Acer Nitro 5 AN515-42-R5ED Gaming Laptop review

SPECIFICATIONS
CPU: Intel Core i5-9300H Processor
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6 GB
RAM: 8GB
Screen: 15.6-inch IPS, LCD Full HD
Storage: 1 TB HDD & 128 GB SSD

REASONS TO BUY
+Solid all-round hardware spec+Big storage space+Low price point

FORComfortable keyboard
Lots of ports

AGAINSTSluggish performance and graphics
Below-average battery life
Meh speakers

SUMMARY

Storage	1 TB HDD
Processor	AMD Quad-Core Ryzen 5 Processor
Display	15.6" (39.62 cm) display, 1920 x 1080 px
Ram	8 GB DDR4 RAM

MULTIMEDIA

Secondary Camrearfacing	No
Microphone Type	Dual Digital Microphone
Inbuilt Microphone	Yes
Sound Technologies	Acer TrueHarmony Plus Technology, Optimized Dolby Audio Premium Sound Enhancement
Webcam	Yes
Speakers	Stereo Speakers
Video Recording	720p HD

PERFORMANCE

Clockspeed	2.0 Ghz
Graphic Processor	AMD Radeon RX 560X
Processor	AMD Ryzen 5 Quad Core 2500U
Graphics Memory	4 GB

MEMORY

Ram Type	DDR4
Memory Layout	1x8 Gigabyte
Memory Slots	1
Ram Speed	2400 Mhz
Expandable Memory	32 GB
Capacity	8 GB

DISPLAY DETAILS

Display Type	LED
Display Size	15.6 Inches (39.62 cm)
Display Resolution	1920 x 1080 Pixels
Display Touchscreen	No
Display Features	Full HD LED Backlit IPS Display
Pixel Density	141 ppi

PERIPHERALS

Keyboard	FineTip Keyboard with Independent Standard Numeric Keypad (International Language Support)
Backlit Keyboard	Yes
Pointing Device	Touchpad with Multi-Touch Gestures Enabled
Fingerprint Scanner	No
Optical Drive	No

GENERAL INFORMATION

Dimensionswxhxd	390 x 266 x 26.7 mm
Operating System Type	64-bit
Weight	2.7 Kg
Operating System	Windows 10 Home Basic
Model	AN515-42 (UN.Q3RSI.001)
Brand	Acer
Colors	Black

NETWORKING

Wireless Lan	802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth	Yes
Bluetooth Version	5.0

STORAGE

Hdd Speedrpm	5400 RPM
Hdd Capacity	1 TB
Hdd Type	SATA

BATTERY

Battery Life	5 Hrs
Battery Cell	4 Cell
Battery Type	Li-Ion

PORTS

Sd Card Reader	Yes
Usb 30 Slots	1
Microphone Jack	Yes
Headphone Jack	Yes
Usb 20 Slots	2

OTHERS

Sales Package	Laptop, Battery, AC Adapter, User Guide
Warranty	1 Year
Lockport	Yes

In the last year we’ve taken a look at a couple AMD Ryzen APU-powered (Raven Ridge) laptops, and while these laptops have had their ups and downs in terms of battery life, one area where AMD has never shied away from is total performance. Even in a mobile form factor, the Zen architecture is fast. And in AMD’s APUs, this also gets paired with AMD’s highly capable integrated Vega iGPU.

Overall a performant combination, a single APU is still at times limited – if not by its own innate performance than by the clockspeeds and total throughput the low-TDP part can sustain. So what do you if you need more performance, particularly GPU performance? As always, you go the tried and true route: you add a discrete GPU. Acer has done just this with their Nitro 5 laptop, which in the case of the model we're looking at today, pairs up a Ryzen APU with a Radeon RX 560X GPU in order to produce a thrifty, entry-level gaming laptop.

The Nitro 5 can be had with either AMD or Intel offerings on the CPU, and AMD and NVIDIA GPU offerings as well, which is rare to see. AMD sent us the Nitro 5 AN515-42-R5GT model, featuring an AMD Ryzen 5 2500U processor, and the AMD Radeon RX 560X GPU, coupled with 8 GB of DDR4 and a 256 GB SSD. The AN515-42 also comes in a slightly less expensive model which foregoes the SSD for a 1 TB HDD. With the size of today’s games that might be tempting, but the everyday performance benefits of the SSD mean that it should be the default choice, especially since you can add the HDD later if necessary without having to reinstall the OS.

