lcd panel acer nitro 5 an515-53 color accuracy made in china

The Apple MacBook Air might be the best laptop if you want to make color corrections, such as contrast and vibrance adjustments, on your real estate photos.

Unlike the other laptops on our list, this laptop comes with a Liquid Retina Display that boosts color saturating, improving the contrast and viewing experience by around 44 percent compared to other displays. This allows you to make color corrections and get truer results, regardless of the color space.

Like the HP Pavilion 15, this laptop comes with a 15.6 inches screen, which allows you to clearly view the image and make precise adjustments such as subject selections without zooming in.

Although the display can’t match the liquid Retina Display of the Apple MackBook Air, it’s a full HD IPS display and allows you to view the true colors of the image, minimizing the chances of misjudging the colors and ending up with oversaturated or undersaturated images.

If you have a large collection of real estate images in RAW format and want to process them with a RAW editor such as Lightroom, consider going for the Acer Aspire 5 laptop. This laptop comes with 512GB SSD storage, large enough to hold thousands of RAW images.

However, the Intel Core i5 processor in this laptop can’t handle heavy tasks like the top Intel Core i7 processor in the HP Pavilion 15. This makes the laptop overheat when running heavy applications.

In case you want to run heavy photo editing applications such as Lightroom and Photoshop simultaneously, you might need a laptop that is designed to handle heavy tasks, such as the Acer Nitro 5.

Unlike the Acer Aspire 5, this laptop is designed as a gaming laptop and comes with the advanced NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 GPU, which allows it to switch windows of simultaneously running applications without lags, freezing, or black screens. The display comes with a refresh rate of 144Hz.

The high refresh rate allows the display to update the edits you are making almost instantly, making it suitable for edits that require you to monitor the effect on the image, such as increasing the color saturation using the saturation slider.

However, with a weight of 5.07 pounds, it’s the second heaviest laptop on our list, making it unsuitable for shooting tethered where you might need to carry the laptop around in a laptop bag or backpack.

Typically, this laptop is the slimmest and most lightweight on our list, with a physical dimension of 12 x 8 x 0.5 inches and a weight of 2.51 pounds.

However, the laptop comes with a smaller 13.3 inches screen, and you might need to hide some panels from the workspace or zoom the image to avoid straining the eyes.

Also, the laptop comes with 256GB SSD storage, which might not store a large collection of RAW images compared to the 512GB storage of the HP Pavilion 15.

If you want a laptop you can use to manage a large collection of photos using a photo management program like Lightroom; then the HP Pavilion 15 might be the best laptop for you.

This laptop comes equipped with a large 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD storage that can store thousands of both processed and unprocessed image files. The storage is fast enough and offers a transfer speed almost 15x faster than the traditional hard drive.

Like the Lenovo Ideapad 3i, this laptop comes with a large 15.6 inches display that allows you to view the application"s panels and tools without straining your eyes.

The laptop comes with a good battery life of around 7.45 hours, which allows you to shoot tethered and share photos from remote places without worries about the battery dying in the midst of the photo shoot.

For instance, the LED LCD display uses backlights to illuminate the image pixels, while the pixels in the OLED display produce the light themselves instead of being illuminated. On the other hand, the Retina display is an improvement of the OLED display, usually used in Apple products.

As a result, a laptop display that uses the Retina display, such as the Apple MacBook Air, can reproduce images with better color accuracy and higher contrast, allowing you to adjust the image colors and get accurate results depending on the color space you are using.

A laptop with a poor graphics card can make you misjudge the colors and make the wrong color corrections and edits. It’s therefore advisable to go for a laptop with a high-end graphics card, such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 GPU in the Acer Nitro 5.

For the best performance, consider going for a laptop with the latest generation high-end processor, such as the 12th generation Intel Core i7 processor in the HP Pavilion 15.

