lcd panel acer nitro 5 an515-53 color accuracy free sample

One of the weak spots on Acer’s Nitro lineup has been the display in the past, so we will see how the new model fares. The base offering is a 15.6-inch 1920x1080 IPS display, offering a 60 Hz refresh rate, and on higher-tire models there is a 144 Hz offering available, although with the limited GPU offerings, that is likely overkill for this machine. There is no G-SYNC available either, so although 144 Hz displays are fantastic, the Acer Nitro 5 likely won’t be able to achieve that kind of framerate at its native resolution anyway.

To see how the Acer Nitro 5’s display performs, we test it using Portrail Display’s Calman software suite with a custom workflow. Brightness and contrast measurements are done with the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter, and color accuracy testing is done with the X-Rite i1 Pro 2 spectrophotometer.

To hit a price target, one of the first areas generally cut is the display backlighting, and that is certainly the case here. At just 260 nits of peak brightness, the Acer Nitro 5 is one of the least-bright displays we have tested recently. That being said, it does offer relatively good black levels, so the overall contrast ratio is very solid at 1300:1.

At 200 nits brightness, the grayscale was very impressive on the Nitro 5, with very even red, green, and blue coloring to the white levels. The overall result did not go over the 3.0 level at any point, and the average was just 2.4 dE2000, which is quite good.

Unfortunately for the Acer Nitro 5, the good grayscale is not backed up by good color accuracy. The Nitro 5 backlighting is not only dim, it can not even get close to covering the entire sRGB color gamut. The blue values are very undersaturated at 100% levels, but red and green are both unable to hit the correct target either, so the secondary colors are quite far off the mark as well.

Gamut tests the color accuracy at 100% levels for the primary and secondary colors, and the saturation test does the same thing but at 4-bit steps from 0% to 100%. The blue levels are some of the worst results we have seen in years, with a peak error level of almost 17. For reference, error levels of 3.0 are considered accurate, and under 1.0 is considered impossible for the eye to distinguish.

The Gretag Macbeth swatch tests not just the primary and secondary colors, but many others as well, including the important skin tones. With the display unable to achieve the full sRGB gamut, the GMB results are unsurprisingly poor. The average error level is helped by reasonable grayscale, but most of the other colors are quite far off.

The colorchecker tests a sample of colors, and displays the target color on the bottom with the measured color on the top, to give a visual indication of the inaccuracy of the display. This is a relative result, as any errors in your own display will change the output, but it is still a handy way to more easily interpret the error levels shown above. It is not very pretty for the Acer Nitro 5.

Going into this review, there were not high hopes for the display. It is an area where Acer has found room to keep costs down in the past, and if we are being honest, it is an area where you expect less than ideal results in a budget-focused design. That being said, $300 iPads and $500 Surface tablets ship with full sRGB displays that are calibrated per-device. This display is fine for what it is. It is an IPS display, with good viewing angles, and at least on the review unit, good white values, but although some slack must be given Acer due to the tight budget on this device, it is still a bad display.

The Nitro 5 has been Acer’s go-to budget laptop since the line first debuted in 2017, where it made use of Intel’s 7th gen chips. But thanks to the AMD Ryzen 5 4600U processor, 2020’s AMD refresh of the Nitro 5 makes the laptop more affordable than ever. Its specs are definitely entry-level, but at $669, it’s among the most affordable gaming laptops you can get right now, and one of the best gaming laptops on a budget. That does mean you’ll have to make some sacrifices, though, especially when it comes to the display.

This year’s Acer Nitro 5 sports a slightly new look when compared to previous models, with the key difference being a slightly thinner quarter-inch side bezel around the screen. Otherwise, the design changes are largely aesthetic, though they give the laptop a modern feel compared to previous iterations. The main look here is “angles.” The laptop case itself is cut into angles at the corner and angular vents adorn the back and side. The lid also has decorative angular indents on its otherwise flat surface. One big change here over previous versions of this laptop is that the lid is now largely flat, which looks a bit more modern.

Opening the lid reveals that the Nitro brand’s black and red motif now spreads across the whole keyboard. Compared to previous Nitro 5 models, which had all-black keycaps with red lettering, all the keycaps on this model have red outlines on their sides to help keys stand out. It really makes it pop. To maintain extra contrast on the WASD keys, though, this model also adds red outlines to the very edges of the top of their keycaps, as well as gives them a slightly different font. This is also the case for the arrow keys and the “Nitro” key. The touchpad also has a red outline. The exterior of the laptop is all-black, then, except for a red Nitro logo printed across the hinge and a hard red plastic grill that surrounds the back vents.

The Acer Nitro 5 charges through a port on its back, leaving both sides open for accessories and other connections. The laptop’s left side has two USB Type-A ports, one RJ-45 ethernet port and a 3.5mm combination headphone and microphone jack. The right side, then, has an HDMI 2.0 port, another USB Type-A connection and a Thunderbolt 3 port.

The Acer Nitro 5 is roughly on par with mainstream gaming laptops when it comes to size, though it is slightly thicker than some competitors. For instance, it comes in at 14.3 x 10 x 0.9 inches when stacked up against the Dell G3 15’s 14.4 x 10 x 0.9 inches and the HP Omen 15’s 14.1 x 9.4 x 0.9 inches. It is also roughly about as heavy as these competitors as well, weighing 5.3 pounds against the G3 15’s 5.4 pounds and the Omen 15’s 5.4 pounds.

The Nitro 5 works to cut costs while keeping performance playable on most modern games, though you might have to drop below high settings to hit over 60 fps on certain titles. Unlike similar mainstream laptops like the Dell G3 15, which uses an Intel Core i5-9300H, the Nitro 5 opts for an AMD Ryzen 5 4600U. It might not be as advanced as the Omen 15’s Ryzen 7 4800H, but it works well assuming you’re either fine with 30 fps or don’t mind not always using the highest graphics presets.

