Acer - Nitro 5 17.3" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 - 512GB Solid State Drive - Black

I have an old Acer V5-571 i7 laptop I bought new a while back but wanted something for games so I looked to Acer again. I got this laptop for $150 off the current price on sale and I really can't find a better deal anywhere for the hardware. I checked some benchmarks on the GTX1650 graphics chip and ran the same tests on the Nitro 5 (Upgraded to 32gb and added a 2TB M.2 drive) and was surprised to see that this laptop actually beat the posted benchmarks in almost all the games I tested on Ultra/Extreme settings. (Battlefield V, FarCry 5, Forza Horizon 4, GTA V, Metro Last Light Redux, Red Dead Redemption 2, Star Wars Fallen Order, The Witcher III) I didn't always hit 60fps but every game I tested played great and in some cases, turning down just 1 or 2 options to high from ultra got you to that sweet spot of 60fps and I certainly won't complain about that. Visually there was almost no difference I could see. Now bad parts... when I took the laptop out of the box it did not turn on. Plugged it in, let it sit for an hour or so an still nothing despite the charge light coming on. I happen to be an HP and Dell certified tech so I took the back off and pulled the battery cable, then held the power button for 10-15 seconds, then reconnected the battery and voila! It powered on and booted to the windows setup! Unfortunately that wasn't the end of it. I watched the automated process until it asked me to select a wifi connection, which I tried to do but was unable because most of the keys on the keyboard were not working. Fantastic. Fortunately, during my little adventure with the battery, I had noticed some of the ribbon cables looked a bit crooked. I didn't mess with them though because I was worried I'd have to take it back and didn't want to void my warranty. I couldn't help looking though so I opened it up again and straightened two of the small ribbon cables. At first, the wide ribbon cable for the keyboard looked fine. It was in the connector and taped into place. However when I pushed it with my finger, i saw it was in the socket but was very loose and not really making a connection. I removed the tape and saw that the plastic tabs that hold the ribbon cable in place on each side were not pushed down at all. Someone at the factory inserted the cable and taped it but never locked the tabs that hold it in place. Locked the tabs and powered it back on and double voila! I was able to type now! No real issues since then. Had to try a couple brands of RAM before I found a pair that worked in this thing to get it up to 32gb. Ended up going with some Crucial DDR4 2666 16GB x2. Tried Corsair Vengeance, and GSkill Ripjaws but the unit wouldn't even post with those. Also installed a Sabrent Rocket Q 2TB NVMe hard drive into the 2nd m.2 slot and it was picked up by the BIOS without issue. Speaking of BIOS... Mine came with bios version 1.01. There are currently 9 bios upgrades available on the Acer web site starting with v1.23. Anything above bios v1.25 will cause the backlight on the keyboard to turn off after 30 seconds of non use and it doesn't come back on if you touch the touchpad. You have to press a key. There is a setting in the bios to enable/disable this feature but the backlight will still turn off and Acer says it's a power saving feature. The ONLY way to disable this so the backlight stays on is to use the NitroSense app. Go into settings and turn off the option to turn off the backlight. It was really a pain in the butt figuring this out once I flashed the latest bios and I really need that backlight on. Out of the box this is a really decent laptop. If you got it on sale like I did, you really can't beat the price for the mid level gamer who likes to game on the go. And with a few upgrades, it becomes quite capable. FYI, just those games listed above take up over 600gb of disk space so if you're looking to upgrade, I'd probably start there, then add at least another 8gb of ram to keep things running nice and smooth. Just make note of the above issues if yours doesn't power on or you have keyboard issues. You may be able to save yourself the hassle of returning it. 3 stars for now due to the 'repairs' I had to make myself right out of the box, but I will update my review once I've run it through the ringer a bit more to make sure it's up to par.

