Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-54) review | Laptop Mag
Our Verdict
The Acer Nitro 5 is a budget gaming laptop that makes strategic concessions to make room for the Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU.
For
- Bonny blackness-and-red design
- Bully VR score
- Wallet-friendly value
- Competition-beating frame rates
- Decent battery life for a gaming laptop
Against
- Awful keyboard
- Cheap build quality
- Dim display
Laptop Mag Verdict
The Acer Nitro 5 is a budget gaming laptop that makes strategic concessions to brand room for the Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU.
Pros
- +
Attractive blackness-and-red design
- +
Groovy VR score
- +
Wallet-friendly value
- +
Competition-chirapsia frame rates
- +
Decent battery life for a gaming laptop
- +
Cons
- -
Atrocious keyboard
- -
Cheap build quality
- -
Dim display
Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-54) specs
Price: $999
CPU: Intel Core i7-9750H
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 256GB SSD
Display: 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080, 144Hz
Bombardment: 7:06
Size: 14.3 x 10 x 1.0 inches
Weight: 4.85 pounds
The Acer Nitro 5, a upkeep gaming laptop under $one,000, is a advisedly curated rig that makes the correct concessions to attract bargain-hunting gamers. Acer wanted to offering consumers a decent graphics carte at a wallet-friendly price, so information technology sacrificed a premium build quality and a bright, colorful display to make room for an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 GPU.
The Nitro v isn't for bougie gamers — I'm talking to you pretentious players who wouldn't touch an all-plastic laptop with a 10-foot pole, fancy folk who believe dim displays are for peasants, and CPU snobs who only use the latest processors. These types would balk at the thought of using this gaming rig. This Acer laptop is for down-to-earth gamers who are willing to take a few trade-offs in favor of a amend discrete graphics card.
If yous plough your nose upwards at lackluster screens, odd keyboard layouts and cheaply congenital gaming rigs, yous may not exist satisfied with the Nitro v. Yet, if you're a sucker for reddish-and-onyx motifs, impressive mid-range GPUs and decent VR functioning at an affordable price, the Nitro 5 is an excellent choice.
Acer Nitro v cost and configuration options
The Acer Nitro v starts at $829.99 and comes with a quad-cadre Intel Core i5-10300H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GPU with 4GB of VRAM, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe SSD and a 15.6-inch, 144Hz display.
My review model costs $999 and comes with the same storage and display, merely swaps out the processor, graphics and memory for a hexa-cadre Intel Cadre i7-9750H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 GPU with 6GB of VRAM, and 16GB of RAM, respectively.
Acer Nitro 5 design
The Acer Nitro v looks like it'southward been ripped from Optimus Prime's robotic build and welded into a badass gaming rig with an eye-catching cherry-and-black motif. A sleeky, but subtle Acer logo sits in the centre of the onyx-coated lid. The lid features ii textures: a smooth, fingerprint-attracting black center flanked by a funky hexagonal-pattern design.
An attractive red hinge with the word "Nitro" connects the display to the deck. Acer adorns the Nitro 5 with reddish-trim accents around the keyboard keys and touchpad. The Nitro 5's chassis is made out of plastic — and it shows. If y'all press downwardly on the lid, you'll notice some flex and a lack of sturdiness. The palm balance is more than solid than the lid, but certainly notwithstanding feels cheap. Ane of the trade-offs you lot'll make with this budget gaming laptop is build quality.
Acer tries to distract you from the display'due south ultra-thick bezels with visually pleasing bevel-border corners, but there'due south no ignoring the Nitro 5's chunky frames. The gigantic chin is the largest bezel, sporting a glossy Acer logo. The Nitro 5 has four condom anxiety on each corner, making room for a large, edge-to-border ventilation grill.
At four.9 pounds and 14.3 ten x x 1 inches, the Acer Nitro 5 is lighter than its iii budget gaming rivals: the Asus ROG Strix G15 (5.iii pounds, 14.two x x.eight 10 1 inches), Dell G5 15 SE (five.5 pounds, 14.4 x 10 x 0.9 inches) and the Lenovo Legion 5 (5.iv pounds, 14.three x x x 0.9 inches).
Acer Nitro 5 ports
The Acer Nitro v has an OK stock of ports.
On the left side, you'll discover a Kensington lock slot, an RJ45 Ethernet port, an HDMI ii.0 port, a USB Type-C port and two USB Type-A ports. On the right side, you'll discover a headset jack and some other USB Blazon-A port.
The Nitro 5 does not accept Thunderbolt three support, a microSD card slot nor a mini DisplayPort. If you need more ports, nosotros recommend checking out our best laptop docking stations and best USB Blazon-C hubs pages.
