Acer Nitro 5 (2019) review: A great budget-conscious laptop, at least for the moment - richardsonprisay

Acer's latest Nitro 5 shows you just how affordable gaming laptops have become. Last year we reviewed the 2018 version of the Acer Nitro 5, which secure a uppercase entry-level gambling feel for for a mere $800 operating theater so—cheaper straight-grained than some entry-level desktops I've built.

Now 2019's Nitro 5 (available at the best Buy) has come across my desk, touting the usual annual upgrades. That means slimly more than usual though, as we've had both CPUand GPU multiplication changes this year. What can $800 purchase you in 2019? Is itactually good enough for a modern gamer-on-the-run short? Let's watch.

This recapitulation is part of our ongoing roundup of the best gaming laptops. Belong thither for information on competing products and how we tested.

Variants

We took a look at the $830 Nitro 5, which features an Intel Marrow i5-9300H clocked at 2.4GHz, an Nvidia GTX 1650, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, a 1TB Winchester drive, and a 128GB SSD boot drive.

It's notrather the most expensive Nitro 5, just it's scalelike. There's also an $880 version that's all but identical, except it trades the dual-drive storage solution for a widowed 500GB SSD. It's up to you whether that's meriting the extra dough, though I'd contend the serve is yes.

Then thither are a change of little expensive Nitro 5s. At the very bottom is a $670 variant with an AMD Ryzen 5 2500U processor, AMD Radeon RX560X graphics, 8GB of DDR4, and a 1TB hard drive (but no SSD). There's also a split-gen version that combines a Substance i5-9300U with Nvidia's older GTX 1050, sitting at $730.

It's complex, only honestly the version Acer sent us is believably the most balanced kit—though as I said, that 500GB SSD is tempting.

Design

The Nitro 5 may not be the sleekest OR just about attractive laptop, but information technology doesn't feelcheap either—a common pitfall for budget laptops. The faux-brushed metallic lid looks high-final stage than it is, though matchless touch dispels the illusion. This laptop computer isveryplastic. Still, it's a stealthy way to improve the Nitro 5's standing from a distance. And while I'm not in love with the coloured-and-black color scheme, which just screams "Gaming Laptop computer," the precious stone-flavour variant misused here is conspicuous and slightly less tawdry than the norm.

That same, this is unmistakably a play laptop—same as the Nitro 7 we reviewed a few months back. It's aggressive, especially the vents on the rear, though at leastthose aren't red this time. I also find the pentagonal palpebra shape questionable. It doesn't genuinely do often to slim the Nitro 5's profile, nor is it especially interesting.

But in most respects the Nitro 5 is identical to the Nitro 7, and I liked the Nitro 7. The Nitro 5 even features, if not thesame keyboard as the Nitro 7, and so united I enjoyed every bit arsenic such. As I aforesaid when reviewing the Nitro 7:

"In most shipway it's just your typical chiclet slab, but there's a generous amount of travel to each keystroke and a crisp, tactile click that makes information technology a joy to type on."

Like the Nitro 7, I've found myself using the Nitro 5 to write articles more often than I expected. IT feels zealous—better than keyboards I've used on laptops two or threefold the price. I distillery wish the touchpad had discrete mouse buttons, as that's a pet peeve of mine on gaming laptops, only that feature article punches well above the Nitro 5's price taper.

Virtually things do, really. The Nitro 5 is impressive. You can tell apart where corners have been cut, but most are inoffensive and unnoticeable to the light observer.

Substantially, except the display. If there's one non-so-hidden compromise that brings the Nitro 5 in low-level budget, IT's the screen brightness. In most regards the Nitro 5 holds its own, with a fairly standard 15.6-inch, 1920×1080 IPS screen. It peters out at a bare 250 nits' luminosity though, which is commonly ourbaseline for testing.

250 nits is disposable, even in a passabl bright room, but it's definitely non impressive, and especially a pity given the Nitro 7 clears the 250-nit markthen some. Screening angles on the Nitro 5 also seem slightly narrower, though I don't take over a Nitro 7 present to liken. But it's a noteworthy difference betwixt the Nitro 5 and Nitro 7 lines—one of the a few that isn't related to under-the-hood computer hardware.

Carrying out

So have's get into the under-the-cowling hardware, shall we? As I said, the Nitro 5 we reviewed packs an Intel Core i5-9300H, Nvidia GTX 1650, and 8GB of DDR4 RAM.

It's modern but selfsame entry-level gaming hardware, exactly what you'd expect for the monetary value. Benchmarks prove that out, as the Nitro 5 slips a few notches below the Nitro 7 we looked at—especially in the Mainframe class, where the Nitro 7's Core i7-9750H handily outpaced the Nitro 5's Core i5 in Cinebench, most notably in multi-threading.

The rule repeated in the HandBrake test, where we re-encode a 30GB MKV file down to the Mechanical man Tab standard. The Nitro 7 wasn't exactly rapid, but still managed to finish the job just about ten minutes faster than the Nitro 5's poor Core i5 and its 44-minute encode. That said, the 2019 Nitro 5 did wangle to improve upon its predecessor's time (52 transactions) by almost ten transactions, so it's not all bad news. You'ray getting a lot more belt for your buck this year than last class.

Enough bang for your buck, though? For that we rattling need to turn to play performance, and that GTX 1650. And listen, the results aren'tamazing. The GTX 1650 is an entry-level plug-in with entry-level performance, and we can see that in our FireStrike Extreme results…

…as well as in our real-world gaming benchmarks,Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor andRise of the Grave Raider. These are unimpressive results. The fact that the GTX 1650 struggles to maintain a sweetie 60 frames per moment at 1080p resolution inEmanation of the Grave Raider—a young game—ISN't great. There's not a gross ton of runway for the Nitro 5, especially as we draw near the next console generation.

Simply it's genuinely affordable. I think that's the catch here. The Nitro 7 ran with the same GTX 1650 and cost hundreds of dollars to a greater extent, which is about unendurable to justify. The Nitro 5's discount price at to the lowest degree gives it a shot at relevance. Non that long ago, its about-$800 monetary value wouldn't eve have netted a proper artwork card. That in mind, the price present is pretty reasonable.

There's been one and only last major advance: battery life. We knocked 2018's Nitro 5 for its 291-minute runtime, and Acer apparently took the criticism to heart. For 2019 the battery's been upgraded from a scrimpy 48Whr to a more resilient 59Whr, with the end result that this year's manikin lasts more two hours longer.

Sure, that won't transform directly into two more hours of peak-public presentation play—we do our rundown test with whorled video, which is substantially less intensive. Still, for a gambling laptop? Seven hours of battery under our test conditions is almost unheard of.

Bottom line

Honestly the simply aspect of the Nitro 5 that gives me pause is longevity. Seem at thatRise of the Tomb Raiderbenchmark once again: The GTX 1650 struggles with a four-year-old biz. You'ray definitely not going to max out most of 2019's biggest releases, and it's only going to get worse from here.

On the other hand, IT's about $800. Would I urge saving skyward an extra $150 to $200 for Acer's beefier Predator Helios 300, reviewed in July? Yes, perfectly. Simply if you simply can't, or if you plan to buy a cheaper laptop and upgrade Sir Thomas More often, then the Nitro 5 is a respectable entry-level automobile. The build quality far surpasses what I'd expect from a laptop this cheap, and the internals are "good," for what that's worth.