The dGPU coupled with the Ryzen CPU is the AMD Radeon RX 560X, which launched in April 2018. AMD hasn’t had a lot of traction in the laptop gaming market, and although they’ve moved to their latest Vega architecture on the desktop and integrated with Ryzen, the RX 560X is based on Polaris 11, built on Global Foundries’ 14nm node, and offering 16 CUs / 1024 Stream Processors coupled with 4 GB of GDDR5 in the Acer Nitro 5. Despite being an older architecture than the Vega GPU integrated with the Rzyen 5 2500U, there’s far more GPU available, so it’s still a significant boost in gaming performance over the integrated model.

The 15.6-inch laptop does offer a 1920x1080 IPS display, which is great to see, since gaming laptops can tend to gravitate to TN panels. These are useful if you want a high refresh rate, but are much less useful the rest of the time. The 8 GB of DDR4 is unfortunately single-channel, but this is less of an issue on this machine because the dGPU has its own 128-bit GDDR5 memory pool. The upside is that the RAM is also upgradeable and easy to access.

Wireless in the AMD version is based on the Qualcomm Atheros 2x2 802.11ac adapter, and the laptop offers plenty of I/O with two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, and even a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port. The laptop also offers HDMI, and Ethernet.

To get to the price range, there’s definitely some corners cut, but lets take a look at the design and see how they did.

Meanwhile, the interior of the Nitro 5 screams "budget gaming." Picture this: red keyboard font combined with red backlighting, a red-accented touchpad and a red hinge. Of course, the budget gaming design isn't without incredibly thick bezels.

The Nitro 5's lid flexed like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his body-building days when I put pressure on it.

At 5.2 pounds and 15.4 x 10.5 x 1.1 inches, the Nitro 5 is the same size as its Intel counterpart, but just slightly heavier, as the Intel Nitro 5 weighs 5.1 pounds. The Nitro 5 is also much larger than the Dell G3 15 (5.2 pounds, 15 x 10.2 x 0.9 inches) and the Asus TUF Gaming FX504 (5.1 pounds, 15.1 x 10.3 x 1 inches).

Ports

There's a good amount of ports on the Nitro 5.

On the left, there's a Kensington lock slot, an RJ45 Ethernet port, one USB Type-C port, an HDMI 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port and an SD card slot, while the right side features the power jack, two USB 2.0 ports and a headphone jack.

Acer has attempted to brighten up the boring red and black colour scheme with a shimmering chevron pattern on the lid and palm rest areas, but there’s no hiding behind its sub-standard build materials. The chassis is plasticky and feels rather cheap, and the bezels bordering the screen aren’t flush with the rest of the device.

Design

Gaming laptops generally fall into two categories based on their size, which is usually 15.6 and 17.3 inches. The larger laptops offer more space for extra cooling, but they can be so large that its difficult to move them around. The Acer Nitro 5, at 15.6-inches, is surprisingly svelte (especially for the price), but even then it is still 1.1-inches thick and weighs just under 6 lbs.

One of the easiest ways to save some cost is on the chassis, and the Acer Nitro 5 is made completely out of plastic. What the company has done to improve the look and feel though is to incorporate a faux carbon fibre weave into the design, which covers the top of the laptop, as well as the keyboard deck. It provides some much-needed texture on the top of the laptop, and provides a nice look and feel to the device without being too over-the-top. For contrast, there’s a red hinge bar, and the keyboard backlighting is red as well. Due to the budget nature, there’s also no thin-bezel design that we’ve seen on even some gaming laptops, so this is a large and wide laptop for 15.6-inches of screen space.

The large size does allow Acer to cram in a full keyboard with number pad on the right. 15.6-inch devices with a number pad are kind of a mixed bag though, since the keys tend to get pretty crammed together, and this model is no exception. The lack of a full size zero key also makes transitioning to this number pad less than ideal, but it is there if you need it. The other tradeoff is that it pushes the rest of the keyboard off center. Acer also commits a faux pas by putting the power button in the keyboard, which means you may accidentally turn off the computer while typing, although this is mitigated by it being above the number pad and not near the keys you’d use most of the time.

