Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop | Acer Nitro 5 Specs

Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop Review

In today's Article we are doing another laptop review Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop, I wroted full review with all Acer Nitro 5 Specs as well as my gaming experience with this acer nitro 5 2019 laptop and gameplay of this laptop.

Acer Nitro 5 Specs:

Starting with the Acer Nitro 5 Specs I’ve got an Intel i7-9750H CPU, Nvidia RTX 1660 Ti graphics, 16gb of memory in dual channel, a 15.6” 1080p 60Hz IPS screen, and a 512gb M.2 NVMe SSD.

For network connectivity, it’s got gigabit ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 5.
The lid is black plastic, most of it is a smooth matte finish while the sides have a
triangle grooved texture.

Inside it’s all matte black with plenty of red accenting, and the build quality seemed about average for a plastic machine, with no sharp corners or edges anywhere.

I found my Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop to weight just under 2.2kg without a 2.5-inch drive installed. Once we add the 180-watt power brick and cables the total rises to around 2.9kg.

The dimensions of the Acer Nitro 5 I7 are 36.3cm in width, 26cm in-depth, and 2.5cm in height, so while not as thin as many others it’s got noticeably thinner bezels compared to the older 2018 model, let me know if you want to see a full comparison between those two and there’s no G-Sync here.

I’ve measured the color gamut using the Spyder 5 Pro and got 95% of sRGB, 69% of NTSC, and 74% of AdobeRGB. At 100% brightness, I measured the panel at 300 nits in the center and with an 880:1 contrast ratio, so decent results for a Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop.

The Acer Nitro 5 i7 Sense software allows you to enable or disable LCD overdrive, but I didn’t personally find this to make a noticeable difference.

Many of you asked me to try and overclock the screen, as Linus was able to get his acer nitro 5 i7 up to 90Hz with the 6-bit panel. Based on my panel being 8-bit it would appear to be different, I wasn’t even able to get mine to 70Hz, but this will vary by panel.

Backlight bleed was looking alright, I didn’t notice any issues while viewing darker.

There was some screen flex due to the plastic build, but the hinges felt pretty sturdy and are found out towards the far corners.

It was possible to open it up with one finger, the weight was pretty evenly distributed and
it felt fine sitting on my lap.

Acer Nitro 5 Specification of the 720p camera is found above the display in the center.

The camera looks alright and the audio sounds ok. Here's what typing sounds like, and here's what it sounds like when you set the fan speed to maximum.

So it does get pretty loud, but it also attempts to isolate my voice so you can still hear me.

The keyboard worked alright, the keys were a little mushy but overall I liked typing with it.

It’s only got red backlighting which lights up all secondary key functions and brightness can be adjusted in 4 levels or turned off by pressing the function an F9 or F10 keys.

There was some keyboard flex due to the plastic body, especially in the middle, but I never found this to be an issue during normal use.

Fingerprints show up easily but are kind of hidden by the matte finish, and as a smooth
surface they were easy to clean.

On the left from the back there’s a Kensington lock, gigabit ethernet, HDMI 2.0 output, USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C port, no thunderbolt though, and two USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports.

On the right from the front, there’s a 3.5mm audio combo jack, USB 2.0 Type-A port, status LEDs, power input and an air exhaust vent.

On the back, there’s an air exhaust vent on the left with some subtle Nitro branding on the back red plastic, while the front is just plastic with more of that triangular texture that was found on the lid.

Underneath there’s air intake vents found up towards the back and the rubber feet did a good job of preventing movement while in use.

The two speakers are found towards the front left and right corners, and I’d say they
were pretty average, there was no bass and they sounded a little tinny.

At maximum volume, they got loud enough while playing music, and the Latencymon results looked good. The bottom panel can be easily removed by taking out 11 Phillips head screws.

Once inside from left to right there are two M.2 slots, a single 2.5-inch drive bay, and there was a cable for this provided in the box, the battery, WiFi card above that, and two memory slots towards the right.

My Acer Nitro 5 i7 5 came with single-channel memory, which was unfortunate, I’ve upgraded to dual-channel for all of this testing to show best-case performance.