Acer Nitro five display
The Nitro's 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080-pixel display looked surprisingly sharp and detailed as I watched The Mauritanian trailer on YouTube. I could spot every contraction and pore on Benedict Cumberbatch's face up. I could brand out the beautiful, tiny freckles that populate Shailene Woodley's cheeks. Notwithstanding, Jodie Foster'south hitting blueish eyes and scarlet lips could have been bolder and more than vivid on the Nitro 5's brandish. Still, the Acer laptop offers a satisfactory visual experience.
I played Hitman two, navigating through a Colombian jungle to take down a drug dare. I loved how the brandish accurately showed Agent 47'due south transition from the muggy wilderness — cloudy with a misty haze — to a less humid environment with muddy streets and run-down brick homes. Of form, being that the Nitro 5 is equipped with a 1080p screen, it won't win any awards, but I was pleased with the game's visuals on Nitro 5's IPS display.
I hope you don't sit near a bright window — Nitro five is pretty darn dim. The Acer laptop'due south brandish emanates only 245 nits of brightness, which is dimmer than the average budget gaming laptop (271 nits). The ROG Strix G15 (251 nits), G5 fifteen SE (301 nits) and Legion 5 (287 nits) are all brighter than the Nitro v, but not by much.
The Nitro 5 also covers 45% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is 8 percentage points less than the 53% category average. The ROG Strix G15 covers 1% more than of the DCI-P3 color infinite than the Nitro 5 (46%). The G5 15 SE takes the crown equally having the most colorful display (77%). The Legion 5 fares the worst with an embarrassing color-coverage score of 40%.
With a Delta-Eastward score of 0.33, the Nitro five is less color authentic than the 0.iii score of the average upkeep laptop (the closer the score is to naught, the better). The Nitro 5 is also less color accurate than the G5 15 SE and Legion 5, which share a Delta-Eastward score of 0.26, but the Acer gaming rig defeated the ROG Strix G15's score by a hair (0.34).
Acer Nitro 5 keyboard and touchpad
Meh! I'm non a large fan of the Nitro v'south less-than-impressive keyboard. Simply absolutely, it has some positive aspects, and so permit'due south start there. The frequently-used keys in PC gaming (i.e. the W, A, South, D and arrow keys) are outlined with a thick red trim to help them stand out on the keyboard. There is one boosted fundamental outlined in red: a dedicated "N" fundamental, located within the elevation-left corner of the full-sized numpad, to quick-launch the NitroSense app for fan control.
The keyboard's island-style, red-and-blackness colour scheme panders to my personal tastes — I take a weakness for crimson-and-onyx motifs. I even beloved the red backlighting, which has 4 brightness tiers. Unfortunately, if you're non a fan of red-backlit keys, you'll be disappointed to know that the Nitro 5 doesn't feature customizable RGB-primal lighting, so yous're stuck with red. You tin can always plow off the red backlight, simply the nighttime-red symbols superimposed on black keys are a tad difficult to see.
While I honey how the keyboard looks, I cannot stand how it feels. I hated typing on this laptop so much, I angrily gave upwards on it while typing this review in Google Docs. I scored 84 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, which is a slight regression from my typical 85-wpm typing speed. One of the Nitro five'due south biggest offenses is its shortened Shift fundamental — an result I addressed in 2020 laptop trends that must die. Capitalizing messages is a hurting in the rear; instead of landing on the Shift primal, I oft ended upwardly on the up-arrow key, which sent the blinking text cursor flight to another paragraph. Another gripe I have with the Nitro 5 keyboard is its poorly placed power button — I am not a fan of ability buttons integrated into the keyboard, sorry.
The Nitro 5's 4.2 x 3.ane-inch touchpad is fine, offer a satisfactory clicking feel. It's also responsive to Windows ten gestures, like two-finger scrolling and iii-finger tabbing. All the same, when I don't have a gaming mouse handy, I adopt touchpads with dedicated left-and-right buttons. While playing Dishonored ii, I found myself landing on the wrong side of the touchpad, causing me to accidentally burn my pistol and warning nearby enemies of my presence. I had to run for my life — so much for stealth gameplay.
Acer Nitro five audio
The dual speakers, tuned by Waves MaxxAudio, are on the left and right corners of the bottom chassis. I played Mariah Carey'due south "All I Want for Christmas" on Spotify and wished the sound was slightly louder — the Christmas classic didn't make full my large testing room.