As for key feel, this is another area where Acer has saved some room on the bill of materials. The keyboard doesn’t offer very much travel, and the keys are quite slippery and don’t offer much tactile response either. With gaming laptops offering quite a bit more Z height than something like an Ultrabook, it would be nice to see a keyboard with a bit more travel here.

Luckily the same can’t be said of the trackpad, which is a generous size without being unwieldly, and the trackpad offers an incredibly smooth surface, and detects taps, two-finger scrolling, and more, with zero issues. Considering the sad state of trackpads on many laptops, this was unexpected considering the value segment Acer is targeting.

Acer offers two USB 2.0 ports on the right side, coupled with the barrel power connector and headset jack, and the left side offers a Type-C USB 3.1 Gen1 port, along with a USB 3.0 Type-A, HDMI, and an SD card reader. The RJ45 connector has a hinged section on the bottom to allow it to expand to full size when a network cable is plugged in. It can be a bit of a struggle to get the connector back out again though, but if you’re using the laptop on a desk, it’s still worth having the Gigabit connection.

Overall the design is very nice. The low-end material for the chassis is spruced up with the carbon-fibre look, and the chassis itself doesn’t flex or bend at all if you pick it up on one size. The Acer Nitro 5 doesn’t offer the premium look and feel of some of the top gaming systems, but it also doesn’t come with their price tag.

System Performance

Acer offers both Intel and AMD powered versions of the Nitro 5, and there’s some significant differences in terms of CPU options due to the limited product stack AMD launched with Ryzen Mobile. The AMD powered Nitro 5 comes with a Ryzen 5 2500U processor, offering four cores, eight threads, and a maximum boost frequency of 3.6 GHz. Being a U series, the TDP is 15-Watts by default, though AMD offers a range of cTDP modes from 12-25 Watts. This is a rarely tapped feature on most laptops, but in this case it looks like Acer has put the Ryzen in cTDP up mode. We’ve reached out to Acer and AMD to confirm the TDP settings, but as you’ll see below this Ryzen 5 2500U performs well ahead of other we have tested.

AMD has recently announced the second generation Ryzen mobile processors, and the product stack is much wider, with a couple of new H series models which will expand the base TDP to 35 Watts. It would not be a shock to see this Acer updated when those are available.

This is the first Ryzen laptop we’ve tested though that’s been paired with a dGPU, so the Acer’s choice to go with the Ryzen 5 2500U isn’t as large of a step down from the 2700U as usual, since the big jump in the 2700U is the bigger Vega 10 GPU. Since any GPU task will be offloaded to the RX 560X, the iGPU performance tradeoff isn’t a concern.

For comparisons, we’ve included the Dell XPS 15 9560 because it came with a quad-core Kaby Lake and GTX 1050, which is the same type of components found in the other model of Acer Nitro 5. We’ve also included the Surface Book 2 15, which had a 15-Watt CPU paired with a GTX 1060, and the MSI GT75 Titan was included only because it’s the only other laptop we’ve tested with the most recent version of our gaming suite so far. If you’d like to compare the Acer Nitro 5 to any other system we’ve tested, please check out our online Bench.

PCMark

The Nitro 5 holds its own here, performing similarly to the Dell XPS 15, although its not quite able to keep up with a 45-Watt processor in all of the tasks on PCMark 10.

AMD’s Ryzen has always performed well in Cinebench, and continues to here as well. The extra cooling capacity of this gaming laptop lets the Ryzen stretch its legs, outperforming the same Ryzen 5 2500U we tested in the Lenovo ThinkPad A285 by a wide margin.

As with the previous tests, the Acer Nitro 5 performs quite well in our CPU based encoding test, but can’t quite match a quad-core Kaby Lake at 45-Watts. It’s still well ahead of the other Ryzen models we’ve tested though.
Web Tests

Web is one of the most important tasks for any system, but is also the least reliable way to check performance, since it is so heavily dependent on the browser, and of course browsers are updated continuously meaning even just using the same browser is more or less a snapshot in time.

Web performance is one area where Ryzen struggles against the similar Intel Core products, most likely due to the effort Intel has put into their Speed Shift and how quickly the processors can ramp up to their maximum performance level, which is important in web because the tests tend to be short bursts of work.
CPU Conclusion

While not quite able to match the 45-Watt Intel quads, the Acer Nitro 5 with Ryzen 5 2500U still offers very solid performance, offering much more sustained performance than we’ve seen in any previous Ryzen laptop we have tested.
Storage Performance

Unless you buy the lowest-priced Nitro 5, Acer includes SSD storage, as well as a 2.5-inch HDD bay so that you can add extra storage if needed. With a 256 GB OS drive, there’s enough room for the OS and a couple of games though. Acer offers a SATA SSD in the Nitro 5, based on the Micron 1100.