Acer Nitro 5 Battery Life:

Powering the laptop is a 4 cell 58-watt hour acer nitro 5 battery life. I’ve tested it with the screen brightness at 50%, background apps disabled, and all keyboard lighting off.

While just watching YouTube videos it lasted for 5 hours and 29 minutes, and it was using the Intel integrated graphics due to Nvidia Optimus.

While playing the Witcher 3 with medium settings and Nvidia’s battery boost set to 30 FPS the acer nitro 5 battery life lasted for 1 hour and 8 minutes, and it was able to sustain a solid 30 FPS the entire time.

The 180-watt power brick that Acer include with the Nitro 5 appears to be adequate for
these specs, I wasn’t seeing any drain during my testingtesting, so the acer nitro 5 battery life is really very good.

Acer Nitro 5 2019 Thermal Testing:

Let’s move onto the thermal testing. Just to recap, on the bottom of acer nitro 5 2019 we’ve got some air vents towards the back for air intake, then air is exhausted out of the back.

While it looks like there are vents on both sides, air is only exhausted on one side, and the back right-hand side.

There are a couple of heat pipes shared between the processor and graphics, and we can see why air is only exhausted from one corner.

Unfortunately, some of the head of the power cable does partially block the side air vent, though I didn’t find this to cause any problems.

The Acer Nitro 5 i7 Sense software allows us to control fan speed, there’s granular control of each separate fan, however I’ve only tested either with the auto or max setting.

Unlike the Acer Helios 300 and Acer Triton 500, no CPU undervolting is done out of the box with the latest BIOS and version of Nitro Sense in use. Expect different results in different environments.

At idle both the CPU and GPU were on the cooler side, no issues there. The same time to fully load the system.

Any time I had the fans on auto speed both the CPU and GPU were thermal throttling, so 92 on the CPU and 86 on the GPU, and this was still happening even with the CPU undervolted, however we’ll see how this helped improve performance in the next graph.

Simply by setting the fans to max speed saw nice improvements to the thermals under both workloads, while undervolting the CPU helped cool things just a little more.

With the cooling pad added into the mix temperatures drop down a little further.

We’re seeing the lowest performance with the fans on auto speed due to the thermal throttling that was taking place on both the CPU and GPU in this state.

We do however see decent improvements to CPU clock speed with the CPU undervolted, so despite still thermal throttling, it’s now throttling less and we see higher performance.

Setting the fan speed to maximum helped improve clock speed overstock for the same reason, though we saw a much higher boost to the GPU here as I wasn’t doing GPU undervolting, just CPU.

When combining higher fan speeds with
undervolting we’re seeing much better results, though not quite the full 4GHz all core turbo boost speed of the 9750H in any of these workloads, but pretty close.

We can see the GPU in the green bars failing to hit its 80-watt power limit when the fans are on the default auto speed due to the thermal throttling.

Likewise, the CPU TDP is down for the same reason until things cool down. Otherwise, once we are no longer thermal throttling,
power limit throttling becomes the next limitation.

The CPU was maxing out at the 45 watt PL1
limit and I was not able to boost this further with Intel XTU.

These are the average CPU clock speeds while under a CPU only workload, so with no GPU load.

In both cases, we’re hitting that 45-watt power limit, so even with the best underfoot
I could achieve it still wasn’t possible to hit the full 4GHz all core turbo boost speed, most other machines can hit this in this test.

We can see why when we look at the power limit, in both tests we’re averaging the same TDP, and again I couldn’t raise this with Intel XTU.

As a result, we’ve got the same temperatures, in this case, the same amount of power equals the same heat.

To demonstrate how this translates into performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks.

While the single-core performance was about as expected, the multicore scores were noticeably lower when compared with other laptops with the same CPU I’ve tested, and this was due to the 45-watt power limit on the Acer Nitro 5 i7.

Undervolting did help improve performance,
but this was still noticeably lower compared to the 2600-2800 I usually see was around the normal 30 degrees Celsius.

While gaming or under stress test with the
fans on auto speed it’s getting quite hot, mid-50s in the center and it didn’t
feel comfortable to rest my fingers on.

