Acer Nitro 5 (2018) Review
True budget gaming laptops—models well under a grand—aren’t as plentiful as some budget-conscious shoppers may like, so it’s always nice to see when new contenders hit the market. The refreshed Acer Nitro 5 ($749.99 as tested) is one such system, keeping its price hundreds below the bar while offering modest power for grinding through AAA gaming titles. We weren’t struck by any one standout feature or key design aspect of this 15-inch-screened laptop, but the Nitro 5 is priced fairly for decent 1080p play and avoids any major trip-ups. If you’re a PC gamer looking to save money and are okay with a machine that’s only a bit above the gaming-ready floor, the Nitro 5 will do the trick.
Mục Lục
Sharp, Simple Design
Given its positioning as a budget gaming system, the Nitro 5 keeps it fittingly basic. The chassis is all black, with red accents on the hinge, keyboard, and touchpad. I do like the angular red hinge design, which looks nice with the lid either opened or closed. The laptop is made entirely of plastic, which is to be expected for the price. The lid bears a brushed finish, while the keyboard deck is a shiny, plainer material.
Overall, I like the simple design, which includes just enough flourishes to keep it from being boring, even if it is yet another red-and-black gaming laptop. (Those colors are the apparent uniform for gaming machines these days.) Though plastic, the build feels sturdy in most spots, apart from some flex to the right of the touchpad and at the bottom of the display. Without pressing down on either spot intentionally, you likely would never notice; these are not areas that get stressed in normal use.
The Nitro 5’s sturdy build is not especially light, coming in at an on-par 5.95 pounds and measuring 1.05 by 15.35 by 10.47 inches (HWD). Most heavier alternatives are 17-inchers, and anything significantly lighter is surely a pricey form-focused gaming laptop, putting the Nitro 5 squarely in the middle of the pack with other 15-inch options.
Dell’s Inspiron 15 7000, for example, is very similar at 1 by 15.15 by 10.82 inches and 5.84 pounds. To make the contrast clear, the premium Razer Blade ($1,999.11 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) —the new poster child for gaming portability in a 15-inch-class machine—comes in at 0.68 by 13.98 by 9.25 inches and 4.63 pounds. On the other end of the spectrum is the powerful 17-inch Alienware 17 R5, tipping the scales at 1.18 by 16.7 by 13.1 inches and 9.77 pounds. This is to say: The Nitro 5 is slim for what it is and light enough to toss in a bag, but nothing to write home about in terms of portability.
Its 15.6-inch IPS display bears a full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) native resolution and a matte finish. Despite this being an inexpensive machine, I have no complaints about the display. The resolution is the right pick for the components, the picture looks good, and the screen has wide viewing angles. Any higher resolution would be a wasted bump in price with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card being used here, as it would strain its capability beyond playable frame rates.
In the past, you didn’t always get a 1080p panel at this price, so it’s nice that the Nitro 5 hits this minimum resolution floor, the same used on laptops that cost many hundreds of dollars more. For example, the Inspiron 15 7000 had a subpar panel, which was the main issue on that system. (Dell later introduced a slightly more expensive IPS version.) So it’s not a given that budget laptops in this price band pull off a serviceable display.
One area where the build quality did let me down is the touchpad. It’s somewhat cheap-feeling, and pressing in for clicks feels awkward and is not always responsive. Also, when panning with your finger, sometimes the pad interprets that action as clicking and dragging, or the cursor skips ever so slightly. The pad tracks fine most of the time, but this is not something that should be even a little hit-or-miss.
The keyboard fares better. The keys are appropriately responsive, with a good amount of travel. They have just enough bounce, don’t feel mushy, and are—surprisingly, for the price—backlit in red lighting, with the WASD cluster outlined in permanent red in the plastic. You also get a number pad to the right of the main layout, despite the 15-inch-class chassis. Its inclusion doesn’t make the laptop feel cramped (the number-pad keys are a bit narrower than the letter keys), so those of you who rely on a number pad, whether for humdrum numeric input or for game shortcuts, will appreciate it being there.
Considering the Nitro 5 is a budget laptop, you get plenty of useful ports. You’ll find two USB 2.0 ports, a USB 3.0 port, a USB Type-C port, an HDMI output, an Ethernet jack, an SD card slot, and a headphone jack. While you don’t get extras like Thunderbolt 3 support or a DisplayPort out, the essentials are covered in type and number.
Acer offers two models of the Nitro 5, both of which include the IPS 1080p display described above, 8GB of memory (upgradable to 32GB), and an eighth-generation Intel Core i5-8300H processor. The $749.99 test version I’m looking at here includes the GeForce GTX 1050 and a 1TB 7,200rpm hard drive, while an $849.99 model bumps up the graphics to a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and the boot drive to a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD). Note that the latter option includes just the relatively small SSD and does not come with a larger, secondary scratch drive (though one can be added later, if you’re willing to do your own upgrade).
