Acer - Nitro 5 15.6" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 - 256GB Solid State Drive - Black

The Acer Nitro 5 AN515-54-54W follows the path of other Nitro laptops right into the low-mid range of gaming systems. Looks other Nitros it has enough power to handle most E-sports titles (CS:GO, Overwatch, LoL, Rocket League) at high settings. It also has no problem with Fortnite at high settings (and with good FPS), as well as AAA titles at med-high settings (with average, but playable FPS). Prior to this laptop I played on the Nitro 5 AN515-42-R5ED, which I will refer to as the previous gen. Specs Processor – Intel Core i5 9300H - CPU 4C/8T @ 2.4 GHz with boost to 4.1 GHz Graphics – NVidia GeForce GTX 1050 3GB @ 1366 MHz[Discrete] / Intel UHD Graphics 630 Memory – 8GB DDR4 2666 Single Channel (19-19-19-43) Storage – 256GB Kingston SSD (M.2 NVME) Display - 15.6” 1920 x 1080p LED IPS screen Camera – HD (720P?) with dual mics Network Adapter – 802.11AC WiFi adapter / 1X Gigabit LAN Port / Bluetooth 4.2 Radio Ports – 1X USB-C (3.1) / 2X USB 3.0 / 1X USB 2.0 / 1X HDMI / 3.5mm TRRS jacks for headsets Battery – 3815 mAh / 58.75Wh with a claimed 7 hour battery life The Nitro 5 comes with an Intel/NVidia loadout, sporting Intel’s latest 9th Gen i5 9300H. The i5 comes with 4 cores utilizing 8 threads. The 1050 3GB graphics card is a bit older GPU, but still relevant in today’s gaming market. Although behind the 1050ti and newly released 1650/1660ti, it is still a perfectly good card that can play AAA games at relatively good settings. This being a 10 series Nvidia card, you can also hook the Nitro up to an external monitor (HDMI) that supports G-Sync or a certified (by NVidia) Freesync panel. Like most Nitro 5’s, this laptop comes with a single 8GB DDR4 RAM stick. This, for the most part, is enough RAM to play most games without becoming a bottleneck. Storage comes in the form of a 256 GB M.2 NVME drive from Kingston. The display is a 15.6” 1920 x 1080p 60 HZ IPS screen. It appears to be the same display or very close to my other Nitro 5. I again couldn’t find any listed response times for the monitor, so I would assume it would follow the default IPS times of about 5ms. It’s still not the best display out there, but a decent panel that fits the budget and marketed range. Picture reproduction is still clear, colors are decent, and text is sharp (after tweaking). 1080p is still the sweet spot for budget gaming builds, so this panel’s resolution makes perfect sense. The display does not support any adaptive sync technology (Freesync, G-Sync). The color reproduction of the display, like the previous gen, is still lacking. Pictures came out clear, but the colors were a little flat. Games and Benchmarking I ran the Nitro through a series of benchmarks to test its various capabilities. I wanted to get an apples to apples comparison to the last gen, and I already had all of the install files on hand (lazy). Tests included Cinebench R15, 3DMark Time Spy and Skydiver, PC Mark 10, GeekBench, and CrystalDiskMark 6. I have included a screenshot of my raw results table. The results show, as you might expect, that the Nitro floats somewhere in the mid-range. It outperforms my previous gen Nitro with the help of Intel’s newest chip and the onboard NVME drive. Much like with the benchmarks I loaded up the same games to play as I did for my other Nitro. First up was Fortnite. I let it configure to the best settings for my system. The game listed all settings on high with the framerate capped at 60fps. I bumped it up to 120 fps just to see what it would top out at. With that in mind I was able to hit 68-75 fps pretty consistently in squad rumble matches. The only time it took a dip was during heavy CQB with lots of building going on around. Even then I think I saw it dip into the upper 50’s. If I kept the fps locked at 60 I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the dip. Compared to my other Nitro, I had a more polished gaming experience on the same settings. Topping out at 75 fps vs. 45-50 with the same settings. I stuck with Shadow of War for my AAA game benchmark since I still haven’t finished it. I again ran the game at high settings with V-sync on. I played for about an hour, and again I thought it played great – similar to console experience. When I ran the in-game benchmark with my settings it recorded the gaming running at only 37fps – a 5 fps improvement. When I usually play the game on the other system, I drop down to medium settings and get around 46 fps. This system again edged the old one and pulled out 50 fps. The game was still playable at high settings, and for a solo campaign the lower fps didn’t bother me as much. I’ll still toggle back to medium because I tend to notice the lower framerate more than the lowered graphics quality. Design The design of the Nitro has changed a bit with the last refresh. It no longer looks as edgy as it did before. It still looks the