On the other hand, the Acer Nitro 5 comes with a large cooling fan that helps it remain cool even under intense use. This makes the laptop bulky and heavy. It’s therefore advisable to check other factors and disregard the weight if you will be operating from an office.

Just like smartphones, laptops come in a wide range of screen sizes, mostly ranging from 13 inches to 15.6 inches. Generally, a larger screen gives a better viewing experience as you can clearly see the image details even without zooming the image in.

For instance, the larger 15.6 inches screen in the Lenovo Ideapad 3i means a correspondingly larger keyboard. This gives room for a numeric keypad which makes it more convenient to use the shortcut keys.

Although RAW files depend on the camera you are using, most have larger sizes, and a single image can be over 40MB. If you are working with a large collection of RAW images, it’s advisable to go for a laptop with bigger SSD storage, such as the Acer Aspire 5.

Even if the laptop has a high-end processor, slow or small RAM can affect its booting time and multitasking performance. For the best performance when using heavy editing programs, consider going for a laptop with 16GB DDR4 RAM, such as the HP Pavilion 15.

For instance, if you are using a slider to reduce contrast, you want a laptop that reflects the changes on the preview almost simultaneously as you drag the slider. Fortunately, you can get this responsiveness from a laptop with a higher refresh rate, such as the Acer Nitro 5.

A backlit keyboard comes with light underneath the keys that help to illuminate the symbols and letters. If your office is poorly lit, you can consider getting a laptop with a backlit keyboard, such as the Acer Aspire 5.

However, Acer does offer the Nitro 5s in a multitude of configurations. This article is about the updated 2020 15-inch Nitro 5, code-name Nitro 5 AN515-55, in its higher-tier version with the 10th gen Intel i7 processor, RTX 2060 graphics and a FHD 144 Hz display with 100% sRGB color coverage.

I’ve gathered all my thoughts and impressions on this product down below, however, keep in mind that most of our findings apply to the other 2020 Nitro 5 variants as well, with some differences in the performance, thermals, and noise for the lower tier configurations. That means that you will find most of this article useful no matter the Nitro 5 model you’re specifically looking at, and we’ll update with links towards our other reviews once we get to test those as well.

Much like the previous generations, this 2020 Nitro 5 is entirely made out of plastic. It doesn’t feel cheap, but it’s also not as nice as the metallic Acer Predator options, starting with the Nitro 7.

I appreciate that Acer ditched the faux carbon-fiber patterns and red accents on the lid used on some of their previous Nitros, as well as the fact that they implement muted Acer branding elements on this generation. However, those black smooth surfaces are incredibly prone to showing fingerprints and smudges, both on the lid and on the arm-rest, and you’ll constantly have to rub this laptop clean if you care about these aspects.

Despite the all-plastic build, this Nitro 5 feels sturdy, with a strong screen and little flex in the lid or keyboard deck. It’s also fairly compact and lightweight, at a little over 5 lbs in this variant.

As far as the practical aspects go, I will complain about a few details, such as the fact that the status LEDs are annoyingly placed just beneath the screen and the front lip and corners are too sharp for my liking. For the most part, though, this is a fine laptop. Acer put grippy feet on the bottom, implemented a hinge that allows one-hand operation and can get the screen to about 160 degrees on the back, and placed a fair selection of ports on the sides.

Acer offers this Nitro 5 series with either a red or an RGB keyboard, and we have this latter variant here, normally reserved for the higher-tier configurations.

It’s also a good typer that should appeal to most of you. The feedback is a bit stiffer than I’m used to and not as mushy as I remembered from the previous Nitros, and that’s a good thing.

Acer offers a couple of different screen options for the Nitro 5 series. Once more, our sample gets the higher-tier variant, which is a fine IPS FHD panel with 144 Hz refresh rate and fairly good response times.

This is a solid choice for gaming and daily use, with 100% sRGB color coverage, wide viewing angles and almost 400-nits of brightness at its highest setting. Blacks are fairly washed out, though, and that also impacts the overall contrast.

