Acer Nitro 5 AN515-44 Laptop Review: AMD dating Nvidia

Its competitors are other 15-inch budget gaming laptops, such as the Dell G5 15 5590, the HP Omen 15, the Lenovo Legion Y540-15, and the Acer Predator Helios 300. Accordingly, our comparison group is comprised of those four devices.

As is expected of a modern laptop, Acer opted for narrow albeit slightly wider bezels than those found on some of its competitors. Nevertheless, the Nitro’s footprint of 36.3 x 25.5 cm (14.3 x 10 inches) turned out to be fairly compact for a 15-inch device, as did its maximum height of just 2.4 cm. Thanks to its moderate weight of no more than 2.2 kg it is even portable to a certain degree.

Despite its budget price, the Nitro does not require any compromises in regard to communication. While wired connections are handled by a Killer E2600 Ethernet controller, wireless protocol support is plentiful thanks to Intel’s AX200 Wi-Fi 6 modem offering fast Wi-Fi transfer rates of more than 1,300 Mb/s both when transmitting and receiving data. Due to our recently improved test setup those numbers are not comparable to older test results. In order to future-proof our setup we switched from an AC to an AX router (Netgear Nighthawk AX12).

Even though the webcam was not as bad in terms of focus as webcams on other gaming laptops, we advise you to lower your video quality expectations and not to expect too much of it.

Included in the box are a few leaflets with general information, a mounting frame for the vacant 2.5-inch slot, and a pleasantly lightweight (ca. 340 g / 0.75 lbs) and compact (ca. 13.5 x 7 x 2.5 cm / 5.3 x 2.75 x 1 inches) 135 W power supply.

Given the lack of a maintenance opening, the entire bottom case needs to be removed in order to access the internal hardware, which requires the removal of a total of 11 Philips screws. Once removed you get access to the battery, the wireless communication module, two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, as well as two M.2-2280 slots and one 2.5-inch storage bay. The cooling solution for the soldered CPU and GPU consists of two fans connected by various heat pipes, and it is not completely isolated from each other.

Default warranty varies based on country of purchase. For example, our German review unit comes with two full years of pickup & return warranty by default.

The red-framed touchpad’s footprint of 10.5 x 7.5 cm (4.1 x 3 inches) is more than adequate for a 15-inch laptop. Its smooth surface ensures great gliding capabilities, and its precision was at an acceptable level. As expected, various gestures are supported, for example pinch by zoom or two-finger scrolling. The sound it makes when triggering the buttons is rather loud and clattery, and it could have used some additional fine-tuning, particularly considering that overall keyboard clatter is very low.

In the past, displays with more than 100 Hz were mostly limited to expensive high-end laptops. Nowadays, more and more budget gamers are equipped with these high-frequency panels.

Our particular SKU can be found in the upper mid-range segment of gaming laptops, both in terms of price as well as performance. It is worth noting that the CPU offered much more performance headroom than the GPU, which topped out in some of the more-demanding games occasionally already. Unlike the GPU the RAM can be upgraded, and we strongly suggest doubling the RAM from 8 to 16 GB of dual-channel RAM.

Its clock speeds were pretty impressive overall. While it only achieved its maximum boost of 4.0 GHz under ideal conditions, an average of 3.7 GHz with load on all cores is more than respectable. The fact that performance dropped after a few runs is no exception but rather typical for a laptop.

When running our benchmarks, the Ryzen 5 4600H practically wipes the floor with its Intel competitors. In CineBench R15 multi-thread it scored around 20% faster than a Core i7-9750H. Compared with the Core i5-9300H, a processor very popular with notebooks in the Nitro’s $1,000 range, it was between 70 and 80% faster thanks to its higher core count. Intel definitely has to take note of this.

According to PCMark 10, our review unit scored somewhere between other devices equipped with a GTX 1650 Ti or GTX 1660 Ti, and an i5-9300H or i7-9750H. Subjectively, the 15-inch device felt very fast and snappy at all times, be it application launches, load times, boot times, or file transfers.

In order to present the powerful CPU with a worthy storage device Acer opted for a PCIe SSD. Sequential transfer rates north of 1,000 MB/s in both read and write may not be the cream of the crop but still more than enough for everyday use. Our review unit was equipped with a 512 GB large SK Hynix BC511 SSD. If you need more storage space, you can either add a second M.2 SSD or use the included mounting bracket to add a traditional 2.5-inch hard disk drive.

Truth be told we are somewhat disappointed by the GTX 1650 Ti despite its overall decent performance. Looking at the benchmark results reveals that the DirectX 12 GPU can only perform slightly better than a “regular” GTX 1650.

Given the overall very similar specs this does not come as a huge surprise. After all, both Turing GPUs feature 1,024 shaders with access to 4 GB of VRAM and a 128-bit interface. The only difference is that the Ti model features GDDR6 instead of GDDR5 VRAM.

In order to determine sustained load capabilities, we ran The Witcher 3 on FHD/Ultra for at least 60 minutes. The resulting frame rate was consistent throughout the entire test, which hints at a properly sized cooler capable of keeping the GTX 1650 Ti in check. GPU clock speeds settled at more than 1,700 MHz, which is impressive considering the GPU’s base clock speed of no more than 1,350 MHz.

The Nitro 5 AN515-44 was developed with price-sensitive gamers in mind that might not necessarily insist on running every single game on the display’s native resolution of 1920x1080 on maximum details. Accordingly, recorded frame rates in less-demanding games such as FIFA 20 get very close to the display’s refresh rate while more-demanding, graphically intense, or poorly optimized games (we are looking at you, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Borderlands 3) tend to skip frames. Things quickly turn ugly when running at even higher resolutions, for example 2560x1440. Generally speaking, a GTX 1650 Ti is not suited for display resolutions higher than QHD.

Noise-sensitive users might have to look elsewhere. While the fans are either completely off or running at low speeds resulting in a fan noise of 32-34 dB(A) when the device is idle, they quickly rev up to 46-49 dB(A) under load and necessitate the use of a headset. Only the Dell G5 5590 was even louder.

The case peaked at 49 °C at the top and 50 °C at the bottom, which is fairly typical for a gaming laptop. Idle temperatures were very low, and the case did not exceed 30 °C.

Sound was mediocre at best, and sound quality was pretty comparable overall to the Predator Helios 300, both of which showed a distinct lack of base. At least the Nitro 5 gets significantly louder (79 dB(A) vs. 69 dB(A)).

Acer’s 15-inch Nitro 5 is living proof that modern gaming laptops can be powerful yet very energy efficient at the same time. Despite its hexa-core CPU, the Nitro 5 only consumed between 5 and 13 W when idle. Both of its 9750H-equipped competitors consumed two to three times as much energy. Under load, it required between 69 and 124 W of energy, which was also excellent.

Thanks to its combination of switchable graphics and low power consumption the Nitro 5 offers excellent battery life. Despite its comparatively small 57 Wh battery it managed more than 13 hours of runtime in our idle test at minimum display brightness, and close to 9 hours in our Wi-Fi test at medium brightness. The only device capable of keeping up in our comparison group was the Dell G5 5590.