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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cfenton - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
I think it's pretty important if you're used to looking at color accurate screens. Since many popular phones are now finally getting this right, you might notice your monitor looks funky in comparison. I agree that the difference between, say, the Matebook and the Surface Book isn't all that important. Both are so accurate you'd have trouble telling the difference. But this Acer screen isn't even close. Look at the colorchecker chart on a calibrated display and it's crazy how bad anything that contains blue looks.Brett Howse - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
It's all about target market. This screen is terrible but I doubt that would play into many people's thoughts when they are after a budget gaming laptop. I'm still glad it's IPS though at least it doesn't get worse off-angle.GreenReaper - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - link
It's kinda important on a laptop because you can't trivially swap out a screen like you can a drive; while in some cases it's technically possible, in practice it's more like soldered-in RAM. Adding a extra one (while feasible in many use-cases) means you have to lug it around or have it where you want to use the laptop. Plus you usually still pay the power cost for the existing one.For something you look at all the time, quality matters. But for goods sold over the Internet, it's it's an easy cost-cutting area because you can't really see the difference in the way that you can for, say, a CPU - even though this may be deceptive due to a deficient cooling system, etc.
lakedude - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I've got the i5 1050ti with SSD version. Paid $650. I keep it docked to a keyboard/mouse/monitor most of the time. Best laptop ever! It is much lighter than previous desktop replacements, sips far less power and is much faster to boot. That is was the cheapest by far helps as well. Of course I'm comparing to my previous laptops but the Nitro 5 is a great value even compared to modern laptops. The screen does not bother me but I'm only looking at it a few times a year while on the road. I suggest checking on out in person to see if you can live with the screen.Also having 1x memory stick makes for an easy upgrade, just pop in another stick.
Annnonymmous - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
How's the noise on the version? I considered the 1050Ti version (was more expensive for me) but chose not to get it due to noise complaints. The last thing I want is a leaf blower. The All AMD version is dead silent for all operations except gaming, and then it's a mild hum (very quiet).tkalfaoglu - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
i just got this laptop with AMD cpu and GPU. very happy. Linux dual boot took a few attempts to find the correct boot parameters but it now works great. It handles games much more effortlessly than my other amd machines and it stays cool..ads295 - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
"Acer ships the Nitro 5 with a 135-Watt AC adapter. However, they don’t dedicate much of the power to battery charging."Can you include some numbers to back this up? Would be interested to know if they limited the charging rate on purpose, it's beneficial for battery life. I own an Acer E5-553-T4PT with an AMD A10 and it ships with a puny 45W charger that charges at 15% an hour if I'm gaming.
(Side note: Acer put in 2x2GB DDR4 modules out of the box in a laptop that costs US$380 approx so I really don't know WTH is going on with this one.)
Brett Howse - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
The recharge rate is almost always limited. Going crazy on charge time can overheat the battery. But you can see the Acer needs 2.65 hours to charge and the battery is about 47 Wh, so it's averaging about 17 Watts for charge rate. Obviously this isn't an apples to apples comparison to your Acer E5 since that one doesn't have a GPU that can draw 75 Watts on its own.ads295 - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
17-20 watts is my charge rate when I'm not doing anything on it... What was the load on the laptop when it was charging?ASUS goes bonkers on their charge rates, seen this with two laptops... They charge at a percent per minute.
hanselltc - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
As expected, not great but cheap. I'll be convinced Ryzen Mobile is legit when AMD manages to get out one single device that can compete toe to toe with a XPS 15, 9570 or 9575, but before then I'll enjoy it on my desktop.