I can't believe what you can get in an unbelievable budget package from Acer. While it's not the best you can buy its certainly the best you can buy in this price range. You get the huge 17-inch display (60hz), the OUTSTANDING performance of today's gaming laptops with this version of the 9th gen Intel i5, 1080p gorgeous smooth gameplay at high FPS with Nvidia's GTX 1650, Sleek and stealth designed laptop with a good amount of I/O and customizability so you can add more RAM and an empty SSD/HDD slot. The Acer Nitro 5 checks every single box you could want in a 17.3 inch though take notice its also at the height of 1.1 inches thin! I have never seen or owned a gaming laptop this thin at all and certainly not at this price point. This is truly amazing hands down. Display: First thing first. This is not a 120hz display. This is not a G-Sync display. The display on this Nitro 5 17.3 inch model from Best Buy is 60hz. Nitro 5’s 60hz panel is a great display for gaming. I appreciate the extra real estate on the screen for this laptop for playing games. As this isn’t my main gaming rig I don’t mind the 60Hz and taking it to a LAN party didn’t distract from my fun. The screen gets extremely bright when cranked to 100%. I keep it around 35% - 75% indoors. As far as I can see very very minimal backlight bleed. The matte screen is perfect for gaming and one of my favorite features of this Nitro funny enough. I’m so used to glossy displays that it’s refreshing to just have a display you can see from all angles without light hitting it. If you live in a well-lit area this screen does justice. The 17-inch viewing is not just perfect for gaming but also perfect for all other forms of content and media like YouTube, Twitch, Netflix, and Hulu. The 60hz is fine for what you get and at this price I have no issues. Like many though I wish Acer could have used 120hz display and hit the under $1,000 mark as that would have been the icing on the cake. Gamers wouldn’t have asked for too much more features after this. The silver-lining here is that you can hook this up to an external G-Sync 144hz monitor for older esport titles if you want to take advantage. What myself and many other PC gamers do appreciate is the super narrow bezels on this laptop. They slimmed them down from previous years models and I’m sure they make a big difference. Your eyes immediately focus on the display itself rather than the huge bezels. Acer really designed this well and I love that we are going in this direction. Design: If you hate the look of gaming laptops this probably won’t change your mind with the design but to me, this is sleek while not drawing too much attention to itself. Nitro 5 looks great with a stealth design element to it but it is plastic. It’s not a cheap feeling laptop whatsoever if that helps the case. It feels well built but if you want a premium design over the Nitro 5 then the Nitro 7 is something you should look for. Overall the design exceeds what I would expect from this price. The keyboard is fine, not the best I’ve felt on other laptops. I don’t enjoy them but gets the job done. 3 levels of brightness which is red. The red backlit keys stand out the most and it looks great for the most part. A part of me wishes they would have just added a full RGB keyboard to let one pick their own colors. That shouldn’t have added too much to the price point. Can be a good setup if you enjoy red and black as I do. FN keys are all over the place but fine once you get used to the placement. The trackpad is mediocre at best...it works but it’s not that good to me. It just doesn’t have a “great” feeling like I tried on other ultrabooks, has red accent around the trackpad that doesn’t light up. I/O: 1x USB 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, HDMI, There will be no eGPU with this generation of USB-C as it’s only for data transfer and changing up your USB-C phone. Not sure why manufacturers still mix USB 2.0 and 3.0 but it’s here. For creators, there is no SD card slot on this Acer Nitro 5, which is a bummer, especially for a 17-inch laptop. I’m not one to use an SD card slot but there was enough room to add one for those who want this for gaming and content creations. Though if it keeps the cost down I’m sure not many would be too upset that it’s lacking. Also, it’s not a total loss as you overall getting enough storage slots internally for gaming purposes. The A/C port on the laptop is in an awkward location. This is a small gripe but it’s near a USB port on the right side of the laptop. The vent for the fan is also on the same side. This could cause an uncomfortable feeling when the vents are on the side blowing air out against you using the mouse. Again with so much space in this model, they could have moved the A/C port up higher to the back of the laptop. This may annoy some who want to use a mouse so close to the laptop. Sound: It's just