Ended up getting the Acer. It's a great laptop for what it is: good horsepower and options crammed in a $500 laptop. Sacrifices had to be made.
It's no modern thin and light. Think late 00' standard clamshell with a 15". A little lighter and a battery you can actually count on. And by count on i mean i've been using it on battery daily for 8+ hours with more left in the tank. Browsing, Excel and Word, VLC, some light Fusion360, and my work software. This thing is faster and more responsive then you;d think for a $500 laptop thanks to an 8th gen Core i5, 8GB of RAM, and an m.2 SSD. Underneath is an upgrade bay that's simple and accessible. An empty RAM slot, m.2 SSD right next to it, and an open SSD bay.
Geforce MX150 graphics card! Okay maybe it won't run Cyberpunk2077. Fine. Civ6 and PoE? Sure.
Full backlit keyboard with numberpad that's pretty comfortable to type on. Touchpad is accurate and responsive. Did i say numberpad? 2 USB-3, 1 USB-2, 1 USB-C, HDMI, VGA (for those old projectors some people refuse to give up), SD card, and a DVD burner (remember those?). Bluetooth is a nice touch for a laptop this cheap as well, have my mouse paired because fuck using a touchpad if i don't have to.
Sacrifices had to be made:
-Plastic is thin and bendy in spots. Doesn't feel cheap just...thin
-screen is a bit dim. It's very livable and maybe i'm just blinded by my 27" 144hz IPS at home.
-256gb main disk. Workable if you don't need to store much. m.2 though! and an empty SSD bay waiting for that terrabyte drive!
-big....when compared to today's laptops with narrow keys, no numberpad, no bezels.....
I like it.