Like any other good PC brand out there, Acer is one that houses several brands to serve different market segments. Acer houses, of course, Acer itself to sell computers for the general market, the lifestyle people and general office use. It also houses ConceptD, a new concept brand to serve the content creator or the creative industry with super quiet, super powerful, and super industrial computing solutions. Then there is Predator, the skunkworks, as we call it; that serves the gaming industry with souped up machines that looked like they could take you to the moon.

What we are reviewing here is nothing like a Predator machine, at least not in terms of concept or branding perspective. That is because it is not a Predator machine. It is an Acer machine but made for gaming anyway under the Nitro name. Oh yes, Acer has the Nitro namesake for its entry-level gaming line-up of products.

The Acer Nitro 5 has been Acer’s staple entry-level gaming laptop since they launched it a few years ago. In the market, the Acer Nitro 5 was also regarded as one of the best value-for-money machines you can get for gaming and content production. While it does not feature the most powerful components, it was plenty powerful for gaming as long as you do not expect Ultra graphics settings in games.

Here is the thing though, 2021 is a little different for Acer. It is also a different year for AMD. AMD is finally in a leading position in high-performance computing solutions after many years. They have made ultra-powerful CPUs that is loved by both the gaming and creator market. Acer decided that the powerful AMD processors should find a home in the Nitro 5 series and the Acer Nitro 5 for 2021 is born. Is it any good though? Should you buy it? We find out.

Design

The Acer Nitro 5’s shell in 2021 does still resemble the old Nitro 5. The angles are all in the same places, and the vents are largely similar in size and placements. Its dimensions did not change too much too.

Of course, there are some key visual differences between the older model and the new 2021 variant in terms of design. For one, the brushed aluminium look of the display shell is no more. It is now a semi-gloss finish. The power tappers running on both depths of the display shell is also gone. The glossy blacked out Acer logo remains from the previous generation Acer Nitro 5 though.

Instead, on the shell is now a Predator-esque lines that stems out from the bottom of the display shell. We would not call it a power bulge, maybe power lines. Instead of the regular red Nitro branding plate is now the same semi-gloss black finish as the display shell, while the Nitro print is red in colour, true to the Nitro theme colour.

While the keyboard is largely similar to the older Nitro 5, there is now proper RGB on the keyboard. We admit, it is not a per-key RGB, it is a four-zone RGB. Still, any RGB is good. Other than that though, the interior of Acer’s latest “entry-level” gaming laptop has remained very similar to before with the thin bezels and the semi-gloss black plate on the keyboard side.

The vents are also laid out differently now on the Acer Nitro 5. The have moved most of the I/O expansion slots further south of the device to make room for side exhaust vents on both sides. The rear vent however is not a single large vent anymore that stretches the width of the notebook. It is now split in two smaller vents with a quite a large red plate in the middle. It now looks a little bit like a mid-engine supercar, to be honest, especially with the charging port at the back too. We quite like the look, to be fair.

Hardware

The Acer Nitro 5 2021 is a very different beast compared to the ones that came before. We would not call the Nitro 5 that we have at hand “entry-level” anymore. There is no other way to put it, it is a high-end gaming PC, on paper at least.

Specifications

Features

This Nitro 5 is also one of the most feature packed in its line-up’s history. There is quite a lot to talk about with the Nitro 5 starting with the decision to move the charging port and only the charging port to the back of the device. But there is also a new RGB keyboard on the Nitro 5 now, which is a sign of changing times and a new era in gaming. The Nitro 5 now looks more premium than any other “entry-level” gaming laptops out there.

Charging From the Rear

Instead of the usual placement of the regular laptop at the furthermost possible part of a notebook’s side, the Nitro 5 moved its proprietary charging port completely to the rear of the device. We saw Lenovo making the first move to put charging ports at the back of the device, and we are pretty much fans of the idea.

We do have a little complain on the backplate that houses the charging port though. The plate is so large that it covers nearly half the back of the device which could be used for more cooling vents. If the plate had to be this large, we would also prefer some expansion slots to occupy the rear of the notebook.

We also had a problem with the charging port in the New Nitro 5 when we first unpacked it and was going to get it to boot. The charger plug is a sort of a “two-stage” plug. You have to line it up with the charging port, and then slide it in. Usually, that is job done. It is not in this case, you have to push it into the charging port until the charger goes deeper in with a noticeable ‘click’. This, we do not like. What is wrong with using magnets to secure the charger?

4-Zone RGB Keyboard – Finally

The 2021 version of the Acer Nitro 5 houses a 4-zone programmable RGB keyboard. While it is a fresh change to the keyboard, the keyboard is physically the same keyboard you find on the previous Nitro 5 though. It feels the same, it types the same, it works the same so we are not going to talk about that.

Because it is 4-zone RGB though, you cannot program the keys to do a ripple effect from the Nitro Sense software bundled in the Acer Nitro 5. You can set four different colours on the four different RGB quadrants on the notebook with Nitro Sense to make it look a little more unique. We prefer the rainbow wave effect though, cos that makes the notebook look like it has per-key RGB.