Of course, the Nitro 5 is also big enough to pack a GPU, and uses an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650. That’s the same card as the G3 15, though the Omen 15 uses a more powerful GTX 1660 Ti (and is more expensive because of it).

When I played Control on Nitro 5 for a half hour, I typically landed between 28 - 35 fps on low settings and 28 - 35 fps on high settings. Because the Nitro 5 uses a GTX GPU, ray tracing wasn’t an option, but aside from a few rare dips below 30 fps during heavy action, the game was plenty playable.

High preset graphics performance improved slightly when we benchmarked Grand Theft Auto V at 1920 x 1080 on very high. Here, the game scored an average 40 fps, which was slightly higher than the G3 15’s 38 fps but much lower than the Omen 15’s 61 fps (which isn’t surprising - that’s a step up spec-wise).

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was barely above 30 fps results when we ran its 1920 x 1080 benchmark on its highest preset. The game ran at a 32 fps average on the Nitro 5 and a 48 fps on the Omen 15. Shadow of the Tomb Raider wasn’t in our testing rotation when we reviewed the Dell G3 15.

Performance was at its highest in Far Cry: New Dawn’s benchmark (1920 x 1080, ultra). Both the Nitro 5 and the G3 15 scored an average 53 fps here, while the Omen 15 earned 75 fps.

We also returned to Metro: Exodus to stress test the Nitro 5, running its 1080p high settings benchmark on a loop 15 times. Here, the Nitro 5 had an average 34.3 fps. The average CPU clock speed was 3.4 GHz while the average GPU clock speed was 1.6 GHz. The laptop was plenty cool throughout, with an average CPU temperature of 59.2 degrees Celsius (138.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and an average GPU temperature of 53.4 degrees Celsius (128.1 degrees Fahrenheit).

The Nitro 5, uses a Ryzen 5 4600U processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB M.2 PCIe SSD. To test it, we put it up against the Dell G3 15, which uses an Intel Core i5-9300H CPU, and the HP Omen 15, which uses a more powerful Ryzen 7 4800H CPU.

The Nitro 5 scored 5,262 on our Geekbench 5.0 benchmark, which measures general productivity. That puts it over 1,000 points above the G3 15’s 4,119, though the Omen 15 heavily outperformed both with a score of 7,978, thanks to the high-end processor.

We got similar results on our Handbrake benchmark, which tracks how long it takes a computer to transcode a video down from 4K to FHD. The Nitro 5 completed the task in 9:11, while the G3 15 trailed behind with a time of 14:01. The Omen 15 was the fastest, finishing the transcode in 6:01.

Results were closer in our file transfer test, where we track how quickly a computer transfers 4.97GB of files. The Acer Nitro 5 moved the files at a rate of 273.6 MBps, while the G3 15 was slightly faster at 299.4 MBps.

I tested the Nitro 5’s display by watching the trailer for The New Mutantson the screen. Because The New Mutants makes such heavy use of blacks, this let me immediately identify the display’s strongest quality- its black are effectively deep and do not bleed. This makes it easy to follow action and distinguish character silhouettes. Unfortunately, in more colorful scenes, the colors were largely dull, which was also the case when I watched the more colorful Sonic the Hedgehog movie on the display. They weren’t inaccurate, but they also failed to pop, which wasn’t aided by what felt to me like a dim screen with poor viewing angles where the picture washed out whenever I got more than about 35 degrees away from the display.

The Nitro 5 was the most dim among its competitors, though, only hitting 255 nits of average brightness while the G3 15 hit 272 nits and the Omen 15 scored 311 nits.

The Acer Nitro 5’s keyboard has comfortable raised chiclet-style buttons and a full numeric keypad, though its keypad has a unique layout that takes a little getting used to and includes a superfluous button.

Pressing buttons on this keyboard feels good. The keys are slightly raised above the surface, enough that you can see their switches underneath, which means they feel like the sink down into the keyboard when you press on them. They also feel soft and cushiony when pressing down, though not so soft that they don’t give you tactile feedback. For instance, I was able to score an average 85 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test using the Nitro 5 keyboard, which is 10 wpm higher than my usual score.

All the numbers are there, as well as key functions like PgUp and End, but the right arrow key juts into its bottom row. This is probably so that the arrow keys can be full-size, but it does mean the numeric keypad loses out on a possible button. The Acer Nitro key further exacerbates this issue, as it takes up a button slot next to Numlock and only functions to open the Acer NitroSense app. This means the + and - keys had to move off to the side, which could mess with muscle memory.

The Acer Nitro 5 has one bottom-firing speaker on either side, which I tested using Dynamite by BTS. The song was understandable, though I did lose some information.

At full volume, the Nitro 5’s speakers were able to carry across my entire 2-bedroom apartment, so volume wasn’t the issue. Instead, the problem was mostly in the bass, as the speakers cut most of the bass track from the song. It was a completely different experience than listening to the song on either my headphones or desktop speakers, and made the line “Can’t you hear the bass boom?” pretty funny.

Opening the Acer Nitro 5 is painless, and gives you access to plenty of parts to play around with. Just use a Phillip’s head screwdriver to unscrew the 11 identical screws along the laptop’s bottom, then lift off the case. Inside, you’ll see the M.2 SSD, network card, and RAM.

The Acer Nitro 5 excels on battery life and should keep you going for more than a full workday for non-gaming tasks. On our benchmark, which continuously streams video, browses the web and runs OpenGL over Wi-Fi tests at 150 nits of brightness, the Nitro 5 kept working for 11 hours and 9 minutes. That far exceeds the Dell G3 15’s 6:41 battery life and the Omen 15’s 6:13 battery life on the same test.