part, but it has been toned down. The entire body of the laptop is still plastic, except for hinge components. This keeps the cost down on the laptop and helps with weight. The exterior plastic still has that brushed look to it, giving it a little more upscale appearance. It still has the red accents around the body that gives some pop to the look. I am glad to see one of my favorite little features - the spring loaded expanding ethernet port – is still in use. Acer has done away with is the bevel/angle on top of the laptop cover. The laptop cover (backside of the screen) is now flat. This is part of the toning it down that I mentioned. The laptop comes in at 4.85 lbs and a little under an inch thick. It feels noticeably smaller. The overall size reduction can be seen in the slimmer monitor bezel - down over an inch (1.1”) in width and 0.5” in depth. Like the prior gen the lightweight plastic shell fails a bit when it comes to the structural rigidity of the laptop. The biggest offender is still the lid, albeit not as bad as before. The dimensional shrink surely helps reduce how much leverage you can apply to the screen, but it just comes up a bit short. Still, it is an improvement, so I am happy with that. Keyboard and Touchpad Acer has stuck with the red LED backlight and accents for the keyboard. There have been a couple of changes from the prior version. They have given every key a red accent along the side and fully accented WASD and arrow keys. The keyboard had to slim down a bit as well, so a few keys were narrowed. Most of the width savings came from the number pad and arrow keys. The backlight has seen a change as well. The keys only stay lit for 30 seconds after the last keystroke regardless of your power source (battery or wall plug). The previous Nitro had the ability to toggle the keys on indefinitely if you were plugged into the wall. I don’t currently see a way to change this behavior. The key construction has remained unchanged - low profile and a decent throw length. They have a soft actuation – no clack to them at all. Backlight on - the keys are easy to read and decipher. Backlight off - it is difficult to distinguish the keys in the light, let alone seeing them in the dark. That extra red accent around each key really makes it hard to pick out the letters on the key faces. This is a big step back for me over the old keyboard. You can adjust the brightness of the LED’s with this gen, which is the only improvement I see. The touchpad is a single piece clickable surface with multipoint touch. For standard navigation and browsing this trackpad will do just fine. Its pretty much identical to the last gen, which means I will use a mouse for day to day. Upgradability This gen of Nitro’s brings a little more upgradability to the table. The prior gen had 3 upgradable parts – RAM, 2.5” HDD/SDD, and M.2 SSD. This gen adds a second M.2 SSD to the mix. The back cover has 11 screws to remove before you carefully pry the cover off (I started at the front corners). Once the cover is removed, the 2.5” bay, RAM, and M.2’s are all right in front of you. The Nitro 5 comes with a single 8GB RAM stick as a factory default. For my Ryzen based system that was more of an issue, but Intel processors don’t see as much of performance hit with single channel RAM. The Nitro 5 has a max RAM capacity of 32GB (2 x 16GB). If you want to go with smart investment – another 8GB stick would be perfect, and all you would need. A problem with this system is the lack of storage. I only have 30GB remaining after installing just 2 games and my benchmark programs. My suggestion is a 2TB Seagate Firecuda hybrid drive. It gives you plenty of storage and speed. They run about $80-90 but would be a worthwhile upgrade. Acer bundled the necessary cable and screws for a drive. Don’t be discouraged by the warranty verbiage on these parts. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act allows you to service and upgrade your equipment without violating the warranty. The last upgrade is another M.2 2280 drive – NVME or just standard SSD. These are easy enough and just plug and play. I would think the 2.5” drive would be a more useful upgrade since the $/GB of M.2’s is still very high on the large drives. Final Thoughts This updated version of the Acer Nitro 5 comes to the market at an affordable price point for a mid-range gaming laptop. It has some upscale features (M.2 drive), and has a reasonably priced upgrade path ahead of it. There are only a couple of areas that could use some improvement – better spec’d display, control over the keyboard LED’s, and toning down the keyboard accents. I am happy with the Nitro as a whole, and I think it would be a great pickup for the casual/new gamer. It is a step up over my other Nitro, so I am glad to see the progression of this lineup. Overall, I give it a 4.5/5. It still has a few issues that can’t be corrected (keyboard, display), and a few that can be (storage).

