Preview Acer Nitro 5 in 15- & 17-inch: Ryzen 5000H for gamers
Acer wants to enter the new year with a thick performance plus for gamers and relies on AMD's Zen3 cores in the Ryzen 5000H. AMD wants to follow up the success of the Ryzen 4000H in 2020 with the 35/45-watt Cezanne chips. These were able to win over numerous editors and buyers because they often offered a higher performance in short and long phases. Intel's competition (Comet Lake) weakened massively especially in the long term performance, which is why Ryzen 4000H as well as Ryzen 4000U offered the better price/performance ratio
Acer relies on the following in the new Nitro 5 models Ryzen 5 5600H, Ryzen 7 5800H and Ryzen 9 5900HX. With the graphics it goes up to the GeForce RTX 3080 the entry is a GTX 1650. We have two Nitro 5s in front of us, AN515-45-R05E in 15-inch and AN517-41-R3FK in 17-inch.
- 15-inch predecessor Nitro5 AN515-44-R5FT (Ryzen 5 4600H)
- 17-inch predecessor Nitro5 AN517-52-77DS ( Core i7-10750H) - no AMD variant
Case and equipment
Although a large part of the case is made of plastic, both Nitro 5s make quite a quality impression. Acer has managed to create a deceptively real aluminum imitation on the lid. The mixture of black surfaces and red elements (fan, keyboard, touchpad, ...) makes the chassis neither look too drab nor too playful. Most buyers should be satisfied with a maximum opening angle of 150°.
Acer relies on slim bezel designs, whereby the screen's edges turn out a bit wider compared to some other competing products. With a footprint of 36.3 x 25.5 cm, the chassis is still quite compact by 15-inch standards. However, the build height of 2.4 cm is not as slim; Schenker XMG Core 15 and Dell G5 15 SE are better positioned here.
While the Killer E2600 Ethernet Controller is responsible for wired connections, the Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 takes care of wireless connections. The latter guarantees a high WLAN performance (over 1,300 Mbit/s during transmission and reception in the predecessor).
However, buyers of the AN515 with GTX 1650 GPU have to be content with a red illumination, here the colors cannot be switched in the RGB space - what is possible on all configurations with Geforce RTX Graphics. The keyboard's quality hasn't changed compared to the AN515-44: A well-defined typing feel goes hand in hand with an (almost) well thought-out layout. We still dislike the combined Enter/Del key.
The brightness and volume control on the arrow keys turns out to be practical. You can also find them blindly, but you need both hands to activate them.
Connections
Not only the looks remain unchanged compared to the 15- and 17-inch predecessors, but also the ports. Four USB ports, one of which is Type-C, and that's it. The latter cannot be used as a monitor output, and it does not support Display Port via Type-C. SD cards still cannot be inserted.
Display
The displays of our pre-production devices are not final. We will provide complete measurements including evaluation as soon as we have serial devices.
Performance: Nitro 5 has a lot of power
Acer offers its Nitro 5 series in numerous configurations, the strongest with AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX as well as NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics. Our test models are more moderately equipped with the 6-core Ryzen 5 5600H and the Ryzen 7 5800H, respectively. Thus, a very high CPU performance is available.
The mass and working memory configuration is similarly variable, but is always based on two slots for M.2 PCIe and/or SATA SSDs, which support up to 2 TB NVMe SSD or 2 TB HDD storage. In addition, there is a port for SATA HDDs, which was occupied with 1 TB of mass storage in each of the test devices. Thus, the system is stored on fast SSDs, while the Steam library can be stored on the HDD
The working memory can be expanded up to 32 GB, and two slots are available for that. There is no onboard memory
How fast does the Ryzen 5000H calculate?
Things are moving pretty briskly, especially with the Ryzen 7 5800H, which squeezes into the top group and keeps pace with the HP Omen 15, Dell G5 15 and Schenker XMG Core 15. Like these gamers, our R7 5800H model has excellent sustained performance, but it is no faster than its 4800H predecessor. However, all of this depends on the cooling system and TDP configuration, as the Asus TUF A17 shows in the chart
The R5 4600H lags behind in the R15 loop, but also shows a very nice endurance load resistance. No Intel SoC in this comparison can be a threat to it either; you would have to use an Intel i7-10875H or even i9-10980HK
In Cinebench R15 Multi, the 5600H computes 18% slower than the 5800H, but is clearly ahead of the Comet Lake i7-10750H (-24%). AMD occupies all the upper places in this comparison, which could only be broken by Intel gamers with i7-10875H or i9-10980HK. However, such devices play in a completely different league in terms of price than our Nitro 5 AN515, which will be available with Ryzen 5 starting at 900 Euros
Not completely unimportant, both Nitro 5 test devices take the top spot in PCMark 10. The manufacturer has obviously used good SSDs and tuned the components.