The Acer Nitro 5 remains cool during non-gaming use. After streaming 15 minutes of Youtube videos, the hottest part of the laptop- the underside- only registered 88.3 degrees Fahrenheit (31.3 degrees Celsius). Even better, the coolest part- the touchpad- was just 74.5 degrees Fahrenheit (23.6 degrees Celsius). The center of the keyboard (between the G and H keys) was between the two, hitting 81.5 degrees Fahrenheit (27.5 degrees Celsius).

The Acer Nitro 5’s built-in 720p webcam is surprisingly high quality, which is impressive for such an inexpensive laptop, and appreciated given that the best webcams are hard to come by right now.

I tested the webcam in both high and low light, though didn’t find much of a difference between either. Regardless of lighting levels, every picture I took with the Nitro 5 came out with accurate colors and texture and only minor grain. They weren’t as good as what I might get on my iPhone, but given that I’ve reviewed several multi-thousand dollar laptops that make me look like a zombie, they were plenty detailed and true-to-life for my purposes.

Buying an Acer laptop means making peace with bloatware being pre-installed on your machine, and the Nitro 5 is the best example of this I’ve seen yet. I found about 20 programs pre-installed on the Nitro 5 that many users will probably find themselves wanting to remove, including gems like the “User Experience Improve Program.” And the best part is that there’s even bloatware that encourages you to install more bloatware.

Standard Windows pre-installs like Spotify are on the Nitro 5, but so are promotional inclusions like Netflix, ExpressVPN, GoTrustID (a password manager app) and the creatively named “Dropbox Promotion.” Firefox also comes pre-installed on the Nitro 5, and while some of these programs might be useful for some people, I doubt everyone who buys a Nitro 5 will want to use all of them.

The most egregious but simultaneously generous Nitro 5 bloatware is Norton Security, which came with 2 years of time on our laptop. The Nitro 5 also has a photo editor named PhotoDirector for Acer and a movie editor named PowerDirector for Acer.

Finally, the Nitro 5 also has Acer Collection S on it, which is a storefront that sells free apps like Facebook and The Weather Channel, but also sells more niche paid apps like “Yoga Studio.” So, if you didn’t have enough installed on your computer already, you can add to it here.

2020’s Acer Nitro balances budget pricing with entry-level performance. It’s not going to match the performance of the best gaming laptops, but compared to similarly powerful Intel laptops, it’s much cheaper.

For instance, the Nitro 5 was mostly on par in gaming with the Intel Core i5-9300H powered Dell G3 15 from last year, despite costing $669 against that machine’s $849. It also outperformed it on productivity and had the same display color spectrum and almost the same display brightness. The G3 15 is slightly thinner, but aside from that, the Nitro 5 offers almost identical performance at a much lower cost.

That said, it does still make compromises, and its angular black-and-red design isn’t for everybody. The Nitro 5 wasn’t able to keep up with the also AMD-powered HP Omen 15 in our tests. That’s understandable, as the Omen 15 uses more powerful components like the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H processor and GTX 1660 Ti GPU, plus has a brighter and more colorful screen. All of that comes at a price- the Omen 15 costs $1299.99, but if you want a more premium 15-inch laptop with a sleeker design that still uses AMD, it’s a great bet.

For its niche, though, the Acer Nitro 5 delivers great value. While it can’t always play games on high settings at over 30 fps, it’s a perfect entry-level gaming laptop for people who don’t need the best of the best.

Raytracing for the middle class. Ray tracing was reserved for expensive high-end graphics cards in the past. With the GeForce RTX 3050 (Ti), Nvidia now brings the exciting technology to the mid-range range. We test the GPU with the Acer Nitro 5 AN517-53-54DQ.

The Acer Nitro 5, which is very popular due to its usually good price-performance ratio, exists in various CPU and GPU configurations. We took one of the cheapest models, the AN517-53-54DQ, and put it through its paces. The 17-incher, which wanders over the (virtual) counter for just under 1,000 Euro (~$1180), can fall back on a quad-core processor from Intel"s current Tiger-Lake generation, more precisely the Core i5-11300H.

Demanding graphics calculations (the notebook supports Nvidia"s Optimus technology) are taken care of by the GeForce RTX 3050 laptop GPU, a brand new mid-range chip based on Nvidia"s Ampere architecture. The operating system (Windows 10 Home 64 bit) is installed on a 512 GB NVMe SSD in M.2 format. The display is a matte IPS panel with 1,920 x 1,080 pixels and 144 Hz.

Killer E2600 Gigabit Ethernet Controller (10/100/1000MBit/s), Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650i 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter (201NGW) (a/b/g/n = Wi-Fi 4/ac = Wi-Fi 5/ax = Wi-Fi 6/), Bluetooth 5.0

The Nitro 5 AN517-53-54DQ"s competitors include other affordable 17-inch gamers with quad-core CPUs and mid-range GPUs like the Lenovo Legion 5 17IMH05, the MSI GF75 Thin 10SCXR and the Asus TUF FX705DT-AU068T, which are all still equipped with the old GeForce GTX 1650, the predecessor of the RTX 3050. We also compared the HP Omen 15-ek0456ng with a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti for the test.

Since the chassis is mostly identical to the recently reviewed Acer Nitro 5 AN517-41-R5Z7, we will not go into more detail about the chassis, the equipment (interfaces, etc.) and the input devices in this article. You can find the corresponding information in the linked review. The only striking change concerns the keyboard. Instead of a white lettered and RGB illuminated keyboard, the Nitro 5 AN517-53-54DQ offers a red model (both lettering and illumination).

