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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evolucion8 - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
Compared as against Vega 10? Typo on the article lol. And there had been many other laptops with RX GPUs, like the Asus GL702ZC with an RX 580, the Acer Predator 500 with Vega 56, the HP Omen with an Intel CPU but an RX 580, not as widely adopted as the Intel/Nvidia combo but going onto the right direction. Hope you guys can review the AMD powered Predator 500 which is impressive!Brett Howse - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
Vega 10 is the iGPU on the Ryzen 7 2700U in the Acer Swift 3.eva02langley - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
Big, bulky, unattractive...Thanks Acer... when will you understand that we want THIN FORMAT laptops with APU for production and office work ABLE to game at 720p?
Man, my only hope is the 3700u is actually part of the upcoming MS surface.
GreenReaper - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
If you want that, you might not want Acer. Try a more upmarket brand. Of course they might go with Intel because it still has the edge on single-threaded performance at a particular power level. A chunky laptop with good cooling is one of the cases where Ryzen makes the most sense.But there are now things like the Lenovo IdeaPad 720S: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/ideap...
and the Huawei Matebook D: https://hothardware.com/reviews/huawei-matebook-d-...
Notebookcheck found some good things about the IdeaPad w/2500U: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Ideapad-720S-...
The 2700U, slightly more: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-IdeaPad-720s-...
But not as much as the Intel alternative: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Ideapad-720S-...
Basically poor thermals and single-channel DIMM killed it. The Matebook allegedly has dual-channel.
I would suggest waiting until the 3xxx and maybe even until 7nm comes out for it (yes, I know that's probably another year, but you might get Navi and AV1 decode as well, arguably worth the wait).
Ford_Prefect - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
Kinda of regret buying this now, as ASUS is gearing up to release TUF FX705 and FX505 models with Ryzen 5 3550H processors. The latter of which has a 120 mhz display option.Ford_Prefect - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
*120Hz0ldman79 - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
When you factor in that random bug on Skylakes (could be on later models as well, just can't confirm) where the uncore draws 6W at idle for no reason at all the low usage power consumption difference effectively disappears.Reboot the Skylake machine and the issue goes away, but you have to actually notice it in order to do that. Your average user probably isn't watching Core Temp and the power draw while using the laptop.
Gasaraki88 - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - link
For some reason this review is very confusing and pointless? The charts just have random laptops on them, not all the laptops appear in all charts, the laptops tested are all random, some are cheap, some are very expensive, so what's the point? You have to have a standard to compare, you can't just throw random laptops together. Are you comparing similar priced laptops? Are you comparing 'gaming' laptops? Are you comparing laptops that weight similar? Are you comparing laptops with similar wattage cpus?We know that a $2000 laptop is going to be faster than a $1000 one.
ballsystemlord - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - link
Spelling and grammar corrections:So what do you if you need more performance, particularly GPU performance?
Missing do.
So what do you do if you need more performance, particularly GPU performance?
We've reached out to Acer and AMD to confirm the TDP settings, but as you'll see below this Ryzen 5 2500U performs well ahead of other we have tested.
Other whats?
Luckily the battery life is probably not that big...
Missing comma
Luckily, the battery life is probably not that big...
JamesALang - Monday, March 4, 2019 - link
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