ok. Maxxwave audio does the job with filling the room with sound but as always having headphones are better. Just make sure you work with the EQ of the program to your liking. It doesn't get loud enough to hear at a LAN party on its own. Sound awesome when the room isn't drowned by other sounds. The sound of the fans on max doesn't drown out the sound of the games too much but I still recommend headphones. Gaming: To the wonderful visuals of the 17.3-inch display, You are getting a gaming laptop that can handle all of the latest games at certainly blazing framerates. Nitro 5 can handle GTA:V 65+ fps ultra @ 1080p. If you want to play eSports titles, this laptop can blaze through framerate of the best of them, especially at lower settings. This laptop runs Rocket Leauge like butter. Want smooth gameplay of single player titles like Resident Evil 2: Remake or Devil May Cry 5 60+ fps. This laptop can handle High/Max settings but I highly recommend turning down some settings on games. Racing games? Forza Horizon 4 was getting 60 fps on Ultra settings. Fighters like Mortal Kombat 11, Dragonball Z FighterZ, and Tekken 7 was beautiful at 1080p on this Nitro 5 screen holding 60 fps. In fact, anything I ran on this such as Wolfenstein II: TNC, Rage II, Hitman II, and Killing Floor 2 all ran fantastic. There is nothing but greatness for gaming when it comes to this version of the Nitro. For the price, I’m extremely pleased. Turning V-Sync off in most games gets you better fps for something like a G-Sync monitor but I highly recommend keeping V-Sync on for this 17.3 inch 60hz screen. The screen tearing occurs and it is noticeable...once you see it, it’s hard to unsee in my case. Performance: FPS of games so far everything I’ve tested was wonderful. Intel i5 9300h handle things great with 4 cores and 8 threads. I think it’s powerful enough to handle all of the tasks you need it for when it comes to gaming and other things. GTX 1650 4GB produce gorgeous crystal clear graphics on the 1080p screen. Mostly everything I tested ran over 60+ FPS for today’s AAA games. Showing this laptop can handle high demanding games. 1650 should be enough for anyone who looking to game on PC comfortably at the native resolution. I don’t create content so I can’t speak on professional programs but gaming it’s perfect. Battery: Gaming performance drop on battery but you can change this in the Nvidia Experience app. Allowing you to push the game to 30 - 60 FPS on battery. I’m going to cut to the chase. 1.9 hours tops with gaming on the battery (Played Resident Evil 2: RE remake.) Doing things like streaming movies, web browsing, YouTube, and iTunes, Chrome I’ve got about 3-4 hours. The good news here is that this laptop does charge really fast. WiFi: Fast. Paired up with an 802.11ax smart router. Blazing speeds. Fast. Fast. Did I say fast? Just making sure. Also, Bluetooth was working fine, Xbox One controller always automatically connected to BT no matter when I turned it on. NitroSense (and Nitro Key): Nitro Sense on keyboard. Gives you cooling information on the fans speeds. Also gives you controls of the fans to turn on cooling when you need it. Auto, Max, and Custom are the settings. Fans kick on with high speeds when the fan is on Max. I do appreciate GeForce experience built into the app. Acer TrueHarmony is also in here and some settings. Upgradability: This model has 2x M.2 SSD slots. One is already populated with a 512GB SSD that comes with the laptop in one slot. There is one 2.5" slot to add SSD / HDD. This also ships with 1x8GB 2666MHz memory and is upgradeable to 32GB using two memory slots. I currently have an extra 1TB SSD 2.5” and 24 GB of DDR4 Ram installed for now. It’s easy to unscrew the bottom, pop it off, and get into the internals for easy upgrades. Comes with a 2.5 HDD upgrade kit which is odd. Something that seems like it would have already been installed inside the laptop itself but it’s not. Overall: I don’t consider this laptop a “$800 budget gaming laptop” because too many $800+ is a lot of money to a lot of people. But what you get for this price as a gaming laptop PC is nothing short of amazing. There are some cut corners here and there but what you going to be really paying attention to is gaming experience. This was important because I was immersed in whatever game I was playing on this large screen. Can be a desktop replacement for many as well. Upgrading is easy to do and I love that Acer allows you to get into the internals but don’t like the upgrade kit. Still, it’s a nice way to learn to upgrade RAM/SSD for yourself as it's easy to do. If you want to jump into PC gaming the Nitro 5 is perfect for that. Next year I’ll like to see Acer put a 120hz screen at the same low cost in this 17.3-inch model. But other than that, it’s great gaming @ 1080p and I’ll highly recommend this to any gamer like myself looking for a solid laptop.