404 mm / 15.9 inch280 mm / 11 inch25 mm / 0.984 inch2.6 kg5.66 lbs399.8 mm / 15.7 inch279.4 mm / 11 inch26.6 mm / 1.047 inch2.7 kg5.95 lbs398.6 mm / 15.7 inch290 mm / 11.4 inch26.2 mm / 1.031 inch2.9 kg6.42 lbs397 mm / 15.6 inch260 mm / 10.2 inch23.1 mm / 0.909 inch2.2 kg4.78 lbs358 mm / 14.1 inch240 mm / 9.45 inch32 mm / 1.26 inch2.1 kg4.71 lbs297 mm / 11.7 inch210 mm / 8.27 inch1 mm / 0.03937 inch5.7 g0.01257 lbs

Although the 144 Hz panel matches the Nitro 5 AN517-41-R5Z7, the determined values deviate slightly in places. This is a typical phenomenon since there are always certain fluctuations in series production.

However, the color space turns out to be the biggest weakness. 55% sRGB coverage and around 38% Adobe RGB coverage are very disappointing and make for a rather pale picture. Among the comparison devices, only the MSI GF75 performs similarly poorly. The same applies to the color accuracy, although the Lenovo Legion 5 also leaves something to be desired here.

The other rates are rather unspectacular. For example, the response time of just under 19 ms black-to-white and 25 ms gray-to-grey is neither bad nor particularly good. We could not determine flickering at reduced brightness. The viewing angles are on the usual IPS level.

ℹDisplay response times show how fast the screen is able to change from one color to the next. Slow response times can lead to afterimages and can cause moving objects to appear blurry (ghosting). Gamers of fast-paced 3D titles should pay special attention to fast response times.↔ Response Time Black to White

In comparison: 53 % of all tested devices do not use PWM to dim the display. If PWM was detected, an average of 19261 (minimum: 5 - maximum: 3846000) Hz was measured.

In contrast to other gaming notebooks from Acer, the preinstalled Nitro Sense tool has very few functions and options. Besides the fan control, you can only change the energy-saving plan. Our measurements were performed in the delivery state (see screenshot).

A quad-core CPU indicates mid-range hardware as well as 8 GB of RAM and a GPU with 4 GB of VRAM. If you invest a bit more money, you can also get the Nitro 5 with high-end features (8-core CPU, 16 GB RAM, 6-8 GB GPU).

As mentioned before, the Core i5-11300H is a quad-core model from the Tiger Lake series, which is finally no longer manufactured in the outdated 14 nm process that Intel used for years. The 10 nm CPU offers 8 MB L3 cache and can process up to 8 threads in parallel via Hyper-Threading. Compared to the classic 6- and 8-core chips, the TDP is only 35 instead of 45 watts. According to the HWiNFO tool, the processor in the Nitro 5 is set to 40 watts PL1 and 64 watts PL2. The clock - depending on the application and load - is between 3.1 and 4.4 GHz under load.

We checked how the CPU behaves over a long period of time using Cinebench R15. The Core i5-11300H"s performance remained fairly constant in the loop and, as expected, placed itself above the old Core i5-10300H in the loop.

Despite the modest memory configuration, it is enough for the first place in the test field in the system benchmarks. PCMark 10 sees the Nitro 5 between 8% and 40% ahead of the competition, whereby the everyday Windows experience should feel very similar on all devices in terms of boot time and loading times, etc.

There is praise for the fast mass storage. While SATA III SSDs with a maximum of 500 - 600 MB/s were common in the budget sector in the past, fast PCIe/NVMe SSDs are slowly but surely part of the standard repertoire. The Nitro 5 offers a particularly powerful representative of this guild with the 512 GB version of the SK Hynix BC711, which leaves the NVMe models of the competitors behind, sometimes significantly.

The most interesting aspect for many users might be the GPU. While we were able to examine the mobile GeForce RTX 3050 Ti once or twice in the past, there have hardly been any benchmark results for the RTX 3050 so far. Compared to the RTX 3050 Ti, the DirectX 12 model has to make do with 2,048 instead of 2,560 shaders.

However, the performance primarily depends on the cooling system (keyword clock margin) and the set TGP. The latter varies between 35 and 80 watts for the RTX 3050 (without Dynamic Boost). In the case of the Nitro 5, it is 75 watts including Dynamic Boost, so it is a pretty good value that is in the upper third.

We see the limited video memory as the weak point. Both the RTX 3050 and the RTX 3050 Ti only have 4 GB of GDDR6 VRAM (128-bit interface), which is no longer up-to-date in 2021 and especially in view of the VRAM requirements of many current games and has a negative impact on the future-proofing of the laptop. Even in the mid-range segment, at least 6 GB would be appropriate by now.

However, the Ampere GPU has an easy game against the old GTX 1650, which still had to do without ray tracing support. In the 3DMark tests, the lead is usually 30 to 40%. However, it does not quite reach the GTX 1660 Ti"s level - that was to be expected beforehand.

Analogous to the synthetic benchmarks, the mobile GeForce RTX 3050 also ranks between the GTX 1650 (Ti) and the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti in the gaming course, whereby the frame rate sometimes tends more in one and sometimes more in the other direction depending on the game and VRAM consumption.

Overall, the GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU is fast enough to run most titles in the native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 with high to maximum details. It only gets tight when ray tracing is enabled or very computationally intensive and/or moderately optimized games like GeForce RTX 3060 upwards.

