In the gaming niche, it is difficult to compete with other manufacturers with Acer . It offers products with thoughtful designs, powerful components and reasonable prices. Users trust the Acer brand. It has long been known among buyers of computers , laptops, various peripheral devices.
Main technical characteristics
The Nitro 5 series pleases with a variety of hardware. In this case, the review is a complete set, in which 5 key characteristics can be distinguished:
| Display | 15” |
| CPU | i5 |
| Operative | 16 GB |
| Video adapter | GeForce GTX 1650 |
| Solid state | SSD 512 GB |
With the numbers 515-54 in the name, there are also laptops with the i7 chip, the models range from GTX 1050 to the pretentious RTX 2060, the RAM may not be 16, but 8 or 12 GB. Solid state devices: from 256 GB to 1 TB, and there is also a model with a 1 TB HDD. The following operating systems are found in stores:
- “Ten” home,
- professional,
- without OS.
The systems, of course, are licensed. If you wish, you can upgrade to Windows 11 for free. The “no OS” option is good because this bundle is cheaper and you can install any Windows 10, 11 or other system.
In the presented review of the Acer Nitro 5 AN515 54 laptop – a model with a processor, a video card and a mid-range solid-state device , but under the case there is a maximum of RAM for such a modification. In terms of cost, the laptop looks very tempting. Buyers who have allocated $ 1000-1100 for the purchase of a laptop, it is difficult to find a unit designed for games.
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The beauty of buying a laptop is that you don’t have to lug a few different-colored boxes home: everything fits in one. After unpacking, in addition to the laptop, you will find:
- charger 180 W,
- cable for connecting it to the mains,
- driver disk,
- paper instructions.
Also, various little things can be put in a black and red box: bolts, an adapter with SATA for connecting an additional solid-state device. There are no free slots for RAM, but you can add an SSD or HDD if you wish. Acer appliances often come with unsealed cases, but you shouldn’t rush to upgrade them during the warranty period. It is better to clarify this point with the organization dealing with warranty repair.
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Design and dimensions
The Nitro 5 has a plastic case, but it can’t be said that the laptop looks cheap. On the contrary, it gives the impression of being premium. Due to its special texture and fashionable finish, the cover material can be mistaken for aluminum. The combination of the main black color of the case with red accents makes the model look like MSI laptops . Gaming laptop manufacturers are gradually moving towards more discreet device designs. Deliberate aggressiveness is not in vogue these days. The design of the Nitro 5 is in the spirit of this trend. You can see from the body that you have a gaming device in front of you, but it looks solid and does not scare off middle-aged buyers with excessive brightness and youth.
The laptop is solid and the build quality is decent. There are no backlashes, creaks, the body elements fit tightly to each other. The opening angle limit is about 135 degrees. This is enough to clearly see what is happening on the screen, keeping the laptop on your lap. Although you can’t play in this position for a long time, and the air holes can be closed, creating a problem for the cooling system.
Following the fashion trends in the field of digital technology, the manufacturer tried to reduce the width of the screen bezels, however, leaving the webcam. The model is compact. Dimensions: 363×255 mm, thickness – 26 mm. If you compare these characteristics with the size of multimedia laptops, the Nitro 5 loses. However, compared to most other manufacturers’ gaming laptops, its portability is impressive. It looks exactly like a laptop, not some flattened system unit . With weight, the situation is similar: 2.5 kg for a gaming laptop is quite a bit. Even a fragile girl can carry it in a bag without excessive effort.
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Display and graphics
The Nitro 5 features a matte FHD IPS panel. The screen has great viewing angles. Above average brightness, but soft. You can play without fear of impairing your eyesight, if, of course, you dose the time spent at the computer. The color rendition is calm and correct. The refresh rate is 144 Hz. The high-frequency matrix allows you to evaluate the smooth change of the picture in dynamic games . The beveled corners of the lid emphasize the gaming purpose of the laptop.
The display is suitable for gaming, surfing the web, watching movies. The only drawback is the lack of color gamut for professional work with graphics. But for this there are designer laptops that are more expensive.
The Nitra display has an interesting feature – the blue spectrum is slightly muted. No wonder there is a barely noticeable yellowish tint on the white sheet of the Word text editor. This can be attributed to the pluses, since the blue spectrum negatively affects vision. There are even special computer glasses in stores that limit this radiation. This feature of the display does not affect the quality of games in any way.
On board the laptop is a GTX 1650 video card. Its manufacturers put it on laptops in the middle price segment. It’s certainly not as advanced as the RTX series adapters, but in terms of value for money, it’s a chic option. A laptop with a RTX 2060 video costs $ 300-400 more.