Being a SATA based SSD, peak performance is certainly limited compared to NVMe drives, but it still offers orders of magnitude better performance compared to spinning drives. Considering the budget nature of this device, it’s excellent to even see an SSD, so if it has to be a SATA that is just fine.
GPU Performance

It’s a bit ironic that the most recent GPU architecture in the Acer Nitro 5 is the one that is not used, since the Ryzen CPU offers Vega graphics, but despite the dGPU being Polaris 11 based, it still offers far more GPU performance than you can get out of the integrated GPU.

The AMD Radeon RX 560X offers 16 CUs, which translates into 1024 Stream Processors, and is coupled with 64 texture units and 16 ROPs. AMD offers both 2 GB and 4 GB models of this laptop card, but despite this being a budget system, Acer has gone with 4 GB of GDDR5, attached via a 128-bit bus. It’s based on Global Foundries 14nm process.

The Intel version of this laptop comes with an NVIDIA GTX 1050, or a 1050 Ti on the highest-end models. So for comparison the Dell XPS 15 9560 is included which came with the GTX 1050. The MSI GT75 Titan is included only because it is the only other device which has been tested on the latest games in our suite. If you’d like to compare the Acer Nitro 5 against any other system we have tested, please check out our online Bench.

It’s also worth pointing out that the Acer Nitro 5 is pretty limited in terms of resolutions the panel supports. Although 1920x1080 is great for desktop, demanding games may make use of a slightly lower resolution such as 1600x900, but that is not available as an option on this laptop. It only offers 1920x1080 and 1280x720 as 16:9 resolutions, so for our gaming tests we were limited to our Value and Enthusiast settings, but some games play better than others. Civ VI, for example, would only run at 1920x1080 in fullscreen mode, but Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War render at a % of the native resolution, so they work fine regardless.

Acer Nitro 5 AN515-42-R5ED Gaming Laptop review

3DMark

UL Benchmark’s 3DMark offers several tests, with Fire Strike being the most complex, and Ice Storm Unlimited being a test that you can run on smartphones and tablets. As the scenes get less complex, the CPU performance becomes more of a bottleneck than the GPU, and that is apparent here. With Fire Strike, the Acer Nitro 5 trades blows with the GTX 1050 in the XPS 15, but as the scenes get less complex, it fades back. It still offers far more performance than the Vega 10 in the Acer Swift 3, but the gap shrinks from being 413% the performance of Vega 10 on Fire Strike, down to *only* 157% the performance on Ice Storm. Luckily most games are more GPU demanding than Ice Storm would be.

The latest GFXBench offers new DX12 based tests, which are a big step up over the OpenGL based tests from GFXBench 4.0. AMD tends to do well on DX12, and it does do very well here as well. It’s well over any integrated GPU, offering well over double the performance of the Vega 10, which itself is almost twice as fast as Intel’s UHD 620.

Dota offers a wide enough range of options that it can be run pretty well on even integrated graphics, assuming you’re OK with turning down the detail and resolution. It does tend to be more CPU bound than many other games though. At our Enthusiast settings, the game averaged just over 60 FPS, which is far higher than iGPUs. But thanks to the more powerful CPU in the Dell XPS 15, it managed 50% quicker yet.

Unfortunately this game would only detect the display at 1920x1080, which means if you are going to play Civ VI on this device, you'll have to do it with the settings turned down a bit. Luckily, this isn't a game that requires very high framerates to play.

As a DX12 title, AMD does much better here, offering similar performance to the GTX 1050 again. It is more or less dead even between the two GPUs.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

The latest in the Tomb Raider franchise is much more demanding, and although we only have a couple of devices tested with it, it looks like it will be one that will stick with us for a long time, since even a GTX 1080 only achieves 92 FPS on our Enthusiast settings. The game is certainly playable on value on the Acer Nitro 5, but it is running into its limits here.

