Acer’s Nitro series line-up is one of the most popular gaming laptops in the market, offering the latest in gaming specifications and a stylish chassis to match. We take a look at the Acer Nitro 5 (an515-57) and here are our thoughts about it.
Design
Acer’s gaming laptops have always been about offering good performance in a stylish chassis, and the new design of the laptop is well-refined as compared to its predecessor models. While it may not have an ultra-thin chassis, the laptop weighs about 2.2kg and that is not bad for a machine with a 15.6-inch display.
The laptop uses a matte IPS panel with FHD as its native resolution, along with a refresh rate that tops 144Hz for those smooth framerates. The viewing angles are great as any other IPS panel would appear and the colors appeared good.
The Nitro 5 uses a 4-zone RGB keyboard along with special highlights of the WASD and arrow keys to quickly recognize and get back in the game while you play. There is also a dedicated key to open the NitroSense application and control different aspects of the laptop. The touchpad is large in size with support for multi-gestures. We like the way how the RGB lighting is designed for each individual key and users will be able to customize the lighting based on their preferences.
The Acer Nitro 5 comes with plenty of connectivity options that include an RJ45 jack, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, and a headphone jack on the left side, followed by an HDMI port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port on the right side. The USB Type-C port has support for speeds up to 10 Gbps.
Acer also ensured that the laptop receives sufficient cooling and as such, there are air exhausts placed on either side of the laptop, along with another two exhausts on the rear side. The dual-fan cooling system makes use of the air-intake vents located on the top and bottom panels of the laptop. Unlike the bottom panel, the air intake on the top side (above the keyboard area) is a good place since airflow will not be blocked by any external devices.
The outer lid of the laptop has a unique design V-shaped design curve that somewhat resembles the Acer Predator logo, which is surprising since this is a Nitro series laptop. The rear exhausts of the laptop feature a sports car-like design with red accents. The device also features dual 2W speakers with DTS:X Ultra, which is capable of providing an immersive music experience and a 3D spatial soundscape.
Specs & Performance
While it may not be the latest, the Acer Nitro 5 that we have for review, is powered by the Tiger Lake-H based Intel i7-11800H 8-core/16-thread processor with speeds clocked at 2.30 GHz, along with a total of 24GB DDR4-3200 RAM (Hynix based). The primary storage is a 1TB PCIe SSD, also manufactured by SK Hynix, with Windows 11 Home installed.
The graphics, on the other hand, is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU with 8 GB GDDR6 memory onboard. The GPU is tuned to have a maximum power consumption of 100W and the speed is clocked to boost up to 1290 MHz. With the FHD display, the RTX 3070 should be able to handle most of the demanding games around at high resolutions. However, for those who want those fancy reflection effects, the ray-tracing settings need to be lowered. I ran some benchmarks such as Geekbench 5, FireStrike, TimeSpy, Unigine tests, along with some game benchmarks (with and without DLSS modes) and ray-tracing performance. Take a look at the numbers below.
Benchmarks
The laptop also comes with the Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650i module that features 160MHz channels and the Intel Killer E2600 helps to prioritize network traffic and ensures important data is transferred fast. When it comes to battery life, the Nitro 5 houses a 4-cell Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) battery that offers a maximum run time of 8 hours.
Verdict
The Acer Nitro 5 is for those looking for an affordable and stylish gaming laptop that is capable of offering good gaming performance. The 15.6-inch IPS screen and its FHD resolution are easy for the GPU to handle most games and the 144Hz native refresh rate allows users to enjoy fluid graphics. The laptop also comes with an RGB 4-zone keyboard, along with a dedicated NitroSense key. And the laptop weighs only 2.2kg.
The 11th generation i7-11800H 8-core processor, 24GB DDR4 RAM, and its 1TB SSD offer great computing performance and the GeForce RTX 3070 laptop GPU is capable of handling games at 1080p resolution. The Nitro 5 also comes with Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650i for high-speed internet and the 4-cell Lithium Ion battery should be able to last for almost a day for normal usage.