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Nestled into this frame is a 15.6-inch display, the longtime standard size. Larger 17.3-inch screens have been around for a long time, with 14-inch and 16-inch screens a more recent trend, but this size represents your go-to, still-portable gaming laptop size. It's an IPS panel with full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate. The battery life is a definite plus for this laptop, even if some of the alternatives lasted longer. Budget systems and larger laptops are often either short on runtime or power-hungry, but the Nitro 5 clears a long enough threshold to be a positive. Seven hours off the charger (though your runtime will vary, especially if you play games on battery power) is enough to keep you from worrying about the next time you'll be near a wall outlet.
The final test in this section is photo editing. We use an early 2018 release of Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud to apply 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG image, timing each operation and adding up the total. This test is not as CPU-focused as Cinebench or Handbrake, bringing the performance of the storage subsystem, memory, and GPU into play. We use two gaming simulations to measure the 3D performance potential of a PC. In UL's 3DMark, we run two tests: Sky Diver (lightweight, capable of running on integrated graphics) and Fire Strike (more demanding, for high-end gaming PCs), both of them DirectX 11-based. Unigine Corp.'s Superposition is the other; it uses a different rendering engine to produce a complex 3D scene. A good portion of more premium laptops' cost goes toward a thin design, but a chunkier chassis like this is much cheaper. The Acer measures 1.06 by 14.1 by 10.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.51 pounds, reasonably mobile as gaming laptops go but heftier than a modern daily driver. It may not be the first machine you'd want to take with you everywhere, but it's acceptably trim for a budget gaming rig.
The laptop’s sound is a little hyped on the high-end and very echoey, though you could personalize it with the equalizer in the Dolby Audio software. In short, it’s yet another laptop with subpar audio – par for the course, basically (unless you’re Origin). One final note, however, is that the RTX 3060 Nitro 5 runs a lot cooler and quieter than the previous (GTX 1650Ti) model I tested. Even at max spin, the laptop’s fans aren’t particularly loud. Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-45) review: Verdict Turning our attention to the Nitro 5’s gaming benchmarks, it became clear that the GTX 3060 is an ample performer, but it’s a long way from the output offered by its bigger brothers, the RTX 3070 and 3080. These three things we’re lukewarm about. The camera, which offers video recording at 720p 30fps at its highest setting, is grainy. It’s just fine for web chats, but don’t expect much quality imagery produced here.
Excluding the Predator, this is a tight grouping, with the Nitro 5 appropriately within a few seconds of the lead. Graphics and Gaming Tests We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Two more tests from GFXBench 5.0, run offscreen to allow for different display resolutions, wring out OpenGL operations. The new Acer Nitro 5 looks like it could really redefine what we expect from a mid-range gaming laptop. If Acer nails the performance and build quality, while keeping the price (relatively) low, then it could be on to a real winner.As for look and feel, there’s a lot to be desired with the Acer Nitro 5. That’s not to say it’s plain bad – in fact, there are things we appreciate about it. The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10's Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop's storage.
Oddly, our review unit was equipped with a 1TB Samsung PCI-E NVMe SSD, although the retail model only comes with 512GB of space. Regardless, the SSD I tested performed well in our sequential read and write test, with speeds of 2,127MB/s and 1,615MB/s respectively. Next up is a pair of CPU-crunching tests: Cinebench R15 stresses all available processor cores and threads while rendering a complex image, while in our Handbrake test, we time systems while they transcode a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Acer's low-key gaming laptop manages to keep up with its flashy competition.
The Nitro 5’s screen is a bit on the weak side and the battery life is verging on the dismal, but other than that it’s hard to fault the Nitro 5 when it offers such stunning performance at such a low price.
The Nitro 5 comes with Windows 11 pre-installed - with a raft of new features, including DirectX 12 for better graphics, DirectStorage for faster loading and Auto HDR to help enhance visuals in non-HDR games, Windows 11 is the best Windows ever for gaming. Plus, with Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass, you can play hundreds for games for a single monthly fee. All that raw power dramatically takes its toll on the Nitro 5’s unplugged stamina, though, which is further exacerbated by its small 58Whr capacity battery. In our video rundown test, the Nitro lasted for just 6hrs 30mins before running out of juice. The screen itself didn't seem as bright as the 300 nits as advertised. It became more evident when playing the demo of wonderfully colorful Sable, where I was consistently trying to make the screen brighter to no avail as I was looking for parts for my cool hoverbike. The color was great, just not as bright as I hoped it would be. There’s no point beating about the bush, since this thing goes like the clappers. Our standard 4K media-processing test returned the second-highest score we’ve ever seen from a laptop, with a total of 323 points. Upgradability is one of the Nitro 5's strengths. Behind the bottom panel are two M.2 slots (one occupied by the 1TB solid-state drive) plus a 2.5-inch drive bay; screws for the latter are in the box. As I noted, the memory is also upgradable; both SO-DIMM slots are occupied in my unit by DDR4-3200 modules. (Photo: Molly Flores)
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Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better). Just over seven hours is a good number for a powerful 15.6-inch gaming laptop these days, providing enough freedom for a day trip sans power adapter. (That said, take the adapter if you plan on actually gaming; like nearly all its competitors, the Nitro 5 can't deliver peak performance on battery.) One thing to note is that there are a lot more configurations with the AMD model compared to the Intel one, which makes us feel like the AMD one is Acer’s preferred version. Finally, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 will show you what paying up for a smaller, more powerful system will do, and whether the performance gap is worth hundreds of dollars more. Expect it to lead most if not all of these tests, as it's the most expensive contestant. Productivity Tests
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