The 120 Hz display of the Nitro 5 only delivers poor response times - The Acer Nitro 5 AN517-52 in review

Within Acer's product range, the Nitro 5 series stands for inexpensive, entry-level and mid-range gaming laptops. The devices are positioned below the Predator series. With the Nitro 5 AN517-52-77DS, we have a 17.3-inch model from the Nitro 5 series at hand. The laptop is very similar to its predecessor but is a bit thinner and weighs about 600 grams less.

The Nitro 5 is powered by a Core i7-10750H hexa-core processor and a GeForce RTX 2060 graphics core, making it the current top model among the 17.3-inch Nitro 5 variants. The hardware combination brings all modern games smoothly onto the matte screen. Full HD resolution and high to maximum quality settings can always be selected here. Resolutions beyond Full HD (for which a corresponding monitor would have to be connected) often require a reduction of the quality level.

The 120 Hz IPS display is unable to convince. The brightness, contrast and color-space coverage are too low. Furthermore, the response times can only be described as average. A 1,500-Euro (~$1,697) laptop should offer more in this regard. Stable viewing angles, a matte surface and decent color reproduction speak for the display.

The Nitro doesn't lack storage space thanks to the 1 TB NVMe SSD. Should this be the case, the laptop's storage could be expanded with additional drives. In this way, a second M.2 2280 NVMe SSD and a 2.5-inch storage device can be additionally installed. Since the computer doesn't have a maintenance hatch, the case would need to be opened for this.

The laptop offers no Thunderbolt 3 port. Moreover, there is only one USB Type-C port (USB 3.2 Gen 2), and it doesn't support the DisplayPort via USB-C function. This results in the HDMI connection being the only video output available.

Much more information and benchmark results can be found in our review of the Acer Nitro 5 AN517-52-77DS.