The Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop Review: Absolutely AMD - Ryzen Plus Polaris
by Brett Howse on February 15, 2019 8:30 AM ESTFinal Words
AMD’s Ryzen launch has transformed the company, and really brought proper competition to the CPU space that we’ve not seen in the x86 world for a long time. But Ryzen was first and foremost a desktop competitor, and even though AMD did eventually release a laptop version, it’s not had the same success as its desktop counterpart. The biggest issue is the idle power draw, which is quite high, rendering it less than ideal in an Ultrabook. However the Acer Nitro 5 is not an Ultrabook, but rather a gaming laptop, where the expectations are different and portability is closer to a desktop replacement than a laptop that needs to run off a battery all day long.
Being coupled with an AMD GPU makes the Acer Nitro 5 even more unique. The laptop world has been dominated by NVIDIA's products, so it’s rare to find laptops with AMD GPUs, and even more rare for them to be paired with an AMD CPU. It’s great to see this as an option again, and as we’ve seen, the laptop is competitive as well.
Although the shell of the Nitro 5 is completely plastic, Acer has done a nice job with the styling, and the faux carbon fibre adds some texture and character to a laptop which would otherwise be just flat black plastic. The laptop is plenty strong as well.
There’s also a great cooling system inside, and it never has to work too hard to keep the thermals in check. The CPU didn’t even reach 70°C, and the GPU was only 71°C after a full hour of gaming, and during that hour the sound level only peaked at about 46 dB(A), which is well under some larger gaming laptops. Acer also offers a CoolBoost setting if you want extra cooling, but from what we observed, there’s little reason to ever turn that on. Even better, at idle and light workloads, the laptop is completely silent, since it’s now got a big gaming cooling system to only deal with a U series Ryzen processor.
In terms of performance, the Nitro 5 does very well, especially when you look at the price. It offers far more performance than any Ultrabook, Ryzen equipped or not, and the RX 560X in terms of pure GPU performance can go toe to toe with the GTX 1050. On the CPU side, the Ryzen 5 2500U can’t quite match the 45-Watt Intel quad-cores, but the performance is still quite good.
Clearly Acer had to cut some items to reach their price point, and the display was one of those areas, but even though it can’t do 100% of the sRGB gamut, and even though it’s likely the least accurate IPS display we have ever tested, at the end of the day it is still a 1920x1080 IPS panel, offering good viewing angles, and a good resolution for a gaming laptop of this performance level. Really the only valid criticism of the display on a device like this is that it doesn’t support 1600x900 or 1366x768, both of which would be valuable resolutions for full-screen gaming. With just 1920x1080 or 1280x720 as available 16:9 options, there’s a big jump there in resolution which might be the difference between unplayable and playable.
Even with the shortcomings, the Acer Nitro 5 is still a great value. The AMD powered model is even more so. At $669.99 as a starting price, it’s well under most Ultrabooks in terms of cost, yet delivers far more performance. And with the 256GB SSD model running just another $30, it’s a much better 15.6-inch laptop than many you see on the market with 1366x768 displays and 500 GB spinning drives. If you are after a gaming laptop and you’re on a budget, definitely check this model out.
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GreenReaper - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
People who are just coming here to find a review of a particular laptop may not know that.I agree that it would be nice to know for sure if it was stuck in single channel, as I seem to recall that being a criticism of its other AMD model. At the same time it's possible that the impact is less given the separate graphics hardware with 4GB dedicated GDDR5.
jgraham11 - Thursday, February 21, 2019 - link
Brett, thank you for commenting back. Bottom line is that when people are choosing a laptop to purchase, most people that don't have an unlimited amount of money or a specific design requirement want to know what they can get with the money they have. By comparing notebooks that are double, triple or more the price and not indicating price so distorts the perception of this product in a negative way. To solve this, label the price of each notebook (you would get crucified for making such outlandish comparisons) or only compare to other notebooks that have a similar price tag.If you don't do that, you are supporting an Intel monopoly, please say that isn't the case.
Annnonymmous - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
It actually shows how much of a bargain this laptop is. Why spend all that money when a bargain bin laptop gets you within a similar level of performance. I own this laptop. It won't disappoint you.Vitor - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Wow, what a dismal ips display. That's depressing actually.niva - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I said to myself:. Wow, finally, an AMD laptop with a good ips display!Then I saw the results. It's clear that unless AMD makes their own machines directly, no manufacturer will get it right.
mr_tawan - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Based on my own experience with Acer's machines. ... This is about just right :P.Well I've never come across Acer's machine with good stuffs in it before, they are pretty much all budget-oriented. That said things, might have changed.
TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
I've been saying this same thing for years. AMD has had great notebook chips for awhile, but no OEM takes them seriously. They should partner with sapphire or clevo and build a range of proper Radeon-books or such.michaelflat1 - Thursday, February 21, 2019 - link
Clevo and MSI are not going to use AMD's 7nm mobile chips on their release.. so we are out of luck on that front.. some budget laptop chinese companies are locked into a contract with intel, they get cheaper chips but not allowed to sell any amd laptops.. only one amd ryzen embedded laptop to come out of china :( (not regarding matebook D)If AMD's 7nm goes right hopefully we can get a big OEM onboard, microsoft? Dell? Apple!?! that would probably be dreaming..
I think the high idle consumption is keeping them out of high end laptops, and stuff like video playback/streaming on youtube has too much of a hit on battery life.. maybe 7nm will fix this (we hope)
tipoo - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
Yep, manufacturers seem to fall into the trap of them being slightly cheaper than Intel/Nvidia parts meaning they have to penny punch every other component. Would be a pretty great system with a decent display, and preferably dual channel memory, though as noted that doesn't choke a CPU much since this has dedicated VRAM.Oxford Guy - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
It would be useful to see calibrated results. Products like the ColorMunki are not expensive.Since the black depth wasn't as bad as some of the other screens here it may be the case where this panel isn't quite so bad with calibration.