The noise level is in line with the competition. While we could elicit 25 to 33 dB(A) from the 17-incher in idle mode (the device is silent under ideal conditions), it was 43 to 47 dB(A) under load (average 44 dB(A) after one hour of The Witcher 3). In short: The Nitro 5 is neither quiet nor unpleasantly loud in 3D mode.

dB(A)0102030405060708090Deep BassMiddle BassHigh BassLower RangeMidsHigher MidsLower HighsMid HighsUpper HighsSuper Highs2036.738.137.63736.735.92534.235.637.234.53336.93144.649.143.541.645.845.74032.634.432.428.629.833.75028.626.23027.224.227.36328.731.52531.325.230.98023.825.123.421.219.125.210022.924.222.718.619.8241252426.121.423.118.727.916026.224.620.119.820.1302002826.122.821.82229.825026.823.218.117.116.728.43153022.6191514.136.240028.321.724.314.412.831.75002921.83314.112.931.363030.924.217.81312.13480030.222.214.21311.133.8100032.622.513.612.511.435.8125034.324.416.813.21238.2160035.225.614.112.311.638.5200032.521.512.612.111.836.3250032.818.212.611.912.136.2315030.416.512.712.712.539.240002615.812.812.812.931.4500024.914.313.112.91329.5630021.313.913.51313.226.8800020.81413.413.113.224.31000018.713.313.112.81322.11250016.413.113.212.812.816.51600016.512.512.512.612.813.9SPL42.933.131.325.324.947.3N3.91.71.30.70.65.6median 28median 21.8median 14.1median 13median 12.9median 31.3Delta3.94.23.92.21.95.7hearing rangehide medianshow medianFan NoiseAcer Nitro 5 AN517-53-54DQ

The 17-inch laptop is also quite inconspicuous in terms of temperature development. In view of the offered performance, the ascertained chassis rates are acceptable - at least on the upper side. The underside heated up to 54 °C (129.2 °F) in the stress test and after 60 minutes of The Witcher 3, which is why you should not necessarily place the notebook on your lap while gaming. When the Nitro 5 has nothing to do, the surfaces stay pleasingly cool (less than 30 °C/86°F). You can see the temperatures of the components (CPU, GPU, etc.) in the screenshots.

(-) The maximum temperature on the upper side is 47 °C / 117 F, compared to the average of 40.4 °C / 105 F, ranging from 21.2 to 68.8 °C for the class Gaming.

dB(A)0102030405060708090Deep BassMiddle BassHigh BassLower RangeMidsHigher MidsLower HighsMid HighsUpper HighsSuper Highs2040.236.9253636.93141.649.64029.633.55026.129.66327.432.78019.72610021.829.612518.134.316019.836.120024.544.925020.654.931516.557.540012.960.450013.462.563011.671.280011.568.2100011.468125012.168.9160011.870.3200012.367.5250012.468.1315012.966.6400013.262.4500013.364.8630013.961.6800013.662100001362.11250012.559.81600012.152.4SPL25.479N0.744.1median 13median 62.1Delta2.87.632.228.232.237.632.337.637.834.137.829.725.829.730.427.130.425.925.525.92420.72425.418.525.433.218.833.235.31835.331.217.131.23816.23844.714.944.752.514.652.55614.8565814.35859.714.359.754.71454.751.913.951.947.914.147.95014.15051.414.651.455.114.655.154.114.754.154.514.854.557.814.857.858.115.158.15415.2545216.45245.815.445.86726.76722.10.822.1median 52median 14.8median 525.70.75.7hearing rangehide medianshow medianPink NoiseAcer Nitro 5 AN517-53-54DQHP Omen 15-ek0456ng

Since the notebook offers graphics switching and Acer does not use high-end hardware in the present configuration, the energy consumption is kept within limits with 4 to 15 watts (idle) and 85 to 135 watts (load), respectively. The 135 watt power supply seems to be sufficiently sized.

One of the biggest highlights of the tested Nitro 5 is the ample battery life. Despite the only mediocre battery capacity of 57 Wh (the competition has 51-80 Wh), the 17-incher lasts over 17 hours under perfect conditions, i.e. minimum display brightness and no load. This value is just as respectable for a gaming laptop as is around 7 hours of Internet surfing via WLAN with medium display brightness.

The 17-inch device offers - apart from the somewhat unfortunate memory configuration (single-channel, single-rank) - a balanced hardware mix that can render most current games smoothly in high to maximum details, as long as you use the native resolution of 1,920 x 1,080.The Core i5-11300H and the GeForce RTX 3050 laptop GPU form a successful and price-performance appealing team.

The display leaves rather mixed feelings. On the one hand, the contrast and black value are pleasing, on the other hand, the color space and brightness could be much better. The other aspects (ports, case quality, input devices, etc.) hardly stand out from the crowd and are mostly in the midfield. One of the few unique selling points is the generous battery life of about 7 hours during Internet surfing.

Current counterparts based on RTX-3050 or 3050-Ti are rather rare or hardly available, not least because of the still prevailing chip shortage, but they should become more and more common in the coming weeks and months.

The Acer Nitro 5 has a typical budget gamer design, with a plasticky look and a black and red color scheme. The keyboard"s backlight only lights up in red, and there are also red accents around the WASD and arrow keys. There are air vents on both sides of the laptop and the back.

The Acer Nitro 5 feels well-built. It has a full plastic construction that feels solid, with just a bit of flex in the keyboard deck and screen. The hinge is sturdy, similar to the Dell Alienware m15 R3 (2020) in build and solidity.

The Acer Nitro 5"s serviceability is excellent. It"s very easy to access the internals, as you only have to remove some Philips screws, pull a few clips, and pry it open. There are two memory slots; the laptop supports up to 64GB of memory. Our unit has a single 256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD, and there"s room for one more, as well as a slot for a 2.5-inch storage drive. There"s an HDD mounting kit (cable and screws) included in the box.

1080p is a typical resolution for 15.6-inch displays. It looks decently sharp, although you can see individual pixels if you"re close enough. All three displays look the same in terms of sharpness, so you only have to choose the refresh rate you want.

The Acer Nitro 5 has three screen refresh rate options: 60Hz, 120Hz, or 144Hz. The 60Hz panel"s response time is very slow, causing noticeable ghosting behind moving objects. For the best gaming experience, it"s best to go with the 120Hz or 144Hz panels, as they"ll likely have a faster response time. Unfortunately, none of the displays support variable refresh rate to reduce screen tearing.

