Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop Review

PROS

Portable design: Acer is known for lightweight machines that meet the mark for their respective categories. The Nitro 5 weighs only 5.95 pounds which makes it friendly to the back.
Matched display and graphics: Some gaming machines come with unmatched display and graphics speed. The result is image tearing and stuttering which dampens the gaming experience. Nitro 5’s IPS display and GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics card are appropriately synced for smooth image rendering.
Battery life: The gaming laptop has excellent battery life that lasts for about 10 hours in rundown tests. It, however, goes down to three hours and 40 minutes during intensive activity. Nevertheless, the time span in both cases is higher than that of most laptops in its category.

CONS

Mediocre Keyboard: It will take a miracle to get Acer to stop putting keys on the same button and narrowing cursor keys. Such arrangement spoils a rather great and slickly built machine.
Bloatware: It is a prevalent practice among laptop manufacturers to load their machines with preinstalled software. The Acer Nitro 5 comes with its share of the bloatware. They include, a trial version of Norton security antivirus and shortcuts to Firefox, Netflix, and Priceline. It also has apps such as Amazon and eBay.
Poor memory configuration: the Nitro 5 comes with a memory of 8GB DDR4. Under normal circumstance, such a memory should provide superfast speeds. However, the memory is single channel configured. As a result, its speed is lower than standard 8GB RAMs.

VERDICT

It is no doubt that the Nitro 5 is built for casual gamers and not hard-core ones. Professional gamers will find most of the features in this laptop mediocre and not encouraging. As a result, they should look for laptops that cost over $1,000. Otherwise, it is better than excellent for the mild gamer.

The limitations of the Nitro 5 gaming laptop are the result of a compromise between being affordable and top of the league. Acers chose to provide a bit of both world in this machine. There is nothing that can be done about Acer’s keyboard configuration, but it takes only a few games to master. The same applies to bloatware; you can uninstall them in less than 5 minutes to create space for other essential programs.

Editor rating

4/5 on January 31, 2018

$699.99
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User's rating

147 reviews

It is not easy to get a laptop that offers nearly all the premium features of a gaming laptop, but at a price, that does not involve four figures. Most powerful gaming machines are bulky equipment that you cannot carry, and they drain your pockets too. However, Acer brought to the market a machine that is not only portable but also provides enough power to satisfy the gaming desires of casual gamers on a budget. It is the Acer Nitro 5.

Contents

Design
Peripherals
Keyboard
Display
Speakers
Performance
Graphics

Design

Acer Nitro 5 can easily pass for a premium gaming machine given its outward look that makes you want to feel the surface. Only Asus ROG Strix rivals the outward design of the Nitro 5. It weighs 5.95 pounds, which is fair enough for a 15-inch gaming laptop.

If you are looking for a DVD drive or a VGA output port, then this is not for you. The only parts that can be accessed are the memory slots and the Hard disk. It is almost impossible to access the SSD storage.

Peripherals

The edge of the Nitro 5 is full of ports. There are two USB 2.0 ports and a headphone jack on the right side. The power cable port is also on this side of the laptop. On the left side are a USB 3.0 ports and a USB type C port. The other slots include memory slots, an Ethernet port, and a Kensington lock slot. The USB type C port, however, does not support Thunderbolt 3.

Keyboard

It is true that the keyboard of the Nitro 5 is excellent for typing. It is backlit but does not have RGB LED lights. Once again, Acer’s penchant for odd key placement destroys the high-quality experience that gamer would have enjoyed with this machine.

First, left and right cursors are narrowed, deliberately of course. Then the WASD keys have not been reinforced. Then there is the problem with two keys sharing the same button. Only gamers understand how problematic that could be.

Display

The top of the display is a 720p webcam that offers vivid collars and smooth videos. However, it does not support Windows Hello, so you cannot use face recognition to log on to windows.

The screen is a full HD display that has an in-play-switching, IPS technology. IPS helps widen the viewing angle and comes with a matte finish to minimize glare. Even though a 4K display is a better option than the IPS, the graphics settings of the Nitro 5 work only with the IPS. Trying to use the same on 4K display will result in image tearing and stuttering. No one wants that during a game.

The issue which color enthusiast will pick with Acer’s Nitro 5 is its low sRGB gamut coverage of only 59.1 %. This result in washed-out colors and the screen loses nearly 20% of its brightness.

Speakers

Acer provides no surprises with its Acer Nitro 5’s speakers. They have the usual high-end voices and vocals coupled with a lack of bass and cramped mid-range. It is no surprise with laptops. You may need external speakers if you are interested in filling the room with gaming noises.

Performance

The Nitro 5 comes with 256GB SSD storage with several upgrade options. You can get an extra 1TB hard disk just for a $50. The extra room will be more than sufficient for games, movies, and music videos. SSD memory is currently one of the fastest memory technologies on the market.

The Acer runs on a Core i5-7300HQ quad-core processor. However, it does not have Hyper-Threading technology hence the laptop’s multitasking capability is significantly inhibited.

Moreover, the performance of this machine is not by any means aided by the use of SSD memory and 8GB of DDR4 RAM. The 539MB/s and 424MB/s read write speed are normal speeds, and the memory is arranged in a single channel configuration. As a result, it is slower than a pair of 4GB RAMs.

Graphics

The Graphics of the Nitro 5 is sufficient for gamers who do not mind hitting the frame rate low at 30 fps. The performance of the GTX 1050Ti is sufficient given the cost and the display. Players looking for better and higher graphics performance can chuck out a few more bucks and opt for a machine that is powered by GTX 1080.