Bioshock Infinite

We’re including some of our older titles here both because this is an entry-level gaming system, and because we have a lot of data for these tests, and Bioshock is one that can still be demanding to laptops. The Nitro 5 performs very well in our Value results, but struggles a bit on the Enthusiast settings. What would likely be the sweet spot would be our 1600x900 Mainstream test, but as indicated above, this laptop doesn’t offer that resolution.

Shadow of Mordor

The RX 560X can easily run this game, assuming the settings are turned down. It does still struggle at 1920x1080 Ultra though, so some tweaking would be needed.

Shadow of War

The latest version of the game is even more demanding, and here the Nitro 5 runs it well at Value, but would struggle with much more demand than that.
F1 2017

Codemasters offers a pretty wide range of performance with their racing sim engine, and the Acer Nitro 5 can play it pretty well.
Far Cry 5

Ubisoft’s Far Cry franchise is one of their most successful, but the performance required is a bit more than the Acer can handle. The game is playable, albeit barely, at our value settings.
GPU Conclusion

This is the first laptop we’ve seen with a discrete AMD GPU in a long time. Not only is this great for competition, but the performance of the Polaris based RX 560X showed that it can hang with NVIDIA's widely-used GTX 1050. AMD’s work on what was originally Mantle has translated through into great showings in DX12 games, although the system can still struggle a bit in DX11. Most entry level gaming laptops are also going to offer a 45-Watt H series Intel CPU, so the pairing with AMD’s U series Ryzen is also holding it back somewhat. Luckily AMD has just announced their own H series, so this gap should be filled in the near future.

Considering its gaming laptop credentials, the Nitro 5 is lacking in ports. There aren’t any connections on the back edge of the Nitro 5 either, which is far from perfect if you’re trying to prevent cables clogging up your desk space.

On the left edge is a regular-sized SD card reader, USB 3.0 slot, HDMI 2.0 output, USB-C, Gigabit Ethernet port and a Kensington Security slot. On the right, you’ll find a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a 3.5mm audio jack and the power cable socket.

Display Analysis

Acer’s Nitro 5 offers a 1920x1080 15.6-inch display which is an IPS panel, which is great to see. Even though this is a value offering, it would have been disappointing to see a TN display, so well done Acer. That is about where the good qualities of this display end, unfortunately.

At 15.6-inches in size, the 1920x1080 resolution does allow you to run 100% scaling without the elements getting too small. That’s a benefit for sure, since you won’t get the artifacts that can still existing when using scaling in Windows 10. There’s been a lot of improvements to the OS to correct this, but not all applications have taken the time to ever deal with it. Luckily that won’t be a concern at 100%.

To test the display we use SpectraCal’s CalMAN suite with a custom workflow. Brightness and contrast readings are taken with the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter, and color readings are taken with the X-Rite i1Pro2 spectrophotometer.

The panel on the Nitro 5 doesn’t get particularly bright, topping out at just 246 nits. It also doesn’t get particularly dark either, with a minimum brightness of 16 nits. But both values are likely fine for use indoors on a desk. The black levels are quite good though, leading to a solid contrast ratio of 1258:1 at maximum brightness.

Here is where things start to get unravelled for the Nitro 5. The grayscale accuracy is terrible, thanks to the green part of the backlight being far too bright at almost any point in the range. The gamma curve is also well off the 2.2 value expected, falling increasingly under that point starting at around 35% brightness. This means there will be less of a dynamic range between highs and lows as you go towards greater brightness levels.

Gamut

Gamut is the primary and secondary colors at 100% brightness, whereas with the saturation sweep we test with 4-bit steps from 0% to 100%. It’s amazing just how far off the blue levels are, and coupled with the less than amazing reds, the magenta values are also dramatically impacted.
Gretag Macbeth

This graph also needed to have almost all of the charts adjusted to show just how far off the mark the colors are on this display. Considering the less than amazing primary colors, it’s no shock that every single color is pretty much terrible.
Colorchecker

This image shows the intended color on the bottom, and the achieved color on the top, so it gives a nice representation of the previous tests. The whites are very green, and the colors are mostly terrible.
Display Conclusion

This display is possibly the least accurate IPS panel we have ever tested. The uncalibrated panel is coupled with a backlight that can’t even come close to covering the entire sRGB spectrum. The Acer Nitro 5 is an entry-level device, and the display is one of the ways they made it to their target price.
Battery Life

Despite being a large laptop, weighing almost six pounds and being over 1-inch thick, the Acer Nitro 5 has just a 47 Wh battery inside, which is less than many Ultrabooks. As a gaming laptop though, its primary place of use is going to be on a desk, so this is likely a good place for Acer to save on the bill of materials. However, we’ve already seen a few times that AMD’s Ryzen mobile processor has some issues with high idle power consumption, so coupled with a small battery, expectations for great battery life are low.

