ARE YOU CONSIDERING BUYING A GAMING LAPTOP? The obvious choice is the Nitro 5. Although there are both figuratively and practically flashier solutions out there, Acer’s low-cost gaming PC is as solid as they come. It’s not very attractive, but on the plus side, it’s also not offensive.
From raw power to an excellent keyboard, the entire gaming bundle performs better than the price you spend. There are some compromises, but at this price, you can’t expect perfection. You can’t ignore the Nitro 5 if you’re new to gaming laptops or simply interested in this portable form factor and don’t want to spend a fortune.
Nitro-Fueled
The Acer Nitro 5 doesn’t simply provide what you’d expect from its spec sheet; it frequently goes above and beyond, which is impressive for such an affordable device. An Intel Core i5-12500H processor, 16 GB of Memory, a 512 GB SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050Ti graphics card were all included in my evaluation sample setup. When we compared the performance to leading competitors from HP, Dell, and Asus, the results were quite astounding. Acer closely matched competitors across the board in terms of performance, outpaced rivals with comparable specs, and occasionally even outperformed laptops with better specifications.
With the Nitro 5, you’ll get a 1080p 60 frames-per-second system running at about Low to Medium settings for games like Borderlands 3 and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint that prioritize graphical fidelity. The laptop can even push to over 90 frames per second, but average performance is closer to 60. With a game like Apex Legends, the 144-Hz display may be maxed out on 1080p Low settings for those who need as many frames per second as possible.
This laptop also excels in the area of noise, where many gaming laptops frequently falter. This device never gets uncomfortable warm because to the dual fan and quad exhaust system, and until the fans are manually turned up, they don’t make a noticeable noise.
The screen is neither the brightest or most colorful, but that is to be expected at this price. Such luxuries are only available on high-end gaming systems or on gadgets that don’t give a damn about gaming (or frames per second). Yet, it becomes bright enough for a room with moderate lighting, and the colors are appropriately true.
You could discover that environmental detail is a touch missing in games with realistic design as their main focus, but aside from that, you won’t have many visual issues when playing. You are forced to use a 16:9 panel, which is fine for video games, viewing movies, and other similar activities. Nevertheless, in 2022, many in this category will also choose 16:10 panels, recognizing the need to support increased productivity. Not this Acer, though.
Lord of One
Although the Acer Nitro 5’s design is not particularly inspiring, it seems well constructed for a plastic device. It’s manageable even though it weighs 2.5 kilos (5.5 pounds), making it somewhat portable but not quite something you’d want to carry around with you all the time.
The Nitro 5’s relatively poor battery life is a milder blow in a gadget not designed for extended sessions. If you push the Nitro 5 with multitasking and numerous open tabs, you’ll get less than a full workday’s worth of productivity out of it.
This gaming laptop is actually designed to be plugged in to obtain the greatest performance. A device like a Razer Blade or an Asus ROG Zephyrus model will likely cost more, so hybrid worker types searching for something that can game and work should look elsewhere.
The Style: A Universal Appearance
With the most recent Nitro 5, Acer chose to go for a rather basic aesthetic, which is great with us. The majority of Nitro laptops, as well as many gaming laptops in general, especially entry-level ones, were once adorned in garish colors and decorative flourishes, but that look has gradually faded into obscurity. Garish red and black were particularly popular, and while some people might still prefer that overused color scheme, it was challenging to locate an affordable gaming laptop.
In fact, the earlier this year Nitro 5 had a different appearance with a lot of red. While this new edition has a squarer, cleaner appearance, the previous model’s lid corners and rear vents were slightly more geometric. Without the muscle lines of the early 2022 iteration, the lid is plain and smooth.
Dimensions and Display: Somewhat Portable and Compatible with Gaming
The expense of more expensive laptops is largely attributed to their thin designs, whereas this laptop’s bulkier chassis is substantially less expensive. The Acer is moderately portable as gaming laptops go, but heavier than a contemporary daily car, measuring 1.06 by 14.1 by 10.7 inches (HWD) and weighing 5.51 pounds. It might not be the first device you’d want to carry around with you, but for a cheap gaming setup, it’s acceptable trim.
As long as the CPU and GPU can keep up, this results in a smoother-looking experience during play as the screen refreshes the image more frequently. Our explanation has more information on refresh rates, and we’ll get into the components and performance test findings shortly. According to the numbers, that refresh rate and resolution are suitable for a budget gaming laptop.
Tests of Productivity
The primary benchmark of UL’s PCMark 10 measures overall performance for office-focused applications like word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing by simulating a number of real-world productivity and content-creation processes. We also conduct the Whole System Drive test in PCMark 10 to evaluate the throughput and load time of a laptop’s storage.
To determine a PC’s aptitude for processor-intensive workloads, three benchmarks concentrate on the CPU while utilizing all available cores and threads. Although Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Pro mimics well-known programs like PDF rendering, speech recognition, and machine learning, Maxon’s Cinebench R23 renders a complicated scenario using that company’s Cinema 4D engine. Finally, we transcode a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p quality using the free and open-source HandBrake 1.4 program (lower times are better).
Conclusion
For $899, there isn’t much room for complaint about the new Acer Nitro 5, even though it doesn’t top any benchmark charts. The device has a decent component and feature basis while being one of the more affordable gaming laptops available today.
Take the storage and the screen. Although a 144Hz monitor is now the industry standard for gaming computers, having one at this price is still fantastic, and there are also many connectors. Large game installs will soon fill the 512GB SSD, but even more expensive PCs frequently have insufficient capacity in their base model configurations. The MSI Katana GF66 RTX 3060 is certainly a better choice if you’re concerned about maintaining 60 frames per second at ultra settings, but the Nitro 5 is still a desirable, reasonably priced alternative.
