The Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop Review: Absolutely AMD - Ryzen Plus Polaris
by Brett Howse on February 15, 2019 8:30 AM ESTWireless
As we’ve seen in several laptops over the last year, the Acer Nitro 5 features a Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4a wireless card, which offers 2x2:2 and 802.11ac. It also offers a Realtek Gigabit Ethernet connection if you’ve got access to wired networking.
The performance of the Qualcomm adapter is decent. It doesn’t offer the much faster connections that are typical of the latest Intel wireless adapters, but it gets the job done. Reliability also seemed to be quite good, and there were no disconnects or other abnormal behaviour detected.
Audio
With just two stereo speakers and no subwoofer that you sometimes see on this size of system, expectations weren’t high, but despite only hitting about 75 dB(A) on our test track, the Acer delivered solid, crisp sound, with more dynamic range than expected. For software, Acer offers their Dolby Audio Premium software which works when using the headset jack.
Thermals
Acer outfits the Nitro 5 with Acer’s CoolBoost, which features two fans which draw air from the bottom and expel it out the back of the system. There’s also a software toggle to kick up the speed for maximum cooling if necessary, although in our testing it certainly was not necessary.
To test the thermals we ran Shadow of the Tomb Raider for just over an hour, measuring the GPU and CPU temperatures for the duration. The thermal performance of the Acer Nitro 5 was excellent, with no degradation in performance found, and quite low temperatures on the components. The GPU only went up to 71°C, with the CPU just under that at 68.9°C peak. Power draw on the GPU peaked at 72.5 Watts, and the GPU frequency was locked in at 1275 MHz with no deviation detected at all. Fan speeds were only at 35% as well, which kept the noise down to just about 46 dB(A) measured one inch over the trackpad.
Neither the AMD Ryzen 5 processor, nor the RX 560X, are too power hungry in a system of this size, but even so, the Nitro 5 does a great job of keeping everything cool without getting loud.
Software
As a value product, Acer has turned to offering some pre-installed software to help with margins, which is a practice we’ve seen less and less of by OEMs, which is ironic since Microsoft is now tapping that same well for Windows itself. The Acer Nitro 5 ships with Norton Antivirus, as well as an “Acer Collection” which opens to several Store apps. There’s nothing here too exciting.
The Acer Care software is something most manufactures offer now, with a single pane of glass to manage support, updates, and more, and unlike the other software that’s installed, is probably useful for almost anyone.
The laptop also comes with Acer NitroSense, which allows you to customize the fan profiles, set the power plan, and monitor the CPU, GPU, and fan speeds.
The software is simple to use, and works well. There's no macro support or anything that you might see on a higher priced gaming laptop, but for monitoring, it does the job well.
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Peter2k - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Would be interestingI've ordered a FX505DY, from Asus, and it has the same GPU, an "upgraded" 3550H but also just one RAM stick
And rule of thumb with Ryzen is single channel = terrible performance
So it would be interesting to see how it impacts performance here
Also I wonder personally if in my case Asus would let me at least RAM XMP settings instead of running it stock at 2400 no matter what
Annnonymmous - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Sorry to disappoint, but my results were very similar in dual-channel. I know that if used for the onboard GPU, the results would definitely be better, but for the discrete card, there's no appreciable difference in the results.Peter2k - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Thx anywayCheers
Annnonymmous - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Here is my results: https://www.3dmark.com/fs/18345476deksman2 - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
You might experience slightly higher CPU performance though... and also, synthetic benchmarks aren't too representative of real-world performance.I suggest you try running actual games with dual-channel for more accurate comparison.
Still, when it comes to the article, I don't necessarily agree that its AMD fault for low battery life... but mainly that Acer paired it with a very low capacity batter instead. It IS a 25W TDP APU part after all, and the IGP should be handling most of the media watching.
Brett Howse - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Raven Ridge has a power usage issue at idle. All Raven Ridge laptops suffer from poor battery life unfortunately.LarsBars - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
I thought I have read all the AT articles about Raven Ridge. What exactly is the issue? Can you link me to the explanation, thanks.Brett Howse - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13726/the-lenovo-th...Annnonymmous - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
The battery life is just fine. I regularly bring this thing to my bedroom and use it to complete work before bed. It runs dead silent and only warm to the touch. While I have a lapdesk, it is unneeded because the bottom ventilation is great. Your knee/leg won't possibly cover up all holes. Further, 3-4 hours is plenty.On older games, you'll get 3 hours off the APU too. So something to consider.
PeachNCream - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Accurate screens are nice, but I think there's a bit of an over-emphasis placed on that sort of thing here mainly because, in the past, other review sites didn't actually do detailed color analysis and instead just tossed out a quick statement based on eyeball observations. It sort of resulted in that analysis becoming a differentiator between AT and the competition so the focus on it when, for most people, it really doesn't matter, is a leftover. That doesn't mean its a useless thing, of course. I'm sure there are people that care (or at least will think they should care because they have devised some reason to believe it matters a lot) so it should continue and readers can filter for spam as needed with liberal use of the page selector.