By removing the battery capacity from the equation, we can see how efficient each device is. It is more or less in-range with other Ryzen systems, which is where you’d expect.
Battery Conclusion

Ryzen needs work in this area more than any other, and hopefully the 2nd generation addresses these shortcomings. Luckily the battery life is probably not that big of a concern for most buyers of a gaming laptop, so despite being less than amazing, it is still acceptable for this type of system.
Charge Time

Acer ships the Nitro 5 with a 135-Watt AC adapter. However, they don’t dedicate much of the power to battery charging.

The laptop is fairly average in terms of charge time, even with the large power source, but since it’ll likely spend most of its life plugged into the wall, this isn’t a huge concern either.
Wireless

As we’ve seen in several laptops over the last year, the Acer Nitro 5 features a Qualcomm Atheros QCA61x4a wireless card, which offers 2x2:2 and 802.11ac. It also offers a Realtek Gigabit Ethernet connection if you’ve got access to wired networking.

The performance of the Qualcomm adapter is decent. It doesn’t offer the much faster connections that are typical of the latest Intel wireless adapters, but it gets the job done. Reliability also seemed to be quite good, and there were no disconnects or other abnormal behaviour detected.

Audio

With just two stereo speakers and no subwoofer that you sometimes see on this size of system, expectations weren’t high, but despite only hitting about 75 dB(A) on our test track, the Acer delivered solid, crisp sound, with more dynamic range than expected. For software, Acer offers their Dolby Audio Premium software which works when using the headset jack.
Thermals

Acer outfits the Nitro 5 with Acer’s CoolBoost, which features two fans which draw air from the bottom and expel it out the back of the system. There’s also a software toggle to kick up the speed for maximum cooling if necessary, although in our testing it certainly was not necessary.

To test the thermals we ran Shadow of the Tomb Raider for just over an hour, measuring the GPU and CPU temperatures for the duration. The thermal performance of the Acer Nitro 5 was excellent, with no degradation in performance found, and quite low temperatures on the components. The GPU only went up to 71°C, with the CPU just under that at 68.9°C peak. Power draw on the GPU peaked at 72.5 Watts, and the GPU frequency was locked in at 1275 MHz with no deviation detected at all. Fan speeds were only at 35% as well, which kept the noise down to just about 46 dB(A) measured one inch over the trackpad.

Neither the AMD Ryzen 5 processor, nor the RX 560X, are too power hungry in a system of this size, but even so, the Nitro 5 does a great job of keeping everything cool without getting loud.
Software

As a value product, Acer has turned to offering some pre-installed software to help with margins, which is a practice we’ve seen less and less of by OEMs, which is ironic since Microsoft is now tapping that same well for Windows itself. The Acer Nitro 5 ships with Norton Antivirus, as well as an “Acer Collection” which opens to several Store apps. There’s nothing here too exciting.

The Acer Care software is something most manufactures offer now, with a single pane of glass to manage support, updates, and more, and unlike the other software that’s installed, is probably useful for almost anyone.

The laptop also comes with Acer NitroSense, which allows you to customize the fan profiles, set the power plan, and monitor the CPU, GPU, and fan speeds.

The software is simple to use, and works well. There's no macro support or anything that you might see on a higher priced gaming laptop, but for monitoring, it does the job well.

GPU Performance

It’s a bit ironic that the most recent GPU architecture in the Acer Nitro 5 is the one that is not used, since the Ryzen CPU offers Vega graphics, but despite the dGPU being Polaris 11 based, it still offers far more GPU performance than you can get out of the integrated GPU.

The AMD Radeon RX 560X offers 16 CUs, which translates into 1024 Stream Processors, and is coupled with 64 texture units and 16 ROPs. AMD offers both 2 GB and 4 GB models of this laptop card, but despite this being a budget system, Acer has gone with 4 GB of GDDR5, attached via a 128-bit bus. It’s based on Global Foundries 14nm process.