I’ve had several laptops over the years, from business to top of the line gaming and usually what I find is the higher the capability, the thicker and heavier they become. Tha Acer Nitro 5 is surprisingly light and thin for its capabilities. This has a 9th gen i5 quad core processor, 8GB RAM, 512GB WD PC SN520 NVMe SSD, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 with 4GB GDDR5 memory and a 17.3 inch IPS display. The available space on the M2 drive can get filled up quickly with modern games coming in at 60GB or more. However, this does have space for an additional M2 drive as well as a 2.5” drive and it comes with the screws and ribbon cable needed to install one. The only issue I had is that you have to take the entire plastic bottom off to access them and if you aren’t careful, it is easy to break the huge plastic piece. I’ve played several newer games on this laptop and most of them defaulted with high or near high custom graphics settings and smoothly played around 60 frames per second at 1080. Out of curiosity I used the HDMI out to test 4K gaming capabilities and this is clearly not meant for that at about 20fps or less. Running some benchmark tests, 3D Mark Time Spy and PC Mark 10, this laptop comes in just below their typical results of a gaming laptop but slightly above a VR minimum spec gaming PC, screenshots attached. So, with that, I had to give VR a try and hooked up my Samsung Odyssey+ Windows Mixed Reality headset and played VR for several hours. Besides some loading lag between games and the mixed reality home screen, everything played just as it would with my desktop PC. However, since this laptop is not listed as VR Ready and only has an HDMI port connected to the video card, that means the new VR systems that require Display Port won’t work and the USB-C appears to be connected to the motherboard’s Intel UHD 630. There are also only two USB 3.0 Type A ports. There are some minor issues I have with the design. For example, the speakers, though fairly capable for a laptop, point downwards. On a desk this works nice and gives a full sound, but on your lap or any other non-hard surface the sound gets dampened. Another thing, the power plugs in the middle right side, making it awkward for all sorts of reasons. Since it is so far in, it makes the already short power cord feel shorter. The other thing to get used to is how they shifted the keyboard around to incorporate the power and NitroSense buttons into the layout. Also the keyboard back light by default times out every 30 seconds and if you don’t tap a key, you get this constant on/off of the back light. So check that setting under the gear icon in NitroSense. As with any computer, be sure to get all of the latest drivers and updates before you start judging it. The Nvidia GeForce drivers were old but the Acer Care Center says it was all up to date. There is also a new BIOS version that everyone should check into as there is a vulnerability in the Intel Management Engine that the firmware addresses. After two weeks of use, my keyboard started acting up, part of the reason I discovered the firmware update. However, a quick turn around with Acer support and everything is back to normal. The report was that the keyboard needed reseating. Hopefully just a random occurrence.

I’ve chosen this computer because I love to play sims 4 and I’m also a teacher and it helps with my school work. It’s sooo fast and powerful!

This has worked great for me for gaming. I checked on the can you run it site and can 97 of the top 100 games. I like the 17.3 inch screen and the light up keyboard. I would recommend if you are looking to play games at a lower price.

Good quality build and very fast. Computer starts up in less then 5 seconds. I ran fortnite in epic at 60 FPS and Ultra in 50-60 FPS range. Old school RuneScape is constant 50 FPS. Will be upgrading the ram from 8 to 16 GB soon not that it’s even needed but only because it costs $45 and is do it yourself easy. Also has great color and sound.