The vacation jingle sounded a bit flat and congested as it emanated from the oddly placed, bottom-firing speakers. There is a Waves Maxx Audio app to tweak the audio to your liking. In that location are several presets, including Gaming Full general, Gaming FPS, Gaming Sports, Movies, Music and Vocalisation. I played effectually with all six profiles — none of the presets enhanced the audio, but the Gaming Sports profile sounded the worst, adding too much grit and rasp to the smooth-sounding holiday jam.
While playing Dishonored two on the Nitro 5, I preferred the Gaming General preset, which provided well-balanced audio for both the characters' voices and the background music. Dishonored ii is one of those games where you'll need to rely on audio to detect whether an enemy is nearby, and of course, being that the Nitro 5 is a upkeep gaming laptop, information technology won't offer a surround-sound experience. Overall, the speakers are simply OK.
Acer Nitro 5 gaming, graphics and VR
The Nitro 5's graphics are powered by an Nvidia GeForce GTX 2060 GPU and 6GB of VRAM, which is a great graphical engine for a budget gaming laptop.
Cranking up the graphics settings to Ultra, I crept through a cute, abased mansion in a fantasized English metropolis in Dishonored 2. I loved that I could make out the different textures in the mansion, from a wooden ceiling fan to the off-white marble floors. I could also spot some nifty ray-tracing details, including a soft, realistic glow from a leather chair located about a lite source and a brilliant glare from a painting placed within a drinking glass frame.
On the Shadow of the Tomb Raider criterion (Highest, 1080p), the Nitro 5 hovered effectually 52 frames per second, which outpaced the budget gaming laptop average (36 fps). The ROG Strix G15, powered by an Nvidia GeForce RTX 1650 Ti GPU, savage short against the Nitro 5 (forty fps). The G5 xv SE, armed with an AMD Radeon RX 5600M GPU, also fell curt of the Acer gaming rig (45 fps). The Nitro 5 finally met its match with the Legion v. Powered by a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, the Lenovo laptop offered the same score as the Acer laptop (52 fps).
The Nitro 5 averaged 67 frames per second on the K Theft Auto V benchmark (Very High, 1080p), which crushed the 48-fps category boilerplate. The ROG Strix G15 could only muster 44 fps. The G5 fifteen SE and the Legion 5 too failed to reach the Nitro five's celebrity with just 56 and 64 fps, respectively.
On the Metro Exodus benchmark (Ultra, 1080p), the Nitro 5 climbed to 47 fps, beating the 36-fps category average. The ROG Strix G15 just offered 30 fps. The G5 15 and the Legion v came close to the Nitro 5 with 46 fps and 42 fps, respectively, only the Dell and the Lenovo laptops couldn't surpass Acer.
When we ran 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra, the Nitro v (3,696) crushed the category boilerplate (ii,919), the ROG Strix G15 (ii,197) and the Legion v (three,180), just the G5 15 SE killed the Acer'due south winning streak with a knock-out score of four,360.
If you're wondering whether the Nitro 5 tin can handle VR, you'll be happy to know that the Acer gaming rig slew the VRMark Orangish Room benchmark with a score of 7,116, sailing past the boilerplate budget gaming laptop (5,415). The Nitro v also defeated the ROG Strix G15 (5,259), the G5 15 SE (7,237) and the Legion 5 (5,013).
Acer Nitro v performance
The Nitro five packs 16GB of RAM and an Intel Cadre i7-9750H CPU (a mid-tier processor that is a generation behind as of this writing). The Acer laptop managed to juggle 45 Google Chrome tabs and three YouTube videos without a hitch.
Despite its obsolete CPU, the Nitro 5 served up a score of 5,435, which beats the category average (4,696) and the Core i7-10750H processors inside both the ROG Strix G15 (5,168) and the Legion 5 (5,325). However, the Nitro 5 couldn't proceed upwards with G5 15 SE'south AMD Ryzen R7 4800H CPU, which outputted a spectacular score of 7,715.
The Nitro 5 took 11 minutes and 41 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p on our HandBrake benchmark, failing to surpass the category average (11:25). The ROG Strix G15 (ten:28), G5 15 SE (six:43) and Legion v (10:05) were quicker than the Acer gaming rig.
When we ran the file transfer test, the Nitro 5's 256GB SSD duplicated 4.97GB of multimedia files in xviii seconds at a transfer rate of 301 megabytes per second. This is a tinge faster than the category boilerplate (285 MBps). The Nitro v also beat the 512GB SSDs within the ROG Strix G15 (129 MBps) and the Legion five (200 MBps). However, the Acer laptop couldn't keep upwards with the G5 15 SE (452 MBps), which also sports a 512GB SSD.