GPU Conclusion

This is the first laptop we’ve seen with a discrete AMD GPU in a long time. Not only is this great for competition, but the performance of the Polaris based RX 560X showed that it can hang with NVIDIA's widely-used GTX 1050. AMD’s work on what was originally Mantle has translated through into great showings in DX12 games, although the system can still struggle a bit in DX11. Most entry level gaming laptops are also going to offer a 45-Watt H series Intel CPU, so the pairing with AMD’s U series Ryzen is also holding it back somewhat. Luckily AMD has just announced their own H series, so this gap should be filled in the near future.

AMD’s Ryzen launch has transformed the company, and really brought proper competition to the CPU space that we’ve not seen in the x86 world for a long time. But Ryzen was first and foremost a desktop competitor, and even though AMD did eventually release a laptop version, it’s not had the same success as its desktop counterpart. The biggest issue is the idle power draw, which is quite high, rendering it less than ideal in an Ultrabook. However the Acer Nitro 5 is not an Ultrabook, but rather a gaming laptop, where the expectations are different and portability is closer to a desktop replacement than a laptop that needs to run off a battery all day long.

Being coupled with an AMD GPU makes the Acer Nitro 5 even more unique. The laptop world has been dominated by NVIDIA's products, so it’s rare to find laptops with AMD GPUs, and even more rare for them to be paired with an AMD CPU. It’s great to see this as an option again, and as we’ve seen, the laptop is competitive as well.

Although the shell of the Nitro 5 is completely plastic, Acer has done a nice job with the styling, and the faux carbon fibre adds some texture and character to a laptop which would otherwise be just flat black plastic. The laptop is plenty strong as well.

There’s also a great cooling system inside, and it never has to work too hard to keep the thermals in check. The CPU didn’t even reach 70°C, and the GPU was only 71°C after a full hour of gaming, and during that hour the sound level only peaked at about 46 dB(A), which is well under some larger gaming laptops. Acer also offers a CoolBoost setting if you want extra cooling, but from what we observed, there’s little reason to ever turn that on. Even better, at idle and light workloads, the laptop is completely silent, since it’s now got a big gaming cooling system to only deal with a U series Ryzen processor.

In terms of performance, the Nitro 5 does very well, especially when you look at the price. It offers far more performance than any Ultrabook, Ryzen equipped or not, and the RX 560X in terms of pure GPU performance can go toe to toe with the GTX 1050. On the CPU side, the Ryzen 5 2500U can’t quite match the 45-Watt Intel quad-cores, but the performance is still quite good.

Clearly Acer had to cut some items to reach their price point, and the display was one of those areas, but even though it can’t do 100% of the sRGB gamut, and even though it’s likely the least accurate IPS display we have ever tested, at the end of the day it is still a 1920x1080 IPS panel, offering good viewing angles, and a good resolution for a gaming laptop of this performance level. Really the only valid criticism of the display on a device like this is that it doesn’t support 1600x900 or 1366x768, both of which would be valuable resolutions for full-screen gaming. With just 1920x1080 or 1280x720 as available 16:9 options, there’s a big jump there in resolution which might be the difference between unplayable and playable.

Acer Nitro 5 specifications
Processor	AMD Ryzen 5 2500U (Quad-core, 2.0GHz)
RAM	8GB (DDR4 SDRAM, 4GB X 2)
Additional memory slots	0
Max. memory	32GB
Screen size	15.6in
Screen resolution	1,920 x 1,080 (60Hz)
Pixel density	141.2
Screen type	IPS LCD
Touchscreen	No
Pointing devices	Touchpad
Graphics adapter	AMD Radeon RX 560X
Graphics outputs	HDMI 2.0, USB-C
Graphics memory	4GB (GDDR5)
Storage	128GB SSD (Serial ATA), 1TB HD (Serial ATA/600)
Optical drive	No
Memory card slot	SD
USB ports	USB 2.0 x 2, USB 3.0, USB-C
Other ports	HDMI 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45, Kensington Secuirty Slot, 3.5mm audio jack, power socket
Web Cam	Yes
Speakers	Dual speakers
3.5mm headphone jack	Yes
Wi-Fi	IEEE 802.11ac Wi-Fi
Bluetooth	Yes
NFC	No
Dimensions (WDH)	390 x 266 x 26.8mm
Weight	2.7kg
Operating system	Windows 10 Home
Operating system restore option	Windows restore partition
Battery size	3320 mAh