Acer Nitro 5 tested: Inexpensive gaming notebook
30.9.2019
Translation: machine translated
You can easily spend several thousand euros on a gaming notebook - or even just a three-digit amount, such as Acer's Nitro 5, which I tested to see how well it plays.
Specifically, I took a look at the Acer Nitro 5 AN515-43-R5TP. You can only get this configuration at Galaxus. Our Category Manager Kevin has promised me a gaming all-rounder with a good price-performance ratio, which is ideal for getting into gaming.
The technical data at a glance:
- AMD Ryzen 5 3550H
- AMD Radeon RX 560X
- 8 GB RAM (DDR4)
- 512 GB SSD from Western Digital (PC SN520 SDAPNUW-512G-1114, M.2 PCIe)
- 1000 GB HDD from Western Digital (WD10SPZX-21Z10T0 with 5,400 rpm, SATA600)
- 15.6-inch Full HD display (anti-glare)
- Keyboard with number pad
- Lithium-ion battery 57.49 Wh
- Windows 10 Home
Black and red with many connections
The Acer Nitro 5 does not have bright LEDs that shine in many colours. Instead, black and red dominate the appearance. The plastic casing with its clear corners and edges is mostly black. Red is used to emphasise individual elements and is particularly prominent on the keyboard. Even its backlight is red.
With a weight of 2.3 kilograms, the Nitro 5 is still portable, but not a laptop that you want to lug around every day. You don't have to do without anything important when it comes to the connections, which are located on the left and right side. HDMI, USB-C (3.1) and USB 2.0 are each available once, USB 3.0 even twice. There is also an Ethernet connection for the LAN cable and a 3.5 mm audio connection. The Wi-Fi supports the AC standard, but you still have to make do with version 4.0 for Bluetooth.
Matt display
The 15.6-inch display of the Acer Nitro 5 has a Full HD resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. This is enough for a sharp display for this size and I particularly like the fact that the screen is matt and non-reflective. This does make the colours a little less intense. On a reflective display, the colours are more vivid, but this is also more reflective.
For my taste, the brightness could be higher. I often had to increase the brightness in the graphics settings so that I could recognise things well in all the dark corridors. The screen was too dark by default at maximum brightness. You have to do without gimmicks such as a high refresh rate or particularly fast response times with this standard display.
Keyboard with numeric keypad
I like number pads on keyboards. They allow you to enter numbers faster and more conveniently than using the row of numbers above the letters. That's why I think it's basically good that Acer has given the Nitro 5 a numeric keypad. However, the symmetry is lost and the letters and especially the touchpad are not centred. The longer I use the notebook, the more it bothers me.
All along, however, I liked the buttons. They are sufficiently large and are reasonably spaced. At 1.6 millimetres, their travel is pleasantly high and the pressure points are clear and distinct. There is no doubt about the game controls. In the dark, the red backlighting makes it easier to recognise the keys. Acer has highlighted the WASD and arrow keys so that they are immediately recognisable.
My fingers glide smoothly and elegantly on the touchpad. I can move the mouse pointer without any problems or delays. It's big enough for my taste - even if there are bigger ones, of course.
In the end, however, the following still applies: To be able to game with a notebook, you need at least a mouse. The touchpad is far too slow. An external keyboard is also better in the long run. But you can also go straight for a gamepad.
Stereo speakers
The Acer Nitro 5 has two speakers that emit their sound to the left and right. For a notebook, they create a decent stereo sound that accompanies the games well and also sounds good in the ears during music videos. According to Acer, technologies with names such as "Waves MaxxAudio" and "Acer TrueHarmony" ensure good sound.
Battery
If you want to get through a day at the office with the Acer Nitro 5, you have to trust the power-saving functions. As a simulation for simple tasks, I ran YouTube videos in the browser all the time and didn't give much thought to saving power. That's why the screen brightness remained at 100 per cent. The result: the lithium-ion battery was empty after around six hours. If you take care to save some energy, the Nitro 5 can manage more than seven hours.
Gaming puts more strain on the battery than YouTube videos. I drained the battery after just under 90 minutes. Without a mains adapter, gaming fun is therefore short-lived.
Performance
So the external factors of the Acer Nitro 5 are satisfactory. Time to take a look at the hardware, which is not insignificant for a gaming notebook.
With the Ryzen 5 3550H, you can expect a chipset that is not trimmed for performance, but should have a good ratio of performance and energy consumption. It achieves 1683 points in Cinebench R20 and is therefore roughly on a par with the Intel Core i7-6700HQ. In the Geekbench benchmark, the Ryzen 5 easily outperforms the Core i5-8250U, which is found in the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air, for example, with 848 points in single-core and multi-core mode.
The Ryzen 5 is supported by the AMD Radeon RX 560X, a real graphics card and eight gigabytes of RAM. The RX 560X is considered a mid-range graphics card and fits the Ryzen 5 with this categorisation, achieving 22,632 points in the Geekbench 5 OpenCL test.
What do these figures mean in practice? Given the hardware, I chose an older game to try out: "Gears of War 4". The notebook's ventilation is immediately noticeable when starting up, but it quietens down again relatively quickly. The game has its own benchmark test, which has an average frame rate of 54.1 FPS as the final result. In view of the performance of the Nitro 5's hardware, it also suggests that I mainly select medium graphics settings. I follow the recommendation and can go on a smooth monster hunt.
Conclusion: Not suitable for all games
The Acer Nitro 5 AN515 is not the most powerful gaming notebook, but it is comparatively inexpensive. Even for the similarly powerful Xiaomi Mi Air, you have to pay more and do without typical gaming elements: In addition to the design, this would be, for example, the CoolBoost for a higher fan speed and thus improved cooling of the GPU and CPU. NitroSense for monitoring and controlling the entire system is also missing.
I particularly like the matte display and the numeric keypad on the keyboard is very practical, especially outside of games. All important connections are available and the memory is large. However, with its hardware, the Acer Nitro 5 is not the right choice if you want to play "Cyberpunk 2077" on it next year. If you attach importance to always being able to select the best graphics settings, you should also use a more expensive, but more powerful notebook.
The Acer Nitro 5 is just as suitable as the first gaming notebook that doesn't yet have to handle triple AAA titles, most of which are rated 18+, as it is for classics from your games collection.
When I was but a young student, I'd sit in my friend's living room with all my classmates and play on his SuperNES. Since then I've had the opportunity to test out all the newest technology for you. I've done reviews at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, and have now arrived at Galaxus.de.