Our test model is a top-specced configuration of the Acer Nitro 5 in the 2020 AN515-55 model, with an Intel Core i7-10750H processor, 32 GB of DDR4 3200 MHz RAM, 1 TB of storage and dual graphics: the Nvidia RTX 2060 dGPU and the Intel UHD within the Intel platforms, with Optimus.

Before we proceed, keep in mind that our review unit is an early-production model with the software available as of late-July 2020 (BIOS v0.14, Nitro Sense 3.00.3138, GeForce Game Ready 451.67 drivers). While certain aspects might change with future software updates, our results should be mostly what you’ll get with the retail models as well.

Spec-wise, the 2020 Nitro 5 tops at a 6Core Intel Comet Lake i7-10750H processor available on this sample, with i5 models offered on the lower-end models. AMD Ryzen configurations are also available in some markets, but we’ll cover those in a separate article.

The updated Intel platform supports up to 3200 MHz DDR4 memory. Our configuration gets 16 GB of RAM in dual-channel, and there are two DIMMs available inside. As for the storage, our unit gets a single WDC PC SN530 drive. There are two M.2 slots on this laptop, as well as a 2.5″ bay.

For the GPU, what we have here is the standard Nvidia RTX 2060 non-Super graphics chip from 2019, in the 80W variant. I would have expected some power variation between the performance modes available in the Nitro Sense control app, but switching between Balance or High Performance doesn’t seem to change anything on our sample. In both cases, the CPU stabilizes at 45W in demanding loads, and the GPU runs at its stock 80W settings.

Both the CPU and GPU are soldered on the motherboard, but the memory, storage units, and wireless chip are accessible inside for upgrades. For that, you’ll need to take out the bottom panel, hold in place by a couple of Philips screws. I have to add that the 2.5″ bay lacks the required connector on our unit, and there’s a good possibility that Acer will not include it if you opt for a configuration without an installed HDD. Looks like a standard connector that you can easily find online, though.

Before we talk about real performance in demanding loads, I do have to mention that this Nitro 5 is a fine everyday laptop for multitasking, browsing, and video.

On to more demanding loads, we start by testing the CPU’s performance by running the Cinebench R15 test for 15+ times in a loop, with 2-3 seconds delay between each run.

The i7 processor quickly stabilizes at around 45+W on the High Performance setting, which translates in frequencies of 3.5+ GHz and temperatures of 95+ C, with scores of 1070+ points, and quiet fans at only 40-41 dB at head-level. There’s plenty of headroom on this implementation, and Acer could decide to allow it to run at higher power on this profile, the same way they allow it on their Helios and Triton lineups that we’ve tested.

Undervolting is disabled on this sample, and I couldn’t figure out how to enable it in BIOS. That’s unfortunate, as undervolting would have surely helped here, based on our experience with other Acer 10th gen notebooks.

Switching over to the Balance profile power doesn’t have any impact on the performance and thermals on this sample, which is one more reason why I’d expect the retail units to perform a little bit differently. The CPU is however power limited at 25+W on battery, with matching scores. Details below.

To put these findings in perspective, this Nitro 5 performed poorer than the other 15-inch implementations of the i7-10750H platform that we’ve tested, and that’s due to the stock 45W power-limit and lack of undervolting support. I’ve also added two competing AMD Ryzen 4800H models in the chart below, options available in this Nitro’s price range, just for a ballpark comparison of the kind of CPU performance gap you can get with the AMD platform these days at around $1000.

With that out of the way, we then went ahead and further verified our findings with the longer Cinebench R20 loop test and the gruesome Prime 95, on the High Performance profile. The CPU runs at 45+ W on both tests, with fairly quiet fans and solid temperatures of around 75-80 degrees C.

We also ran our combined CPU+GPU stress tests on this notebook. 3DMark stress runs the same test for 20 times in a loop and looks for performance variation and degradation over time, and this unit passed it fine. Luxmark 3.1 fully loads both the CPU and GPU at the same time. The CPU stabilizes at around 45W and 90+ degrees C, with the GPU running at around 80W and 82+ C.

