Acer Nitro 5 (Core i5-9300H, GeForce GTX 1650) Laptop Review

Acer has given the Nitro 5 a major design overhaul. While the old model had wide bezels, Acer has jumped on board with the slim side display bezels for this year’s model. The reduction in bezels has also allowed the company to make the new Nitro 5 noticeably more compact than its predecessor. Our review unit is also around 3 cm narrower and 1 cm shorter than its AMD sibling, while it is 200 g lighter too. Overall, the Nitro 5 is comparatively light for a 15.6-inch gaming laptop; only the Legion Y730-15ICH matches our review unit out of our comparison devices here.

Ports

We have no cause for complaints with our review unit’s Wi-Fi performance though. Acer has equipped the device with an Intel Wireless-AC 9560 module, which achieved exceptional transfer speeds in our iperf3 Client Wi-Fi tests. We conducted these tests with the Nitro 5 approximately 1 m away from our Linksys EA8500 reference router, for reference.

Acer includes a quick-start guide, warranty booklet and an HDD adapter in the box. The latter allows you to retrofit a 2.5-inch drive should you wish to do so. There is a 135 W power supply too, although Acer bundles a higher capacity version with more-expensive and powerful models.

Maintenance is a bit more complicated than it was on the Nitro 5’s predecessor. Acer has not included any maintenance flaps this time around, so you must remove the bottom case to access any internal components. Fortunately, you only need a Phillips screwdriver and some brute force to pry the case from the chassis. You then have access to all main components including the battery, drive bays and RAM. You cannot swap the CPU or GPU, but this is common for most laptops, except for something like the Alienware Area-51m.

The trackpad is also a mixed bag. While it has a pleasantly smooth finish, its precision leaves something to be desired. Multi-touch gestures are easy to perform though, especially two-finger gestures such as scrolling or zooming. Acer has opted for an integrated rather than dedicated input device that allows the trackpad to be an enjoyably large 10.5 x 7.5 cm. Including dedicated mouse buttons would have made the trackpad feel a lot smaller, the effect of which would have been compounded by its imprecision.

Acer has equipped our review unit with a 60 Hz 15.6-inch display, specifically the LG Philips LP156WFC-SPD1. We suspect that the company opted for a 60 Hz panel to save on costs. A 144 Hz display would have been a nice addition though.

Our review unit with its Core i5-9300H processor and GeForce GTX 1650 GPU sits firmly in the midrange of modern gaming laptops. Its 512 GB PCIe NVMe SSD is comparatively large for a gaming laptop at this price, particularly as there is a second M.2 2280 drive bay and a 2.5-inch bay too. 8 GB of RAM is standard though, and at least Acer has included two SO-DIMM modules so that the system runs in dual-channel mode. The only downside is that you must replace both modules if you ever want to upgrade to 16 GB or beyond, but that is a minor gripe.

We checked the clock speed behaviour of the Core i5-9300H using Cinebench R15. The quad-core chip reaches its maximum potential in the single-core benchmark where it averages 4.1 GHz, but it disappoints in the multi-core version. Our review unit briefly reaches 4.0 GHz before dropping to around 3.3 GHz, a level that it can consistently maintain.

Update 9.13.2019: The Core i7-9750H model achieves scores about 10% more in single-core benchmarks than our first review unit, and 29% more in multicore work. The Core i7-9750H has approximately a 10% higher single-core boost clock than the Core i5-9300H, for reference, which accounts for the uplift in single-core benchmark performance. The Core i7-9750H also has two additional cores and can execute four more threads, so a third better multicore performance is to be expected too.

Better still, the Core i7-9750H model can maintain its improved multicore performance under sustained load. By the end of our CB R15 Multi 64Bit loop, our new review unit still scored approximately 21% more than its Core i5-9300H powered sibling. 

As you can see from the benchmark tables, the Nitro 5 cannot distinguish itself from its Core i5-8300H-powered competitors. What’s more, the Legion Y730 gets around 8% more peak multicore performance with its nominally weaker CPU than our review unit does. The Nitro 5 also only scored approximately 5% higher in CB R15 Multi 64Bit than the G5 15 5587. The Core i7-8750H destroyed the Core i5-9300H too, with the Medion Erazer X6805 scoring 58% more than the Nitro 5 in the same benchmark.

Our review unit also sits in the midfield of our PCMark 10 comparison table. Its fast SSD allows Windows 10 to boot quickly and run without issue, but we would have expected a better showing in benchmarks with its comparatively newer CPU and GPU.

Update: 9.13.2019: System performance benchmarks only split the two models by 2%, with the Core i5-9300H model even taking the lead in some tests. Benchmarks like PCMark measure more than just CPU performance though, so it is unsurprising to see two devices that share the same SSD, RAM and GPU score roughly the same here.

Acer has equipped our review unit with a 512 GB WDC PC SN520 SSD that delivered excellent transfer speeds in benchmarks like AS SSD. The drive is considerably faster overall than those in our comparison devices, with only the Erazer X6805 and its Samsung PM961 coming close to the transfer speeds that the WDC PC SN520 achieves.

One of the most exciting things about the Nitro 5 is its GPU. The device is the first that we have tested with the GeForce GTX 1650, which succeeds the popular GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. Nvidia has delivered a decent performance boost between generations, which it has achieved by increasing the shader count from 768 to 1,024 among other improvements. The GeForce GTX 1650 theoretically has around a 100 MHz lower base clock and a 60 MHz lower boost clock than the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. However, the speeds that individual cards can reach in practice depend largely on the cooling system with which they are paired.

In short, the Nitro 5 manages its GPU clock speeds well. The GeForce GTX 1650 averaged 1,710 MHz during Unigine Heaven 4.0 and 1,650 MHz in The Witcher 3 when set to Full HD and ultra-graphics, both of which are respectable. Our review unit also maintained peak frame rates throughout an hour-long play-through of The Witcher 3 with no disturbing peaks or troughs.

Update 9.13.2019: Most modern games are GPU heavy, so upgrading your CPU will only yield performance improvements if it is bottlenecking your system. Even CPU-intensive games like The Witcher 3 cannot make use of the additional performance that the Core i7-9750H brings, with our new review unit averaging the same FPS on the High and Ultra presets as its Core i5-9300H sibling. Both CPUs maintain roughly the same clock speeds during our The Witcher 3 loop too.