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There’s still only a 58Wh battery inside the Acer Nitro 5 series, as the rest of the space is occupied by the 2.5″ storage drive. This is smaller than what the competition offers these days. Not much to say about the touchpad – it offers a big gliding surface and you can slide your fingers with ease but in the meantime, it’s not the most accurate one. As expected, the Intel platform is not as efficient as the AMD models tested earlier, and when paired with the small battery, the runtimes end up this short. The fact that the screen runs at 144 Hz on battery and does not switch to 60 Hz takes a toll as well, so you might want to manually switch it over to further increase the runtimes. All in all, don’t expect more than 2-4 hours of daily use on a charge on this Nitro 5 model.
We also ran some Workstation related loads on this Intel i7 + RTX 3070 configuration, on the High-Performance profile: Our test model is a mixed-specced configuration of the Acer Nitro 5 in the 2021 AN515-57 model, with an Intel Tiger Lake Core i7-11800H processor, 16 GB of DDR4 3200 MHz RAM in dual channel (2x single rank chips), 1 TB of storage (WD SN530 included drive), and dual graphics: the Nvidia RTX 3070 Laptop dGPU and the Iris Xe iGPU within the Intel platform, with Optimus. There’s no MUX switch here, and the display is hooked up through the Intel iGPU.Here’s what we got on our review unit, with the screen’s brightness set at around 120 nits (~70 brightness). In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.
Your best bet is in the RTX 3060 models, available from 1200 EUR in Germany and 1100 GBP in the UK, but make sure you’re getting the better-quality FHD screen or even the QHD option if possible. That base FHD panel is just not good enough for this day and age at these price points. The Intel i7 processor stabilizes at ~65W of sustained power on the High-Performance setting, which translates in frequencies of 3.6+ GHz, temperatures in the mid-90s C, scores of ~1800 points, and the fans spinning at around 44-45 dB at head-level. The performance is thermally limited and drops by around 10-15% from the first runs, as the heat builds up.Acer offers a couple of different screen options for the 2021 Nitro 5 series, with several FHD 144Hz options and a QHD 165Hz panel for the higher-tier configurations. For what is worth, the Nitro 5 series is among the last laptops to still allow space inside for a 2.5″ storage drive (and the connector is included in the box). However, that does mean there’s only room for a smaller battery on this series. The RTX 3070 configurations would demand 200-300 USD/EUR extra over the 3060s, for a roughly ~20% gain in GPU performance. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend a 3070 in this sort of chassis, but our test unit performed really well and even outmatched the 3070 Predator Helios 300, so unless Acer somehow limit the retail models with future BIOS updates, the 3070 configurations might not be a bad deal here. Just beware of those internal temperatures. At this point, this Intel-based version of the 2021 Acer Nitro 5 AN515-57 is not yet widely available in stores, but you should follow this link for the latest updated prices and configurations available in your region, at the time you’re reading this article.
We tested the laptop with a cooling pad and with the fans ramped up to their max state. With the cooling pad, the GPU frequency is a bit higher while the temperatures are the same compared to the default fan settings. Now, there is an improvement if you set the fans to max speed but good god almighty – the CPU fan spins at 5000 rpm and the GPU one is rotating with 6000 rpm. Nope, in this mode the laptop isn’t just a vacuum cleaner – it’s a fighter jet that flies near you. Comfort during full load On a desk, the internal temperatures raise up quite a bit in combined loads and games, with averagely noisy fans at 45-46 dB on the High-Performance profile. These findings are a lot different than what we got on the AMD versions of the 2021 Nitro 5, but the performance is also much better here. In short, the refreshed AN515-57 devices can be configured with Intel Tiger Lake 45H and NVIDIA Ampere GPUs – that sounds modern enough no matter if you’re going to use it for gaming, office, some productivity task, or something else. As always, the base configurations are a bit shy when it comes to power but the best possible one sounds intriguing for a Nitro 5 chassis (and perhaps it’ll be challenging for the cooling as well) – an Intel Core i7-11800H and GeForce RTX 3070 (100W). We think that’s the first time when a Nitro device can house such a powerful graphics solution. The base-level configuration built on the Intel i5 processor and RTX 3050Ti are sporadically listed at around 900-1000 USD/EUR/GBP, with some even cheaper configurations with older GTX 1650 graphics. Finally, the camera is placed on top of the screen, flanked by microphones. It’s OK for occasional calls, and I might argue slightly better quality than what you’ll normally get on mid-range laptops these days. Battery life
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All in all, this i7+RTX 3070 configuration of the Nitro 5 AN515-57 is an excellent performer in games, even if it doesn’t offer a MUX and the display is connected via the iGPU. The impact of Optimus or the fact that Acer puts dual-channel SR memory on this series seems to be considerably more reduced here than on the AMD variants, something to keep in mind if gaming sits high at the top of your priorities’ list. I would advise straying away from this AU Optronics panel though and try to find a configuration with the superior BOE FHD 144hz panel instead. Noise, Heat, Connectivity, speakers, and others The GPU is an Nvidia RTX 3070 Laptop running at around 80W in our tests as of right now. However, with Dynamic Boost 2.0 this should ramp it up to 85-90W on the retail models, based on our experience with other Nitro models, and that might impact some of our findings. We’ll explain below. The 3060 variant should run at similar power levels, while the 3050Ti is a 60-80W variant. If interested, here’s a comparison of the 3050Ti, 3060 and 3070 graphics chips at similar power levels. The lid doesn’t feature a fully flat design and that’s mainly because the laptop is trying to look like a sports car with the two distinguishing details that are placed on both sides of the lid. You can open it with a single hand (with a slight wobble after you release it) and you’ll see that the two side-placed bezels are normally sized but unfortunately, we cannot say the same thing for the upper one and for the fat “chin”. The Web camera is orthodoxly positioned so no surprises here.
As for the storage, Acer puts a WD SN530 on this Nitro 5, a mid-range PCIe SSD. PCIe gen4 SSDs are also supported by the Intel 11th gen platform if you’re looking to upgrade to faster storage, although this included one is plenty fast for daily use. With daily use, the fan noise (on the Balance and Power Saver modes) is limited and only audible in a quiet room, especially when using the laptop unplugged. The two fans are always active though, so never go idle. The cooling solution looks almost the same as the one that we found in the Predator Triton 300 (PT315-52). This means that it has three heat pipes – one of them is shared between the CPU and the GPU and the other two are solely dedicated to these chips. The cooling solution is complimented by four heat sinks and two big cooling plates that cover the video memory and the voltage regulators.
The measured maximum brightness of 306 nits in the middle of the screen and 278 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 14%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6930K – slightly colder than the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K. Plastic is used for the entire construction. The interior and lid have a smooth soft feel and this sort of finishing that resembles dark sand, with some sparkly elements integrated into the plastic. They look fine, but show smudges easily. The underside is a rougher kind of plastic.
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