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Keyboard and touchpad Acer Nitro 5 AN515 54
The manufacturer was able to integrate a full-size keyboard with a separate numeric keypad into a compact 15-inch case. In addition to the standard set, there are two additional buttons: power and Nitro to call the hardware management utility. You can not be afraid of accidentally turning off the laptop with a key, since for this you need to hold it for a couple of seconds. Button travel is 1.6 mm. Typing and gameplay are straightforward, no need to get used to after other membrane input devices.
The WASD keys and arrows are highlighted in red. There is a 4-level backlight in the same color and can be adjusted using the keyboard:
- Fn + F9 – turn down the brightness until the backlight is turned off;
- Fn + F10 – add brightness.
By default, the backlight fades out after 30 seconds of inactivity. This is to conserve battery power. However, the power saving setting can be disabled using the NitroSense utility.
Using Fn in combination with other keys allows you, for example, to adjust the volume of the sound during video / audio playback, change the brightness of the display, put the laptop into airplane mode or sleep. In total, about 20 commands are available using Fn.
The touchpad is large, wider than the space bar, edged in red. The surface of the touch panel is pleasant to the touch, there is no visible section into separate functional areas. The touchpad allows you to position the cursor with high precision without any problems. The laptop provides protection against accidental touch on the panel. But if you are planning a long gaming session, it might make sense to disable the touchpad for a while, since it is shifted to the left, located almost under the WASD. To disable it, click in the system tray on Notifications, then select All settings → Devices → Touchpad.
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Autonomy
The laptop has a 4-cell 55 Wh or 3500 mAh lithium-ion battery. These figures are average, but for a gaming laptop, autonomy, of course, is not the main thing. After all, its target audience is not company employees who often go on business trips, but players who prefer to break away from reality at home. The hero of the review, Acer Nitro 5 AN515 54, has medium-power hardware, and therefore without an outlet it will even be possible to play a little – the session will last about an hour. With mixed workloads, which means working with documents, browsing websites and videos on YouTube, the battery lasts for 4 hours. There is definitely enough battery to watch a movie on the go.
If you need to achieve maximum autonomy, you will have to sacrifice performance, reduce the quality of the screen picture. Disabling the discrete video card has the greatest effect. This can be done using the task manager, BIOS or special programs. Also, battery power is saved due to:
- decrease the brightness of the display;
- selection of an economical diet;
- disabling Wi-Fi and programs that uselessly take up RAM;
- using the Edge browser instead of Chrome or Opera.
If you are engaged exclusively in working with documents, in economy mode the laptop will last about 8 hours without an outlet.
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Hardware part
The laptop has a harmonious set of components. On the one hand, there is no premium-class hardware, on the other, you will not come across a detail due to which the Acer Nitro 5 laptop with the AN515 54 suffix cannot be called a gaming one. Everything you need on board. The only drawback in terms of interfaces is the lack of a card reader. But whether it is really needed in a gaming laptop is a big question. Now let’s go through the components.
CPU
The manufacturer installed Intel’s 9th generation i5 chip – Core 9300H with 4 cores. You will not find a fundamental difference with the analogue of the 8th generation. The operating frequency has increased by 100 MHz – the only significant improvement. The cache memory, as in the previous generation, is 8 MB. The processor remains 8-thread with a TDP of 45 W.
The Core 9300H perfectly holds the 4 GHz declared in the documentation in a single-threaded test. But the extreme load in multithreaded computing forces it to drop frequencies to 3 GHz. Which, however, also corresponds to the range prescribed by the manufacturer.
A quad-core processor is a good option for a gaming laptop. Its power is enough, and more efficient chips often do not justify themselves, since 6 or 8 cores do not give the expected effect in games. With them, the laptop is a little faster, but the price is much higher.
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Storage device
The laptop has two slots for SSD and one for HDD. One M.2 is occupied by a Western Digital disk called PC SN520, designed for 512 GB. In this case, the solid-state device has a standard size of 2280. The PC SN520 line contains drives of 3 volumes, 512 GB is the maximum option. It has the highest read and write speeds: 1700 and 1400 MB / s. The same can be said about the guaranteed resource, which is 300 TBW. This indicator means that at least 300 TB of information can be recorded on the disk during operation. That is, the disc can be completely rewritten at least 600 times.
WD drives are a proven option. The company’s discs are characterized by high speed and reliability. Some gaming Acers are equipped with SK Hynix solid-state devices, not WD, which negatively affects the read / write speed. If you choose an Acer laptop, pay attention to the SSD manufacturer.