With the fans at max speed in the same workloads we’re seeing around a 10-degree reduction to the hot spots.

At idle there was some fan noise, however it alternated between this and being completely silent.

While gaming or under stress test with the fans on auto speed it’s about the same, and noticeably quieter compared to most gaming laptops when under this same load.

With the fan at max speed it gets a fair bit louder in comparison, however I think this
is a good thing as we do have the option of customizing fan speed, so you should be able to work for you.

Overall the Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop gaming laptop runs on the hotter side and thermal throttles on
both the CPU and GPU while gaming with the fans on auto speed.

Fortunately we do have the option to increase fan speed, and by doing this thermal throttling was removed and the machine became noticeably cooler to the touch.

Despite the thermal throttling, in the games
I tested with the fans on auto I wasn’t seeing much performance loss compared with max fans, so you do have the option of running quieter but hotter if you prefer.

It’s also worth remembering I’m testing the Acer Nitro 5 Specs available, so with lower hardware, it probably won’t get quite as hot, though even in this worst
case we could improve it.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to raise the power limit of the CPU above 45 watts
to boost performance, though to be fair that would also raise thermals higher, and that is technically the Intel spec, at least it’s not under like say the Dell G3 or Lenovo L340.

I didn’t find the Acer Nitro 5 2019 Sense software or latest BIOS to perform GPU overclocking
or CPU undervolting.

Given the performance and temperatures we’ve seen here, I think it would be good for them to undervolt the CPU like they do with the Helios 300 and Triton 500 models out of the box, that way we wouldn’t need to run the fans quite as loud to compensate.

Hopefully this happens in a future update, until then you can of course change this yourself to improve the performance.

Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop Benchmarks:

Next let’s take a look at some gaming benchmarks, I’ve tested these with the fans at max speed to minimize the throttling just discussed, however, we’ll also test games with different fan speeds later.

Battlefield 5 Testing:

Battlefield 5 was tested in campaign mode, and it was playing well at ultra settings, still above 60 FPS even for the 1% low result, with much higher average frame rates possible at lower settings, but we’ll see how this game compares with other laptops soon.

Apex Legends Testing:

We could boost average FPS by 46% at minimum settings. An Nvidia driver update came out while I was in the middle of testing that improves the performance of this game though.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Testing:

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built-in benchmark, and even at maximum settings we’re still able to average 70 FPS, which is a fair result for these specs, and we’ll see how this game stacks up against other laptops soon.

Far Cry New Dawn Testing:

Far Cry New Dawn was tested with the built-in benchmark, there’s not much to note except the 1% low and average at ultra settings were a little lower than expected for this level of hardware, around 10 FPS lower for 1% low than the Lenovo Y540 with
same specs for instance.

Fortnite Testing:

Fortnite was tested with the replay feature, and even maxed out at epic settings we’re
still able to average above 100 FPS, so it’s still playing well without compromise, with
well above 200 FPS reached at lower settings.

Overwatch Testing:

Overwatch is another well-optimized game and was tested in the practice range, again great performance, even maxed out at epic settings the 1% low was easily surpassing 100 FPS, absolutely no issues at all running this game.

CS: GO Testing:

CS: GO was tested using the Ulletical FPS benchmark, and as is pretty much always the case high FPS from this test.

The results aren’t too different from other machines I’ve recently tested with similar specs, above 200 FPS even with all settings maxed out seems to be a fair result.

Rainbow Six Siege Testing:

We’re still close to 100 FPS even for the 1% low with a 100% render scale, so again high frame rates without any issues here.

PUBG Testing:

PUBG was tested using the replay feature, and while ultra settings were a little lower
than most other laptops I test, the rest of the results are quite high.

I’ve noticed this change over the last few machines I’ve tested, so I’m not sure if it was an update to the game that resulted in higher FPS at lower settings.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey Testing:

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was tested with the built-in benchmark and seems to be a CPU heavy test, so as a result, the frame rates aren’t that different from others I’ve
tested.

When I compare with the Y540 with same specs the averages here are a little ahead while 1% lows are a little behind, but it varies, either way quite close for the most part.