Budget Pricing, Budget Power
Even as a price-conscious build, with a Core i5 instead of an i7, the Nitro 5 performed admirably on our benchmark tests. Part of this is simply the competence of the new generation of processors (the eighth-gen “Coffee Lake” Core i5-8300H is a muscular four-core/eight-thread chip), which will eventually raise the expected baseline across the board. But the Nitro 5 benefits regardless, even if it is not unique.
Its PCMark 8 score is solid, showing it can work through daily tasks like web browsing and word processing without much strain. It is still a budget system based on a hard drive, not an SSD, so outside of testing I didn’t feel like it flew, but it wasn’t leaving me hanging either.
Its scores on the multimedia tests demonstrated that it’s quite capable should you need to edit photos or encode a video file, even if I wouldn’t make it my main machine as a professional content creator or hobbyist. It beats the Inspiron 15 7000 to the punch on each of these tests, though the Dell’s older processor at the time of review plays a large part. It also beats its predecessor by nontrivial margins, as you’d hope, as well as some more expensive Core i7-based laptops that didn’t have the benefit of the new “Coffee Lake” CPUs at the time, such as the Lenovo Legion Y520.
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Since the GeForce GTX 1050 occupies the low end of Nvidia’s latest GPU generation, the Nitro 5’s scores on 3D tests won’t blow you away…
In very value-first fashion, the Nitro 5 offers modest capability for gaming, averaging 32 frames per second (fps) and 41fps on the Heaven and Valley tests set to ultra-quality and 1080p resolution. Those scores did go beyond the 30fps floor for smooth gameplay, though the most demanding games will see you dip below that number at times, which can be jarring. You may need to tweak detail settings down a notch or two to keep things smooth. But you’ll certainly be able to play.
That said, you probably aren’t (or at least, shouldn’t be) buying a $750 laptop with the expectation of running all current AAA games at maximum settings at 1080p, so the Nitro 5 will fare a good deal better at lower quality levels or with older titles that are less demanding. The Inspiron 15 7000 test unit in the charts here packed a superior GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, but remember that you can opt for that same graphics chip in the Nitro 5 for $100 more. If being so close to 30fps at or near maximum settings bothers you, it may be worth it to shell out for the $849.99 GeForce GTX 1050 Ti version of this machine, though you will decrease your storage capacity in doing so. (That said, having a true SSD as the boot drive should add some perceptible snap to the Nitro 5’s step.)
The Best Tech Products of 2018
The Best Tech Products of 2018
Battery life was nothing to write home about, clocking in at 6 hours and 22 minutes in our video-playback battery-rundown test. The Inspiron 15 7000 lasted much longer at 11:01, and the previous edition of the Nitro 5 tested late last year ran for 10:07. Plenty of gaming laptops out there endure for about 5 hours on this trial, so the Nitro 5 did respectably well; it’s just not especially long-lasting. In ordinary usage, gaming laptops aren’t used off the charger for too long. (Performance can be constrained when you’re gaming off the battery.) But if you’re looking to make this your all-purpose laptop, not just a tied-to-the-desk gamer, the battery life is something to consider.
Most of All, Your Wallet Will Thank You
The Nitro 5 succeeds at keeping things budget-friendly, which naturally comes with some concessions. The design is budget-gamer standard, with no surprises in any particular facet. Still, to its credit, Acer didn’t let the Nitro 5 step in any major holes, and the machine is competent all around.
That’s half the battle when putting together a price-aggressive machine, so Acer deserves attaboys for cooking up a sound recipe. The touchpad is the closest thing to an stumble, but it’s a minor annoyance rather than a deal-breaker. The GeForce GTX 1050 is far from a powerhouse GPU, so know that you’re limited to a pretty low ceiling for gaming power, but it’s the best GPU you can expect at the price. (We couldn’t find a current-generation machine for under $850 with anything better.)
It’s difficult to get too excited about any one trait of the Nitro 5. But if you’re shopping for a gaming machine for your child, or just looking to get in on the gaming-laptop ground floor, it’s easy to get excited—and rightly so—about the price.
Acer Nitro 5 (2018)
3.5
(Opens in a new window)
Check Stock
$732.25
at Amazon
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MSRP $749.99
Pros
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Cons
The Bottom Line
The Acer Nitro 5 won’t blow you away with its performance or design, but it is a perfectly competent gaming laptop without any deal-breaking flaws for an aggressive price.
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