Nitro Sense – Not Quite Predator Sense

The Nitro Sense is very much a stripped down, red toned version of Predator Sense. There is no Predator ‘Turbo’ function on the Nitro 5’s Nitro Sense. That also means that you do not get to overclock your CPU or GPU. Might as well anyway, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H (as tested) is a locked unit which also means you cannot really overclock the CPU. We would still appreciate some overclocking capabilities on the GPU though.

Instead, what you get are fan speed and RGB control app. Of course, you can monitor your system temperatures as well from the app. Just keep in mind that because the air intake is at the bottom of the notebook, your thermals could be greatly improved if you could just lift the Nitro 5 a little bit.

Via the app though, you can customise or maximise your fan speed depending on the apps you launch. You could tie the settings to Adobe Premiere Pro for example, to max out your fan speed when the app launches to keep the Nitro 5 from thermal throttling when you start rendering videos. You can also automatically throttle the fan speed when you launch certain games too if you want.

In terms of RGB, there is obviously a limited number of things that you can do with 4-zone lighting instead of per-key lighting. You cannot set individual colours to each key for example. You cannot even set ripple effects or rain drop effects on the keyboard with 4-zone RGB. Still, a programmable RGB is always a welcome addition to the Nitro 5.

Performance

We mentioned earlier that the Acer Nitro 5 is not what we would consider entry-level on paper. On paper, this is a damn good gaming PC. The Nitro 5 with AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800H is really “entry-level” only by name.

The Productivity and Creativity Stuff

The keyboard on the Nitro 5 is pretty much the same Keyboard you get from before. It also feels pretty much like any other keyboard that you get from Acer’s Predator gaming laptops. Then again, keyboard technology on notebook PCs have not changed or progressed all that much.

Key travel is expectedly shallow, like any regular laptop keyboard you would be used to. Still, it is not an uncomfortable keyboard to use. While key travels are short, there is enough travel in the keyboard that typing feels a little more natural.

The keys bottom out with a soft touch too. It does not feel like you are hitting your fingers against a solid block when you type out long emails or essays with the Nitro 5. There is also enough tactile feedback to each key press to help with precision and speed once you get used to the keyboard.

You would be more interested in its work performance though, in its horsepower in editing videos and even photos. With a spec like the Nitro 5 that we have here, browsing the internet is really a breeze; nothing to shout about or even criticize there. At some point we have more than 40 tabs open on Mozilla FireFox, three Microsoft Word instances open, Adobe Acrobat with about 3 tabs open at the same time as well, and the Nitro 5 has not even broken a sweat.

We use a lot of Adobe Creative Suite apps in our line of work too. We heavily rely on Adobe Premiere Pro, Audition, Acrobat, Photoshop, and even Lightroom for most of our day-to-day operations. Obviously, the most taxing app of all in our selection of apps is Adobe Premiere Pro.

On that end, it took the Acer Nitro 5 xx minutes to render a 1:30 minute video. The video was shot in 4K resolution and was rendered directly to H.VEC 264 MPEG-4 format in Full HD resolution with AAC format audio. Video rendering is AMD’s territory anyway, we expected the Nitro 5 to do well here.

Scrubbing through the 4K footage feels smooth too without too much trouble. Smooth and quick scrubbing also means accelerated workflow and less downtime. The downside here is that you have less excuses for not completing your video projects on time now.

Gaming

A gaming PC is built to game though, and game we did. We played titles like GTA V, Horizon Zero Dawn, Two Point Hospital, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Evil Genius 2, and A Way Out with the Nitro 5. We let the games decide the best resolution for each game when we first ran the game, and later crank the graphics settings all the way up.

You can expect most modern games to run on either ‘high’ or ‘ultra’ settings on the Acer Nitro 5. Remember we are running the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H with NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3070 variant, far from an entry-level spec sheet this. In that case, ‘high’ and ultra’ graphics on certain games are quite expected.

With Horizon Zero Dawn, the game defaults to Full HD in resolution for some reason. Although, graphics settings are set to ‘Ultra’ by default. Once we set the resolution to the correct size at 1440p, the game ran at about 70fps consistently without dropping a beat. Two Point hospital defaults to ‘high’ resolution and at times scored as low as 28fps. Once you zoom down into the littler details though you get about 50-60fps easily.

With GTA V, we expect graphics to run at up to ‘Ultra’ by default. By default, you do not get ‘Ultra’ settings from GTA V. In fact, even fps is limited to 60 fps by default. We corrected that to project at 165Hz and you automatically free up some horsepower from the Nitro 5 to get up to 100fps at times. Of course, not every setting on default was at ‘Very High’ or ‘Ultra’, Most of them were just below the highest settings available though, so it is just a single toggle away. Once we turned all of that up with MSAA off, we still got about 90fps. With MSAA is a little different though. We could turn it up to 4X without losing too much performance in terms of FPS. Once we get it to its max settings though, fps dropped to as low as 53fps at times and remains at about 65-70fps most of the time.

With these games, you are not really hitting the 165Hz of the QHD display at all though, which is a little bit of a waste. If you want to hit 165fps to fully take advantage of the 165Hz refresh rate though, you can play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and easily hit that much frames in a second.