I play the Sims 4 and work remotely from home o this laptop. Money well spent.

This laptop do eveything I need it to I use it as my streaming laptop I also played games on it as well (Overwatch , Rust , New world ) their all beautiful fam can run high some times while playing big mmo but it don’t stop the performance i Recommend it follow me on twitch (lilkaos012) to ask more questions

This Acer NItro 5 gaming laptop is a fairly decent entry-level gaming laptop for casual gamers who aren’t necessarily playing the latest AAA titles. Even if you do end up playing a flagship game like Fortnite, you’ll find generally lag-free performance during gameplay… provided you’re not maxed out on all the graphics, resolution, and detail settings. At medium to low quality settings the laptop can handle nearly all games with smooth, stutter-free cinematics and maintains at least 30 fps throughout gameplay, depending on the title. The bottleneck here is the GTX1050, while technically a mid-range video graphics card, is still the lowest performing card in Nvidia’s GeForce GTX lineup. The draw though is that it can handle the minimum requirements for most gaming while still being cost efficient; great for folks on a budget who need the specs of a gaming laptop but don’t necessarily want to spend extra money on gear upfront. This laptop has a built-in HD webcam, but the quality isn’t great if you’ll be broadcasting your webcam feed any bigger than a thumbnail (in a word, “grainy”); easily solvable by adding-on any number of decent webcams out there. On a related note, the built-in microphone also has low quality so expect it to sound somewhat muffled and far away as well as capture the sound of every keystroke, as the keyboard isn’t super silent either. This makes the on-board hardware less than ideal for streamers. The fan on the laptop also gets pretty loud during graphics-heavy gameplay which you may find competes with the relatively weak output from the on-board speakers, so if you want to get the best auditory experience out of your playtime, headphones are a must. To be fair, the sound from the speakers isn’t terrible, it’s just a bit boxy and small: fine for online video content but certainly not a cinematic experience. Luckily, if you own a decent gaming headset, the laptop has a combo mic/headphone port, requiring one fewer input port for live chat and audio capture while at the same time allowing you to hear the audio at higher fidelity. I do like that this laptop is extremely lightweight, at around 5.5 lbs, thanks to the lack of a card reader and optical drive. It’s also pretty thin, has 4 USB ports (1 USB-C, 2 USB 3.0 and 1 USB 2.0) with one USB 3.0 that is able to charge devices even when the laptop is powered off, which is neat. The WiFi also is zippy, with its dual-band 5GHz/2.4GHz MU-MIMO support to deliver the fastest speeds for up/down streams making downloads of new content very quick, a must have for online gaming. I just wasn't a fan of the DC power plug placement in the middle of the right-hand-side, as with a USB mouse plugged into this side poses a minor crowding issue. The 15.6” IPS monitor is decent, with good color reproduction, deep contrast, and wide viewing angles, but lacks the faster response rate and lower power consumption of a TN panel. At 60 Hz, there is relatively little motion blur up to 60 frames per second, but you won’t get that benefit at any higher than 60 fps. While this generally doesn’t affect the casual gamer, it can make for a worse competitive gameplay experience. The 256 GB m.2 SSD is somewhat limiting, so don’t expect to load more than a handful of titles on it without an external drive. That, or invest in some upgrades like larger/second SSD/HDD (comes with an HDD adapter). It has one extra m.2 slot, HDD bay, and second RAM slot for up to 32GB total memory. The backlight for the keyboard is red and adjustable in brightness but not color. There’s also a dedicated “NitroBoost” button which brings up an application that lets you tweak performance of the CPU/GPU fans for added cooling, though realistically I don’t know how many people would take advantage of that kind of on-the-fly tweaking. For everything other than gaming, it does a fine job, so that I can also use the laptop for work, e.g. word processing, web browsing, media streaming, and video content creation. I don’t have too much trouble using heavy graphics/video processing software like Adobe Premiere although it does occasionally tax the limits of the laptop’s capabilities. Battery life is so-so while gaming. Depending on the game and