First impressions, nice design and comes loaded with well spec’d hardware at a reasonable price. Lots of venting and powerful adjustable cooling fans. Speakers are set towards the front sides and fire outward, nice. Easily accessible bottom panel for accessing system for upgrading, cool. When I first opened the laptop found a 17.3” screen with small bezels and the nicest keyboard I have every used on any laptop, big Kudos. Keyboard has adjustable light level backlit keys which comes defaulted to turn off the backlighting when idle after 30 seconds and turn back on at the touch of any key to save battery life. Benchmarks for the Nitro's 9th gen i5-9300H comparisons show the i5-9300H to be 12% faster than the 7th Gen i7-7700HQ (the de facto 7th gen mobile gaming CPU) and 18% slower than the 8th gen i7-8750H mobile gaming CPU. Great numbers compared to its bigger brother i7 and i8 mobile processors of the previous two gens, offering exceptional performance per-core value. Based on GPU benchmarking the Nitro 5’s GTX 1650 4GB falls right in the middle between a GTX 1050 Ti and a 1060 6GB. This is a solid choice of GPU for the Nitro 5 bringing the latest tech into play in a strong value gaming laptop. Wi-Fi is rock solid on the Nitro, in fact best results I have had in my house ever, running 780Mbps from one side of the house to the other and 866Mbps halfway across the house. Typically, our (very up to date) laptops will vary in the connection Mbps speed but the Acer maintains the connection speeds with no drops in connection speed, highly impressive! If you are gaming on wi-fi you will love the connection. Good Stuff: - Western Digital PC 512Gb SN520 NVMe SSD, supporting PCIe Gen3 x2 Read 1729MBs Write 1455MBs (tested with CrystalDiskMark) - Two M.2 SSD slots and a dedicated HDD slot - Upgradable to 32Gb memory - Lots of ports including USB-C 3.1 - Wired Ethernet - 17.3” IPS screen with appealing colors – gaming is fantastic NitroSense utility is included which monitors system temps, manages cooling, power plan, and a few other advanced options. Handy utility for gamers. Believe from initial testing battery life on basic usage will last 5-6 hours and would not expect more than a couple hours of hard intense gaming. Keeping in mind gaming laptops are not known for long battery life while powering all the fun technology inside. Full charge from 14% was quick. The Nitro 5 is a solid choice with an excellent implementation of spec’d equipment to bring a very strong product together at a very reasonable price. Delivers brilliantly on the fun factor in the gaming department.

This is a little different from my other reviews because I have had several weeks to both use the Acer Nitro 15 17.3" laptop and also open it up to add an additional NVMe and traditional 2.5" hard drive. The short review - buy this laptop. The 17.3" screen on the Acr Nitro is worth the price. The gameplay is better on a bigger screen. You may sacrifice a bit of battery life, but no real gamer would play competitively on battery power anyway. The 17.3" Acer Nitro also comes with a 512MB SSD which is worth the money because that's more than enough for a few games. The keyboard is good, the touch pad is not to my liking but I am more of an external mouse user anyway and don't like touchpads. Now to the most important part - gaming. Wow. Wow. Wow. The i5 9th Generation and the nVidia GeForce GTX 1650 is a HUGE improvement on the previous generation 1050TI. Games I could not play on my previous laptop I can play on the Acer Nitro 5 GTX 1650 - thrilled to be playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey. All of my other games (Overwatch, CoD, etc) play at higher frame rates. I haven't found a game that doesn't run (I recommend the excellent https://www.systemrequirementslab.com if you want to see what you can/can't run). Design wise, Acer made some odd choices which are not deal breakers but I do wish Acer would fix. The power cable is oddly placed on the right side and covers part of the air vents. It also means that the heat vents blow hot air onto your right hand if you're using a mouse. If Acer switched positions, it would be perfect. The best thing about Acer's is you can upgrade the components. I don't know about the other Nitro's, but 17.3" has space for an additional SSD AND standard 2.5" laptop hard drive. Unlike previous Acer Nitro series laptops, there's no ready access panel you need to remove all of the screws on the underside, then pry open the case (I used a guitar pick). Acer ship a ribbon cable for the 2.5" hard drive as well as screws for securing the drive. Don't be fooled into thinking the included ribbon cable is damaged/bent on arrival, it's bent in a way that makes it easy to feed into over the battery and into your 2.5" drive (see photos, red rectangle shows you where it fits). What this all means is I am now running this laptop with 2.5TB of storage, a 1TB SSD as the main, I moved the 512MB SSD to the second slot and added a 2TB standard drive. Awesome. You will NOT find a laptop at this price that has such flexible expansion options. In short, the Acer Nitro 5 17.3" is a BRILLIANT gaming laptop. Acer made a weird decision on the power cable, but everything else is brilliant and I strongly recommend this. Yes, you compromise portability by moving up to a 17.3" screen but it's totally worth it for the benefits. Great job by Acer! I've included 3 photos of the internals of the Acer Nitro to help with anyone wanting to understand the upgrade options. Including a close up of the cable mounting for a 2.5" drive.