Still, the Acer Nitro 5 is a formidable gaming PC that can hold itself against the sea of gaming PCs you find in the market currently. In fact, we do think it can hold itself against its more premium cousins in the Predator family. We believe that it could even outperform some of them in similar spec sheet with an Intel processor in fact.

Battery Life

The Nitro 5 lasted nearly 2.5 hours with its display on full brightness and power mode set to high-performance. We were using the Acer Nitro 5 for web browsing, typing a Word document (this review, in fact), and listening to some music (50% volume) at the same time. There were also a few browser tabs that was open at the same time on Mozilla Firefox.

We have to point out that we still could get GTA V running at about 30fps while on battery on its default settings. While it was our own careless mistake in forgetting to plug the charger in, this is also an indication that you should never game on battery. Still, we were quite impressed.

Putting the Acer Nitro 5 in battery saving mode via Windows turns the brightness down a little and limits background applications like OneDrive auto-sync. It does extend your battery life to 2 hours 45 minutes hours though. In that case, you might want to consider leaving your Acer Nitro 5 on battery saving mode to extend its battery life for the long meetings.

You may also use Nitro Sense to sip battery life with even smaller straws too. Putting the Nitro 5 on power saving mode on Nitro Sense decreases the brightness of the display even further and limits power draw by both the GPU and CPU. Plenty of times then, the GPU is not used at all for regular operations like web browsing, document editing, and even emails. In that case you can push the battery life of the Acer Nitro 5 from 2.5 hours to a little over 3.5 hours in our use case.

We believe that if you skim on the music playing part, turn the RGB on the keyboard off, and dim down the display all the way with both Nitro Sense and Windows on Power Saving mode, the Acer Nitro could go the distance and last over 4 hours. 4 hours in our books is usually more than what more gaming laptops could offer, even in the same conditions.

2K Display and DTS: X Ultra

In our test unit, we got the best possible display for the Acer Nitro 5. We have here a Quad HD 1440p display at 2,560 x 1,440 resolution. It refreshes at 165Hz for a maximum of 165fps that would really help in competitive titles. The IPS display also covers up to 100% sRGB colour gamut. That would help plenty in colour grading use cases, or even photo editing. But that also means that the 2K display looks good in any gaming or movie situation. It is the perfect display for entertainment, and a far cry from the Acer Nitro 5 displays we are used to in the older generation devices.

The display is now something that we can enjoy and rely on for work and play. While it is a little on the small side for a 2K monitor, the 15.6-inch display is fully capable of what we want it to do. We could use the display to reliably colour grade and edit videos, and even photos when we need to. We could do them on-the-go if we really have to. The lockdown that was enforced because of the pandemic though did not allow us to take this Acer Nitro 5 to the streets; we would have loved to do so though.

The speakers are DTS:X Ultra speakers that you should be used to with Acer’s gaming line-up in the modern era. On the Acer Nitro 5, you only get two speakers that fires outward and downward at both sides of the laptop. That is also quite a standard arrangement with laptops these days. There is a while science on why manufacturers designed speakers this way, but we will get into that another time.

We do have to say that laptop speakers have come a long way though. On the Acer Nitro 5 at least, the speakers do sound great. Audio sounds clean and clear throughout its volume range. Of course, low frequencies could benefit from having a dedicated sub-woofer. The mid and high frequencies are excellent and clean though. That also means that you should be able to enjoy your movies with the built-in speakers. Unfortunately, we do suggest you get a decent pair of headphones for games though. While sound is good and clear, the fan noise can overwhelm the speakers (even at full chat) a little bit especially when it spools for gaming and video editing purposes.

The Acer Nitro 5 – Finally, a gaming Laptop You Can Be Proud Of

You pay MYR 6,399 for this piece of kit we test. You get a brilliant AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor and NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3070 to boot. The combination of these hardware alongside 16GB of RAM are in no way “entry-level”. It is a high-performance gaming machine that fits the bill when you need some power in LAN parties.

While prices are not to say in the budget-friendly range, MYR 6,399 is still less than most laptops boasting similar hardware in the current market. In some sense, you are getting a more powerful PC than plenty of gaming PCs of the same price in 2021. With all that considered, this is still the more budget-friendly version of a high-performance gaming laptop.

In 2021, the Acer Nitro 5 has matured into something else. It is not sitting at the bottom of the pile anymore. It can stand and sit alongside the greats in the industry, oddly enough. It sort of pushes the Acer Nitro brand into a brand that could stand on its own with AMD. Sadly, that is not the case because there are Intel based Acer Nitro 5 out there. This also brings another problem to Acer, what are they going to do when the Predator gaming products cannot compete at the same prices?

The question we set out to answer though is whether or not the Acer Nitro 5 with AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800H and NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3070 worth your money, whether or not you should buy it. Our answer is yes to both, but only if you have the budget to work with. While the Acer Nitro 5 for 2021 has been the most expensive Acer Nitro 5 of all that came before, the kind of power that is offered within the AMD variant of the Acer Nitro 5 is quite irresistible if you are in-need of a powerful laptop right now.