what peripherals I’m using I get between 2-3 hours of straight play-through time before I get the low power warning. For non-gaming use I get between 3-5 hours depending on the activity (video editing vs. web browsing vs. streaming etc.) My only other pet peeve with this laptop is that it tends to be a fingerprint/grease magnet so if your hands are even a little sweaty, or you just have an oily skin type, expect fingerprints galore all over the brushed matte finish on the cover, smudges on the screen, near the keyboard, on the trackpad… basically everywhere you touch it. If you need to get a gaming laptop that can also handle everyday computing tasks while staying on a budget, I’d say this is a decent buy as it is able to handle all/most current flagship games, again at less than the max resolution graphics. It has all the features you need to get by without breaking the bank and has multiple pathways for you to improve your experience through upgrades and/or peripherals as you spend more on gear or bring in your existing hardware. However, if you’re planning on buying all the extras and upgrades right off the bat then I’d say you’re better off just getting a more powerful laptop with the specs you’re looking for already in the build, for example, the Nitro 5 lineup has builds that include the upgraded GTX1060 video card and extra 1 TB HDD at a marginally higher price tag.

Where to begin really? Design wise, it’s a nice machine. I've always been fond of the Red/Black motif with computers as they just complement each other well. There's enough ports for your typical use, though I wish that it had a DisplayPort instead of HDMI or at least both. The amount of ventilation is impressive as well and because of that I don't foresee anyone running in to many thermal issues. The system has two fans as you can see in the image of the underside. I also tried to include images of the side ventilation as well. The Keyboard layout is very welcoming as you get a full 10-key as well. Not all that common on 15.6" sized systems these days. I do like that the keyboard is backlit as this makes those late night game sessions easier to deal with. Don't get me wrong though, this is a laptop keyboard for whatever that is worth. Most users are going to use a dedicated keyboard and mouse. The touch pad is responsive and never failed in my testing. The border of it is also backlit so you're not having to hunt for it in the dark. I appreciate the inclusion of a Type-C port as many people charge their devices through their computer. The screen, well it's really good. As one of the benchmarks, which I included the result for in the photos was Assassin's Creed Odyssey which is a fantastic game ran OK on this. Even on medium settings it looked great and the screen really does pop in this game. It's quite bright especially when in the scenes where you're facing towards the sun. Darks on it are really good as well. I definitely appreciate that ACER went with an IPS panel, though slower on the response time, it's not gonna be a deal breaker. I think the screen really is the biggest star of this unit. Do bear in mind this is only a 60hz Panel and even with V-Sync on I was seeing a lot of tearing in Odyssey. G-Sync may be able to help with that. Expandability, another big win here. This model ships with 8GB but you can certainly upgrade it, I'd recommend 16GB. Storage on the other hand, You can add another m.2 drive, of which this already has 1 256GB NVME drive in it which I believe clocked in around 1600MB/s on the Reads and around 800-900MB/s on the writes. The startup on it is incredibly quick, as in about 5 or so seconds of pressing power you're at the login screen and then figure another 5 to load the desktop. That's faster than my actual Gaming desktop. Not only can you add another M.2 drive, you can even add a standard 2.5 drive, be it a slower normal SATA SSD or even just a large SATA Mechanical drive for mass storage. Given that this particular model features multiple difference configurations it may be possible to upgrade things like the GPU and the CPU down the road should you need a boost, but that is sheer speculation and don't condone doing so. Performance, this is the stuff that matters. Since this model only has a 1050, performance is going to be just ok. The 1050 is a capable GPU, but it boggles my mind why the 1650 wasn't used in here when the other's feature the 1660 and the 1660 Ti. Even a 1050 Ti would have been a better choice. In my research it doesn't appear there's much if any premium price wise to just put the 1650 in there. It delivers a