Cinebench R15 Loop
| Cinebench R20 / CPU (Single Core) | |
| Average of class Gaming (439 - 856, n=155, last 2 years) | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN517-41-R3FK | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN517-41-R3FK | |
| Average AMD Ryzen 5 5600H (527 - 538, n=15) | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45-R05E | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45-R05E | |
| HP Omen 15-en0375ng | |
| Dell G5 15 SE 5505 P89F | |
| Asus TUF A17 FA706IU-AS76 | |
| Aorus 5 KB | |
| SCHENKER XMG Core 15 GK5NR0O | |
| Lenovo Legion 5 15IMH05H | |
| Lenovo Legion 5 17IMH05 | |
| Cinebench R20 / CPU (Multi Core) | |
| Average of class Gaming (2179 - 13832, n=155, last 2 years) | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN517-41-R3FK | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN517-41-R3FK | |
| SCHENKER XMG Core 15 GK5NR0O | |
| Dell G5 15 SE 5505 P89F | |
| HP Omen 15-en0375ng | |
| Asus TUF A17 FA706IU-AS76 | |
| Average AMD Ryzen 5 5600H (3074 - 4059, n=16) | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45-R05E | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45-R05E | |
| Aorus 5 KB | |
| Lenovo Legion 5 15IMH05H | |
| Lenovo Legion 5 17IMH05 | |
| Cinebench R15 / CPU Single 64Bit | |
| Average of class Gaming (191.9 - 318, n=156, last 2 years) | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN517-41-R3FK | |
| Average AMD Ryzen 5 5600H (218 - 225, n=14) | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45-R05E | |
| Aorus 5 KB | |
| Asus TUF A17 FA706IU-AS76 | |
| Dell G5 15 SE 5505 P89F | |
| HP Omen 15-en0375ng | |
| Lenovo Legion 5 15IMH05H | |
| SCHENKER XMG Core 15 GK5NR0O | |
| Lenovo Legion 5 17IMH05 | |
| Cinebench R15 / CPU Multi 64Bit | |
| Average of class Gaming (905 - 5600, n=159, last 2 years) | |
| Dell G5 15 SE 5505 P89F | |
| SCHENKER XMG Core 15 GK5NR0O | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN517-41-R3FK | |
| HP Omen 15-en0375ng | |
| Asus TUF A17 FA706IU-AS76 | |
| Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45-R05E | |
| Average AMD Ryzen 5 5600H (1319 - 1723, n=16) | |
| Aorus 5 KB | |
| Lenovo Legion 5 15IMH05H | |
| Lenovo Legion 5 17IMH05 | |
Verdict
Acer takes a logical step and equips its Nitro 5 series with AMD Ryzen in 2021 as well, but this time with Ryzen 5000H. After Ryzen 4000H celebrated many successes last year, this step is only logical. However, Acer also expands the lineup: After there was only an Intel-equipped 17-incher in 2020, it is now also available with AMD.
The Nitro 5 models are attractive devices for various purposes that can also be used for office tasks thanks to the inconspicuous look inside. Acer offers numerous configurations to pick up every buyer from 900 to 1600 Euros.
Nitro 5 offers a lot of computing power that you cannot get from Intel for the same money.
The computing power is beyond reproach, because it is usually better than that of Intel products in the same price range. Real gamers should keep their hands off the GTX 1650 and rather invest in a Nitro 5 configuration featuring the brand-newGeForce RTX 3000 series that deliver much more performance.
Beyond that, Nitro 5 offers cases, input devices and ergonomics that are suitable for everyday use. The RAM and mass storage configuration is very successful; two m.2 SSDs can be combined with a SATA HDD, which can offer up to 2 + 2 TB of space. Not so successful is the scarce connectivity, which does without Thunderbolt, DisplayPort and card reader. The power plug has moved to the back of the device.
The test devices are pre-production models. For this reason, there is no rating. The final assessment will be made in the test reports of the series models. The benchmarks and measured values mentioned here are therefore an indication; the final results might deviate
Price and availability
Acer Nitro 5 AN515 Ryzen 5 5600H & Nitro 5 AN517 Ryzen 7 5800H are currently only listed by very few stores for preorder.
More articles related to this device
Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45-R05E (Nitro 5 AN515 Series)Related Articles
Price comparison