The HWinfo logs below show the CPU and GPU speeds and temperatures in Witcher 3 and Far Cry 5 on the High Performance power profile, with the laptop sitting on the desk.

You can also manually adjust the fan’s speed in the Nitro Sense app, if you’re looking to better balance thermals and noise. However, without undervolting support or the possibility to cap the CPU in Throttlestop, I don’t think you will get it to run at lower than high-80s based on our experience with this sample, at least not in the latest generation AAA titles. Repasting might help, though, but that’s not for everyone

Acer didn’t skimp on the thermal design of this 2020 Nitro 5 configuration, implementing a cooling solution with two fans, four radiators, three heatpipes, and sufficient thermal plates spread on top of the components and secondary electronics. That’s a step-up from the design on the previous 2019 Nitro 5 lineups, and much closer to the kind of cooling normally implemented on higher-tier products, such as their Predator Helios 300 lineup.

With this sort of thermal design, I’m somewhat surprised by those high CPU temperatures in this chassis. Make sure to look into a few other reviews, maybe there’s something wrong with our sample. I’ll update this section once we get to review a few more Nitro 5 configurations.

With games, the fans ramp up to 43-44 dB on Auto, or 49-50 dB on their Max setting available in the Nitro Sense control app. Here’s a quick summary, at head-level.

As far as outer shell temperatures go, this Nitro runs cooly with daily use, but heats up a fair bit with gaming. With the fans on Auto, we measured temperatures in the high 40s around the arrow keys, and mid 50s in the right side of the keyboard, but the WASD region stays cool at mid to high 30s. Switching over to the Max fan profile shaves a few degrees of the hottest regions, but doesn’t drastically change things.

*Daily Use – streaming Netflix in EDGE for 30 minutes, Balance Profile, fans at 33-37 dB*Gaming  – High Performance – Auto fans – playing Far Cry 5 for 30 minutes, fans at 43-44 dB

The speakers fire through cuts on the underbelly and don’t expect much from them. We measured volumes of around 73-75 dB at head-level, and experienced average to poor sound quality, with little at the lower end (on the Music profile in Nitro Sense). You’ll most likely want to hook up some headphones with this.

For some reason the CPU didn’t clock down the way it should on our sample, thus I’d expect the retail versions to run more efficiently and offer around 3-4 hours of daily multitasking, 4-5 hours of light use and 5-6 hours of video on a charge.

This Nitro 5 configuration comes with a compact 180W power-brick, and that’s what you’ll also get with the GTX 1660Ti models. The battery fills up in about 2 hours and USB-C charging is not supported.

This top-end configuration with the 144 Hz screen, the i7 processor and the RTX 2060 graphics chip goes for around 1350 EUR in Germany and 1150 GBP in the UK, but I couldn’t find it in the US just yet.

However, Acer offers this in a multitude of other versions, starting from 899 EUR/799 GBP for the i5 model with GTX 1650Ti graphics, while the i7 model with 1660Ti graphics is available for 1199 EUR/999 GBP. Careful about those screen options, though. If possible, I’d definitely pay extra for the 144 Hz 100% sRGB panel on this sample.

The RTX 2060 variant tested here might not be the most popular version of this laptop, as it’s nearly as expensive as the 2060 variant of the higher tier Predator Helios 300, but the 1660Ti and 1650Ti models are worth more than a look. Acer cleaned-up the design, upgraded the thermal module, keyboard and screen options, and also updated the hardware specs with these Nitros.

On the other hand, the high CPU temperatures with games, paired with only limited performance in CPU-heavy loads, plus the poor speakers and smudge-prone black plastic build are some of the aspects that could lead you towards something else. But even so, the 2020 Nitro 5 lineup is competitive in its segment, where some compromises have to be made to hit the lower price tag.