This is the Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop with AMD Ryzen™ 7 6800H APU and NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3070 Ti Laptop GPU. Even though the Nitro series gaming laptops are placed below the Predator series gaming laptops, the Nitro 5 still packs a lot of punch under the hood to churn out respectable frame rates in triple-A game titles. Let’s find out what this laptop is capable of.
Design
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Let’s start off with the design. The chassis has a standard black and red accent colour combination with a subtle gamer look to it.
Apart from the RGB backlit keyboard and the edgy hot air exhaust, you can’t really tell if this is a gaming laptop at first glance. The polycarbonate chassis may not be the thinnest and strongest of them all, but it keeps the laptop weight at a manageable 2.5kg.
IO
There are plenty of IO options available.
Left
- Ethernet
- USB-A
- Combo audio jack
Right
Back
- Charging Port
- USB-C with DisplayPort out
- HDMI
Display
Opening the lid reveals the 15.6-inch Quad HD display with a 165Hz refresh rate. It supports AMD FreeSync™ technology that dynamically matches the display refresh rate with the GPU frame output. This will smoothen the visual experience, especially in fast-paced games.
This IPS panel is surrounded by thin bezels which contributes to the overall small laptop form factor. The panel itself has a matte surface to reduce screen glare.
Keyboard
The 4-zone RGB backlit keyboard includes the number pad which can be very important for users who are used to full-sized keyboard layouts. The important keys such as WASD and arrow cluster has a unique keycap to provide a visual separation from the rest of the keys.
The backlight effect, colour and speed can be customised in the Acer NitroSense software.
The trackpad is fine for everyday usage but I would rather stick with a dedicated mouse for gaming purposes.
Performance
The Acer Nitro 5 comes in a variety of hardware configurations – there are Intel or AMD CPU options. Of course a number of NVIDIA GPU choices are available as well. The one we have in our studio is a higher-spec model with AMD Ryzen™ 7 6800H and NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3070 Ti. Our model even comes with 32GB DDR5 RAM, which should handle all your Chrome browser tabs with ease.
Comparing this with the previous generation Nitro 5 AMD, while there isn’t much of a leap in CPU performance score between the 6800H and 5800H, what really makes the difference is Acer’s decision to go with higher TGP graphics cards.
For some reason, the previous generation Nitro 5 uses a lower TGP variant of the NVIDIA GPU, for example, the RTX 3070 on the previous laptop is limited to 85W while this time, the RTX 3070 Ti is not having any of it, going at 150W Max TGP.
3DMark has shown a significant 25% increment in the benchmark score.
We can also see the same improvement in actual gameplay, going as high as 70fps in Control with Ray Tracing and DLSS enabled. That is quite a jump from the 45fps on the 85W RTX 3070.
The same applies to CyberPunk 2077 which shows a significant frame rate increment. Even though it is still sub-60fps, but way better than the 30fps gaming experience.
Do keep in mind that all of our tests are conducted with the Performance profile set in the NitroSense software. The Performance mode will produce a higher frame rate, roughly around 10% more fps than the Balance Mode. The downside is the laptop will run hotter and the fan noise will be a lot louder. If you game with gaming headphones and noise-cancelling microphones, I think the fan noise shouldn’t be a problem for you. Otherwise, I think the Balanced mode is good enough.
Thermals
Speaking of the fan noise, Acer has done an excellent job with the cooling of the Nitro 5. While in gaming, I notice the CPU and GPU temperature usually hovers around 80c with occasional spikes that go up to the 90c range. If you’re not used to gaming laptop CPU and GPU temperature, don’t freak out. This is actually a very reasonable cooling performance considering we have an 8-core CPU and RTX 3070 Ti running at 150W.
Upgradability
Removing the bottom chassis panel reveals the upgrade-friendly motherboard design. We got 2 SODIMM slots and 2 PCIe4 M.2 slots. The 1TB storage drive takes one M.2 slot and another is available for storage expansion.
Battery life
And that brings us to the battery life. The laptop has a 58Wh battery that should last you for about 4 hours of usage. That is what I get from using the laptop in the Quiet power profile and limiting the display brightness to 30%. For a gaming laptop with high-power components, that is pretty good if you want to use the laptop while on the go.
For gaming, I would strongly suggest plugging in the laptop since it allows the full potential of the CPU, GPU and 165Hz display for a smoother gaming experience.
Conclusion
Before we conclude, this particular spec will cost you RM8999. The competition is quite fierce at this price range, such as ROG Strix G15 and HP Omen 16 also falls in the same price bracket with similar spec. Whether you need the 1440p 165Hz display or Full HD 144Hz is entirely up to your budget. The same goes for the argument of whether you should get the Intel or AMD model. The AMD version supports DDR5 RAM and may run slightly cooler while the Intel version supports Thunderbolt4. It totally depends on what you need and they should have roughly similar performance in games unless the game can take advantage of Intel’s higher single-core performance. Otherwise, game performance is mostly GPU bound.
In short, there isn’t much to complain about the laptop. Generally, the Acer Nitro 5 is a well-rounded gaming laptop that offers a lot of performance value for the price you’re paying. It performs well in games thanks to the use of higher TGP graphics cards and gamers should be happy with it.
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