The 60Hz display has a good contrast ratio, better than the 700-1000:1 contrast on most IPS panels. However, it"s still low compared to VA and OLED panels and isn"t ideal for dim settings because blacks look grayish in the dark. The 120Hz and 144Hz displays will perform similarly.

The 1080p 60Hz screen"s brightness is okay. It"s fine for most indoor settings, but it isn"t bright enough to fight glare in very well-lit or sunny environments. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which is great for dark room viewing because as it causes less eye strain. The 120Hz and 144Hz panels will likely perform similarly.

The reflection handling is decent. It struggles more with direct reflections, so it"s best to avoid having bright lights shining directly on the screen. It isn"t too bad when viewing light-color content with the screen is at max brightness, but it makes dark-color content hard to see.

The Acer Nitro 5 AN515 has an okay horizontal viewing angle. The image looks dimmer and more washed out from the side. It"s good enough for sharing the screen with someone else as long as you don"t need perfect image accuracy.

The 60Hz panel has bad color accuracy out of the box. Most colors are inaccurate because the panel has a narrow color gamut and can"t display all the colors in the sRGB color space. The white balance is also visibly off, and the image has a slight reddish tint due to the warm color temperature. The gamma doesn"t follow the sRGB curve; most scenes are too bright and dark scenes are slightly over-darkened.

The 60Hz screen has a bad color gamut. It doesn"t even have full sRGB coverage, the color space used in most content, and it has even worse coverage of the wider color spaces, like Adobe RGB, DCI P3, and Rec. 2020, making it a poor choice for viewing HDR content or media creation. Luckily, there"s an HDMI port if you want to use an external desktop monitor. The other panels will likely perform similarly.

The Acer Nitro AN515"s backlight is only flicker-free if you set the screen brightness to maximum. However, the flicker frequency below maximum brightness is very high and isn"t noticeable.

The Acer Nitro 5"s keyboard is sub-par. Although it has stable keys with a good amount of travel and feels good to type on, it sometimes doesn"t register some keystrokes, which causes more typos when typing and can be a dealbreaker for some gamers. The layout is fairly standard, though, so it doesn"t take long to adapt to it. The backlight has four levels of brightness, which you can control directly from the keyboard. There"s a "Nitro" button where the NumLock usually is to launch the Nitro app, which lets you access power settings and fan controls, as well as monitor system temperatures. If you want a similar gaming laptop with a better keyboard, check out the HP Victus 16 (2021).

The Acer Nitro 5"s speakers are good as far as laptops go. They have very forward mids but no bass whatsoever. They"re also a bit piercing on some sounds, like sibilants and cymbals. They aren"t ideal for listening to music, but they"re fine for spoken content.

The webcam"s video quality is sub-par. The image is too dark, lacks fine details, and the colors aren"t true to life. Audio is clear over the microphone, but there"s static in the background, which can be annoying. If you want a similar budget gaming laptop with a better webcam, check out the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 (2021).

The Acer Nitro 5 AN515 has a decent port selection. One of the USB-A ports supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speed(up to 10Gbps) and can charge a mobile device even when the laptop is in sleep mode, while the other two USB-A ports only support USB 3.2 Gen 1 transfer speed (up to 5Gbps). The USB-C port supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speed. Unfortunately, you can"t use the USB-C port to charge the laptop or connect an external display. The Ethernet port has a maximum speed of 1Gbps.

All of the available options are high-power CPUs typically found in gaming laptops and mobile workstations. In GPU-limited games, there isn"t much performance difference between these four CPUs since parts of the CPU will likely be idle. However, if you play open-world games or other CPU-intensive games, there"s a benefit in going with a six or eight-core CPU. More cores will also allow you to do other things without affecting gaming performance too much, like streaming or playing music in the background. If you want a similarly sized laptop that"s equipped with newer AMD Ryzen 5-series CPUs, consider the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15 (2021).

Both GPUs are entry-level graphics processors that can get you around 60fps at 1080p in modern AAA titles, albeit with some tweaks in the graphics settings. The Ti variants in NVIDIA"s lineup usually perform a bit better than the non-Ti variants, but the difference isn"t huge. If you want a gaming laptop with more powerful GPU options, check out the Lenovo Legion 5 Gen 6 15 (2021).

You can configure the Acer Nitro 5 with 8GB, 12GB, or 16GB of memory. It"s best to get 16GB for gaming because 8GB might cause stuttering in some games. Having more memory also gives you more headroom if you want to stream or play music in the background.

You can configure this laptop with 256GB or 512GB of storage. It"s best to opt for more storage because constant writing and erasing of data causes wear and tear on the SSD, reducing its lifespan. However, since the SSD is user-replaceable, you can get a 256GB configuration first and upgrade it yourself later on. There are three storage slots: two M.2 and one 2.5-inch.

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600H in our Acer Nitro 5 has an impressive score in the Geekbench 5 benchmarks. It has enough processing power to handle light productivity tasks, gaming, and even heavy workloads, like video encoding. The Ryzen 7 4800H has much better multi-threaded performance and is a better choice for those running heavily multi-threaded applications. The Intel Core i7-10750H will perform similarly to the one we tested in the Dell Alienware m15 R3. The i5-10300H has roughly the same single-thread performance as the i7-10750H, but its multi-thread performance is worse because it only has four cores.

The GPU compute score is great. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 performs a little worse than the 1650 Ti, but not by much. Both GPUs can handle demanding tasks like image processing, although you might see some stutters here and there, especially in VRAM-heavy applications.

The AMD Ryzen 5 4600H"s Cinebench R23 score is excellent. The AMD Ryzen 7 4800H performs similarly in single-thread workload tests but much faster in multi-threaded because it has more cores and threads. The Intel Core i7-10750H performs better in the single-thread test than the AMD Ryzen 5 4600H but lags in the multi-thread test. The i5-10300H is the slowest when it comes to multi-thread performance.

