-channel memory interface provides double the bandwidth, which significantly cuts down on system stutters and dramatically boosts 3D gaming throughput.
But to be honest, I don’t really care about benchmarks; I care about real-world use.
The Verdict
The ACEMAGIC AX17 Pro fits only one narrow use case: a buyer whose absolute top priority is getting a 17.3-inch display and 16 GB of RAM in a single portable package under £400. There aren’t many big laptops even under £1,000. If you don’t want this, but still want a modern laptop above 15″, your only other choice, more often than not, is an overkill gaming laptop.
For virtually everyone else, spending that same budget on a refurbished enterprise workhorse (like a ThinkPad T14 or Dell Latitude 5500-series) delivers vastly superior build quality, faster processors, back-lit typing, better battery endurance, and universal USB-C charging.
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