Dota 2 Testing:

Also we have tested Dota 2 and the results were quite good here, with above 200 FPS at low settings and still around 170 at ultra without any issues that I was able to notice.

Watch Dogs 2 Testing:

Watch Dogs 2 hits system resources hard, however I can play it just fine with a stable 30 FPS, and as we’re seeing higher than this even for the 1% low at ultra settings it was playing just fine for me regardless of setting level.

The Witcher 3 Testing:

The Witcher 3 was playable at ultra settings, it still played quite well, the 1% low wasn’t too far behind the 60 FPS sweet spot, while high settings and below took us to over 100 FPS for the averages.

Let’s also take a look at how this config of the Acer Nitro 5 2019 compares with other laptops.

Battlefield 5 Testing:

In Battlefield 5 I’ve got the Acer Nitro 5 2019 highlighted in red near similarly specced machines.

It’s right in line with the Lenovo Y540 with the same specs, but behind Acer’s own Helios 300 due to the modifications that have out of the box, which include CPU undervolt, boosted CPU power limit and GPU overclock.

Far Cry 5 Testing:

These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built-in benchmark. Again the results are quite close to the Y540, just a couple of FPS behind.

As a CPU heavy test it seems to just be ahead of the ASUS Scar II with RTX 2060, my guess is due to the 9th gen CPU in the Acer Nitro 5 i7, however the Helios 300 is still ahead with same specs, again due to those customizations Acer give it out of the box.

This time the Acer Nitro 5 i7 was coming out ahead of the Y540 with same specs, and was performing the same as the Scar II with RTX 2060.

It’s only just a few FPS behind the Helios 300 with same specs in this test, so a pretty good result comparatively.

Overall the Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop gaming laptop is performing pretty well here, the i7-9750H
and GTX 1660 Ti make for a great combination and can play pretty much any modern game even with higher settings.

As we saw earlier we could improve performance with some simple changes, so let’s see how these affect gaming performance.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider Testing:

Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built-in benchmark at highest settings.

In this test, there was almost no change between auto and max fans, a single frame on average, while the custom changes just listed made a larger improvement.

Battlefield 5 Testing:

Battlefield 5 was tested in Campaign mode at ultra settings.

Again not too much difference was seen between auto and max fans, while the CPU undervolting and GPU overclocking made a much larger difference, this put the 1% low performance near the averages from the others.

Far Cry 5 Testing:

Far Cry 5 was tested with the built-in benchmark at ultra settings.

There was more of a difference between auto and max fans in this test, but also less of a difference with the custom settings in place, though still an improvement nonetheless.

I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage, and the 512gb NVMe M.2 SSD was performing. Let’s conclude by covering the good and bad aspects of the Acer Nitro 5.

Overall there are some nice improvements over the older Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop, including better features and just nicer looks, but again let me know if you want a detailed comparison.

The Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop seems to be on the more entry-level side in Acer’s gaming lineup, coming in below the Helios and Triton series.

As a result, the body is made of plastic and it did have some flex to it, but I didn’t have any issues with the build quality during normal use.

With the specs I’ve got here, no problems were playing any games, however with
the fans at default speeds there was some thermal limitations.

This could easily be fixed by raising the fan speed though, and the Nitro 5 does allow you to independently control the speeds of the two fans, something many others don’t offer.

The thermal and power limits would likely be less of an issue with the i5 or Ryzen configurations anyway.

Unfortunately, my unit came with single-channel memory, I’m not sure if they’re selling them all like this or if some will come with dual-channel, but that will negatively affect performance.

Although the screen in my unit looked good in terms of colors and brightness, it was
only a 60Hz panel, and while this may be fine with the lower specced configurations available.

I think it would have been good to have a 144Hz panel, but I’m not currently sure if that’s an option. Everywhere I looked didn’t specify the refresh rate.

Acer Nitro 5 battery  life was alright, no complaints there, it lasted long enough for the size and there were no frame dips while gaming on battery power.

The storage options were also pretty good, two M.2 slots and a single 2.5-inch drive bay allows you to upgrade to plenty of storage space.

So this is a full review as well as gaming review, let me know what do you think about it in the comments.

I'll see you in the next one.