Regardless of which configuration you get, it"s almost always better to render 3D models using the GPU rather than the CPU. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 and 1650 Ti are generally pretty close in performance. The GTX 1650 Ti is a little faster than the GTX 1650, but the difference isn"t night and day.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti in our Acer Nitro 5 performs well in the Basemark GPU test. It can get you around 60fps in most modern titles, but you"ll likely have to lower some graphics settings to get there. The GTX 1650 is a slightly weaker GPU, so you might have to lower the graphics settings further to get smooth and consistent frame rates.

The 256GB SSD"s performance is excellent. The system boots up, launches apps, and loads games very quickly. The sequential write speed is good but is more towards the lower end of NVMe SSDs, so writing a large amount of data to the drive is slow, like when installing a big game. If you choose to add a 2.5-inch SATA storage drive, the games installed on that drive will take longer to load because SATA drives are generally much slower than PCIe NVMe SSDs. The speed of the SSD may vary depending on the size, as larger SSDs tend to perform better.

The Acer Nitro 5"s battery life is great. You can easily get through an eight-hour day of light productivity on a full charge, as the system switches to the integrated graphics to extend battery life. However, gaming consumes significantly more power, so you"ll almost always need to plug it in when gaming. Battery life varies greatly depending on your usage.

Borderlands 3 runs poorly on the Acer Nitro 5. The average is well below 60fps at 1080p with "High" settings, and the frametimes are very inconsistent, causing lots of stutters. You need to lower the graphics settings to get a smooth experience, whether you get the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or 1650 Ti. It"s primarily a GPU limitation, so you might not see much difference with a more powerful CPU.

All configurations of the Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop can deliver smooth gameplay in Civilization VI with some minor tweaks in the settings. The turn time is okay with the AMD Ryzen 5 4600H, and we expect the Intel Core i7-10750H to be similar. The AMD Ryzen 7 4800H will give you the fastest turn time, though only slightly, while the Intel Core i5-10300H will have the slowest.

CS:GO runs very smoothly on the Acer Nitro 5. It"s an older title that typically runs well on most gaming systems, so every CPU and GPU configuration of the Nitro 5 can provide a smooth experience.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a graphically demanding title, even for current hardware. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti maintains close to 60fps at the "High" settings, but there are noticeable stutters. Regardless of the GPU you choose, you need to lower the graphical settings to get a more stable 60fps. The large frame time spikes in the graph are scene changes.

The Acer Nitro 5"s thermal and noise performance is okay. It gets a bit toasty under load, causing a hot spot around the number 0 on the keyboard. It isn"t a problem for gaming as most people position their hand closer to the WASD keys, but it might be a bit uncomfortable when typing. The fans get fairly loud, though probably still tolerable for most people. Intel CPUs typically run hotter than the AMD Ryzen CPUs, so you can expect to hear the fans working for longer periods on the Intel models.

The Acer Nitro 5"s performance over time is outstanding. Neither the CPU nor GPU gets very hot, and even though there"s some performance loss, it"s only a few percent, which isn"t noticeable. There"s plenty of thermal headroom, so it"s unlikely that the other CPUs will suffer from significant performance loss. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 performs similarly to the GTX 1650 Ti.

The Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop comes with pre-installed software, including:Norton Security Ultra: Virus and malware protection. You only get a free trial; you need to pay for a subscription to continue using it.

Acer’s Nitro 5 is a gaming notebook with an attractive price. The appeal of these laptops is their higher end spec also make them a great option for photo and video editing on the move or just a fast everyday computer. It’s still not cheap at around £800 or $800, but you can pay a lot more for a laptop far less capable.

This model comes with a 144Hz 15.6” Full HD IPS screen, an AMD Ryzen 5 4600H, 512GB of fast SSD storage, 8GB of RAM and an NVidia GTX 1650Ti graphics card. At this price it’s not perfect. Battery life is not great, the screen is only average and it’s mostly made of plastic, but it can handle most current games at its native resolution and it’s no slouch editing your videos in Adobe Premiere Pro or your photos in Adobe Photoshop.

Inside the box you get the laptop itself, a beefy 135W charger and a couple of brief getting started guides. You can download a complete user manual here.

I would have liked to have seen an SD card slot but it’s great to see a full speed Gen 2 USB Type-C port that supports speeds up to 10GBps, double that of the 5Gbps of other Gen 1 ports. This is particularly useful for gaming or video editing which I’ll come back to later. You can’t use this port for charging the laptop or for output to a display.

The laptop is made almost entirely of plastic, the type that does attract fingerprints, but feels fairly robust especially around the keyboard and palmrest. The lid does have a little flex, especially down towards the hinges, which won’t offer a huge amount of protection for the fragile LED panel behind it.

With its fast NVMe SSD, finishing off the Windows install took around 10 minutes. There is some junkware that I uninstalled including software from Norton, but I’ve seen a lot worse. I let the laptop use the free built in Windows Defender for antivirus. If you need further protection I’d usually recommend MalwareBytes. There’s also Acer Care Centre to update drivers and guide you through backup and recovery that I also left installed. As well as Acer’s Nitrosense with its own dedicated key for configuring and monitoring the laptop’s performance.

I particularly like the keyboard which has over 1.5mm of travel and is very comfortable to type on, even for longer periods – and it’s fairly quiet too. You can hear how it sounds typing in the accompanying video.

My display did have a single bright green sub pixel which is quite noticeable on a dark background. There isn’t an awful lot you can do about it and Acer don’t consider it a warranty issue unless there are more than two.

It has a listed response time of 3ms. It’s difficult to confirm this claim precisely, but in the tests I ran it seems plausible it’s less than 5ms and I didn’t notice any ghosting either. And it supports variable refresh rates via Freesync.