substantial amount more performance from other reviews I've seen online, upwards of 70%. I think it was a pretty poor choice. I don't foresee running in to issue on the CPU side as the 9300 i5 seems more than capable, it's just really held back by an otherwise sub-par GPU. At this price point I can't say I wouldn't recommend it, but at the same time I can't say I would recommend it. If anything I'd say spend the little more to get the GTX 1600 equipped model as the performance really is that much better. The battery on this thing, it's not gonna last long. In the 15 minutes I had Odyssey open and benchmarking the battery went from 80-60%. I'd reckon you can get about 90mins of gaming time on battery so it's definitely lacking in longevity. Though normal everyday tasks or productivity you could expect double that. Still for the price you're getting quite a bit. With SSD's coming down so much add more storage is a no brainer, same with RAM now being at a new low. The one Image I have attached is the benchmark results for Assassin's Creed Odyssey that was generated from their benchmark report. I figured this was a new enough title to stretch the performance. I figure if you know the render resolution down to around 75% you can improve the performance by a maybe 10-15%.

The main difference between any gaming laptop and regular laptop is the cooling system. Gaming laptops are more CPU and GPU temperature controlling with big copper heat-sink and strong air moving fans. After that, the CPU speed (threads capacity) and RAM capacity are also more required for resources hungry games. Screen resolution is also a plus. The size of the laptop and portability might be important for some people… I’d not care much about the battery life. Keyboard should be in general more gaming look. Sound system should also be better than average. For more other people, the possibility to connect more than one external screen is also important. As for this Acer Nitro 5: The price is really acceptable (compared to other on the market available gaming rigs). It is coming with i5 9th generation 2.40GHz processor. I’d like to have an i7 for sure but i5 is still doing it correctly. As by default, it has 8GB RAM (with 7.85GB usable). Running some games (mechanic simulator, generals, GTA5…) the 8GB was doing just fine. I might upgrade to at least 12GB in the future… Just because of my “nerd” side… Nitro 5 is equipped with GeForce GTX 1050 dedicated 4GB memory. It is really good with 3d rendering and playing games with no hiccups while maintaining high resolution. That was in general for any gaming computer. For this Acer Nitro 5 specific features: I like the Nitro Sense button on the keyboard even though I was confusing it with the NumLock button but it is nice to have it available there when needed. The NitroSensr interface is clear and informative with a lot of useful options and information. The keyboard layout is perfect. Very nice for typing and the distance travel by key is very good. It is not noisy at all. Back light has nice RED color with adjustable brightness. In normal use conditions, the fans make almost no noise. With full blast, the noise is till acceptable. The total weight of the Nitro 5 is kind of light. It might look heavy but nice to carry. It is shipped with Acer Sleeve. Nice and well made. As for connectivity: I like the full size HDMI connector with 2 USB 3 on one side and one old USB on the other side. The charger connector and the headphone jack are on the right side. Not the best place for my taste but that’s ok! Also on the left side you have USB-C and Ethernet connectors. Just a fully loaded machine with all what you can need. Disk storage not on the best size. Originally shipped with SSD 256GB but with ability to upgrade. Acer added in the box the necessary cable to install an extra disk drive. They noted that it should be done by Acer certified center or the warranty might get voided. I’ll mostly upgrade that or add more storage. For now, I’ll try to enjoy my games with the current setup. Nitro 5 comes with Norton security ultra 30 days pre-installed. I am fine with Microsoft win10 protection. Then I’ll mostly remove it from my Nitro 5. Actually, I noticed the mouse pointer getting stuck for short half second. After uninstalling Norton, it is not happening any more. I’d recommend this computer for somebody looking for affordable and nice looking gaming laptop with cool features and good capabilities.

Great laptop for light gaming (Sims, war thunder, Starctaft)

I really like the performance of this system and it's really good to me.