Acer Nitro 5 battery life
The Nitro 5 has decent battery life for a budget gaming laptop.
The Acer gaming rig lasted 7 hours and half-dozen minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test (continuous surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness), which outlasted the boilerplate budget gaming laptop (6:56). The Nitro five also has more endurance than the ROG Strix G15 (five:11). The G5 xv SE (vii:14) and the Legion 5 (7:xiii) lasted eight minutes and seven minutes longer than the Nitro 5, respectively.
Acer Nitro 5 photographic camera
On the height bezel of the Nitro v is a 1280 ten 720-pixel camera that is as grainy equally an '80s homemade video.
This photographic camera looks like a visual sprite, displaying fizz via its overwhelming video racket. The webcam could non capture the individual strands of my frizzy hair that was pulled up into a bun, looking like a messy blob. My brownish complexion appeared to accept odd dark-green undertones. If y'all plan on broadcasting your gameplay on Twitch or YouTube, this webcam will stifle your streaming career. Cheque out our best webcams page for cameras with meliorate video quality.
Acer Nitro 5 heat
Later on gaming for xv minutes, the Nitro 5's underside reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is slightly to a higher place our 95-degree comfort threshold. The center of the keyboard and touchpad hitting 107 and 77 degrees, respectively. The hottest location of the laptop is the underside, near the vents, which climbed to 119 degrees.
After playing a 15-minute, 1080p YouTube video, the Nitro five remained relatively cool under the hood, showing off the reward of its plastic chassis. The Acer laptop's center (88 degrees), touchpad (76 degrees) and underside (87 degrees) all hovered below the 95-caste comfort threshold. Over again, the hottest location was the underside (near the vents), reaching 91 degrees.
Acer Nitro 5 software and warranty
The Nitro 5 features the NitroSense app, which allows you to monitor and manage the laptop'southward performance, battery and fans.
You'll also detect Acer properties such as Acer Product Registration, which offers discounts and sectional offers, Acer Collection Due south, an app store, and Acer Intendance Center, a platform that runs system updates, tuneups and diagnostics.
You'll discover some typical Windows ten bloatware apps, including Candy Shell Friends and Farm Heroes Saga.
The Nitro 5 comes with a i-twelvemonth limited warranty. Run across how Acer performed on our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Laptop Brands.
Bottom line
The Acer Nitro 5 is a solid budget gaming laptop with competition-chirapsia frame rates and VR score. All the same, there is ane laptop that consistently kept outperforming the Nitro 5 during our testing: the Dell G5 15 SE.
The $829 G5 15 SE kicked the $999 Nitro v's barrel. The AMD-equipped Dell gaming rig sports a punchier display, more storage, zippier file-transfer and video-editing rates, and better overall operation.
On the plus side, the Nitro 5 crushed the G5 15 SE — and its other rivals — when it comes to gaming frame rates, offering an average of nine more than frames than the Dell laptop. It as well surpassed all of its competitors on the VRMark Orangish Room benchmark.
If decent VR operation and higher frame rates appeal to yous, go the Nitro 5, but if y'all prefer a better brandish, a blisteringly fast CPU and more storage at a sub-$1,000 price tag, the G5 15 SE is the ameliorate option.
Acer Nitro 5 Specs
Bluetooth | Bluetooth 5.0 |
Brand | Acer |
CPU | Intel Core i5 8300H |
Carte du jour Slots | SD retentivity reader |
Company Website | www.acer.com |
Display Size | 15.6 |
Graphics Carte du jour | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti |
Hard Drive Size | 256GB |
Hard Drive Speed | n/a |
Difficult Drive Type | PCIe SSD |
Highest Bachelor Resolution | 1920 ten 1080 |
Native Resolution | 1920x1080 |
Operating System | Windows 10 Home |
Optical Bulldoze | None |
Optical Drive Speed | north/a |
Ports (excluding USB) | HDMI, Headphone/Mic, Kensington Lock, USB iii.i with Type-C, SD card slot, USB three.0, USB ii.0, Gigabit Ethernet |
RAM | 8GB |
RAM Upgradable to | 32GB |
Size | 15.4 x ten.5 x ane.1 inches |
Touchpad Size | iv.1 x 3.0 inches |
USB Ports | 4 |
Video Memory | 4GB |
Warranty/Back up | i-year express warranty |
Weight | 5.14 pounds |
Wi-Fi | 802.11ac |
Wi-Fi Model | Intel Wireless-Air-conditioning 9560 2x2 802.11ac |
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Source: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/acer-nitro-5-an515-54
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