This is not really a laptop intended for critical colour work, but I was a little disappointed that it could only display 59% of the sRGB colour space – the spectrum of colours that most devices conform to, from phones to TVs to monitors, and around 40% of the Adobe RGB and P3 colour space.

I also measured the colour accuracy or Delta E of the screen. Delta E is a metric for understanding how the human eye perceives colour difference with a value of less than 1 being not perceptible to the human eye. And a value between 1 and 2 being barely perceptible.

It charges with the 135W, 19.5V, 6.92A AC adapter with a 5.5mm pin. Gaming laptops always need hefty chargers, but this one is slimmer and lighter than many others I’ve come across.

I also conducted a few real life tests. As a worst case scenario, I ran Forza Horizon 4 in benchmark mode continuously until the battery ran out, starting out with the battery at 100%. The screen brightness was 246 nits. The laptop lasted just 53 minutes – I was hoping for a little more.

I did connect the RavPower Power House AC portable charger I reviewed a while back to try and extend the battery life, particularly for gaming. I wasn’t expecting it to work since the laptop’s 135W charger exceeds the power pack’s 100W maximum capacity. But in my testing it was able to charge the laptop even running the intensive 3DMark Timespy benchmark. A lot of games also perform better running off the AC charger. For example by default Forza Horizon 4 locks at 30fps on battery but gets double that on AC power.

There are a few iterations of this laptop. This model comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 4600H 3GHz Hexa or 6 core processor, 8GB of DDR4 memory, a 512GB NVMe SSD and a discrete NVidia Geforce 1650Ti graphics card.

Windows boots in less than 10 seconds and wakes from sleep in less than 3 seconds. Games load pretty quickly as do large applications. Shadow of the Tomb Raider loads in 26 seconds, Fortnite in just over a minute and Adobe Premiere Pro starts up in around 14 seconds. Games still load faster on a XBOX Series X – Fortnite took around 50 seconds to load – but there’s not a huge amount in it.

Running the PCMark 10 benchmark which measures the computer’s overall performance for a range of office and productivity tasks, gave a score of 5117 which compares well against similar machines in the benchmark’s database.

Running the Geekbench 5 CPU Benchmark gave a single core score of 1053 and a multi-core score of 4969 which are both decent results. Its compute score for its graphics capabilities was 44801.

The UserBenchmark test gave the laptop a high 90% Desktop score, with the 1650Ti getting a Gaming score of 41%. This is a useful test that you can run on your own machine to see what benefits upgrading to this laptop might bring.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the sequence to export using the 1650Ti for hardware encoding, and software encoding using the CPU took over an hour. This sequence exported in 7 minutes on my desktop PC with an i7-8700 processor, an Nvidia RTX 2070 video card and 32GB of RAM. More RAM would certainly help here.

I attached a 500GB Sandisk Extreme Pro drive which measured 971MB/s read and 920MB/s write speed in CrystalDiskMark – almost its maximum spec’ed 1050MB/s. Premiere Pro was happy editing directly off this external storage.

The stereo speakers sit just under the raised front section on either side of the laptop. You can use the Nitrosense software to switch their EQ preset – but this works a lot better with headphones attached.

The integrated WiFi card impressively supports the latest WiFi 6 with speeds of up to a theoretical 2.4Gbps, if you are lucky enough to have WiFi 6 in your house. Even over 802.11ac or WiFi 5 as it’s now known, I get a very good connection around the house connected to my Unifi access points, matching my iPhone 11. This Intel module also supports the very latest Bluetooth 5.1 standard with its extended range and I got a reliable connection to several devices including my Xbox Series X controller. Even if you don’t have WiFi 6 or any compatible Bluetooth 5.1 devices, it’s great to see these new standards that will become commonplace soon, already implemented in relatively affordable laptops.

Fortnite played fine in its maximum Epic settings averaging around 45fps and around 70fps in High mode. There was the occasional stuttering where the frame rate dropped briefly.

Forza Horizon 4 looked like it wasn’t going to play with an error message about the hardware not meeting minimum specs even though it does. But ignoring the messages it played very well averaging a smooth 55fps with Ultra graphics settings in its benchmark mode. Upgrading the RAM to 16GB I would imagine would overcome the initial warning.

I also played Doom Eternal with High settings which averaged around 50fps with no stuttering. There’s only 4GB of video card RAM or VRAM which isn’t enough for higher graphics settings.

As I alluded to earlier the fan is noisy while playing games but it does keep the laptop cool. The exterior of the laptop barely got above 40C. For all the games I used Nitrosense to put the laptop in high performance mode. In Nitrosense you can also adjust cooling yourself and monitor the temperature and loads of the CPU and GPU. You can also turn on Coolboost mode which increases the fan speed to increase cooling.

There’s the 512GB Western Digital M.2 NVMe drive already installed, but there’s space for another one and you should be able to set them up in RAID 0 for even faster performance, but that’s not something I’ve tried yet.

On top of that there’s even space for a 2.5” drive – either an SSD or mechanical drive. Acer even supply the required motherboard cable and set of screws – which are often quite hard to get hold of – so don’t lose them if you plan to upgrade the laptop in the future. If you wanted the laptop as a video editing machine, you could add a second M.2 NVMe drive for your media and then add a large cheaper 2.5” drive for archiving.

The Acer Nitro 5 is a well thought out budget gaming laptop. It can play most games at decent graphical settings at its native 1080p resolution. Its fast 512GB NVMe SSD makes the laptop feel quick in general use, and it’s big enough for a few larger games. There’s also the Gen 2 USB-C port to easily add additional fast external storage. And the upgrade options are even more plentiful if you’re happy removing the bottom cover. If you are, I’d recommend upgrading the memory to 16GB.