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Video card
Vidyaha GeForce GTX 1650 is a proven option that stably keeps frequencies in dynamic games. This is largely achieved through a well-thought-out laptop cooling system. The Nitro 5 draws in air through the bottom grilles and blows heat out through the right and rear edges. The laptop supports Nvidia Optimus technology: when there is no serious load, the unit uses only the built-in video adapter. This approach saves battery power.
The GTX 1650 is a good option for an FHD display. Putting a more powerful video on a medium-budget screen is not the best solution, since the functionality of RTX adapters is more suitable for a picture in 2K or 4K.
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RAM
In the laptop, both slots are occupied by 8 GB slats. Memory – DDR4 with a standard frequency of 2666 MHz. It was possible, within the same budget, to use one 16 GB disk, leaving one slot free. However, the manufacturer decided to rely on the speed of the current configuration with dual-channel memory, overshadowing the convenience of a potential update. You can understand Acer, because not all users over time upgrade their laptops.
Ports and webcam
The laptop has an adequate set of ports. On the one hand, there is everything you need, but on the other, there are no excesses. Let’s walk along the end sides:
- On the left side: 2 ports Usb 3, USB-C, Hdmi, twisted pair connector and Kensington lock.
- On the right side: a combined audio jack, Usb 2 for a mouse, a socket for charging.
Webcam characteristics: frequency – 30 Hz, resolution – 720p. This technique is not suitable for professional streams, but for communication via Skype, its capabilities are more than enough. The picture quality is normal.
Wireless interfaces do their job. Users do not have any complaints about the work of bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
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Performance Acer Nitro 5 AN515 54
The laptop can handle most of today’s fast-paced games at medium or even high settings. If you load the iron to the maximum, the device works quite noisy, over time it starts to warm up. However, the quality of games does not decrease from this and the temperature, if desired, can be reduced by adding speed to the fans. Changing the speed of the turntables is available in the NitroSense app. There are automatic, maximum and custom modes, and there is also an afterburner – CoolBoost. The presence of two coolers contributes to the efficient operation of the laptop and the absence of unnecessary noise.
Nitro 5 is not only effective in games. Photoshop, AutoCAD and other resource-intensive programs work without problems on it, you can render video. Surfing the Web is going with a bang: 20 browser tabs open without brakes. The display is suitable for comfortable video viewing. Sound quality for movies is acceptable. The acoustics of the device, of course, cannot be called audiophile, but there are two speakers that are visible along the competently raised edges of the case. It is better to use headphones or speakers for games .
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Additional features, features and service
Pressing the Nitro key launches the NitroSense utility. In the upper part of the program window there are 2 turntables that cool the processor and the video card. The rotational speed of the coolers can be adjusted individually by choosing the appropriate mode or by adjusting the rotational speed with the sliders. In the lower part of the window there are two temperature graphs: protsa and vidyahi. The utility stores the readings taken from the temperature sensors for 1 hour. Displays the limit values for this period.
There is a settings icon on the top right. The user can:
- Turn Sticky Keys on / off.
- Change Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa in temperature monitoring.
- Turn on / off backlight dimming after 30 seconds of inactivity.
- Enable display overclocking, reducing the response to 3ms.
The latter option is quite useful, as the default display response time in some games may be too slow.
Next to the settings icon – select the sound mode. There are 6 presets available, 3 of them are game ones: General, FPS and Sports. You can also adapt to listening to music or the sound of a movie.
As for the software, there is another curious feature – setting the blue spectrum of the display. It is launched by the Quick Access command in the “Start”. There are 4 levels of blocking available:
- weak blocking removes 10-25% of the blue spectrum;
- medium removes 26-45%;
- high – 46-65%;
- professional is designed for long-term work with a laptop.
Now a few words about laptop maintenance. After 2-3 years of operation, it makes sense to clean the laptop from dust. To do this, you can take the laptop to the service. And if you have the time, desire and ability to handle digital technology, open the case yourself. To remove the bottom cover, you need to unscrew a dozen screws, then disconnect the latches, walking along the contour with a thin plastic ruler or a special metal tool.
The next step is to disconnect the battery from the board. It is important not to miss it in order to eliminate the risk of a short circuit. The cooling system is a single unit that can be easily removed entirely by carefully unscrewing a few small screws. After that, having gained access to the coolers from both sides, it is easy to blow through them with air. Also, removing the cover is the first step in modernization, which may become relevant in a couple of years.
In conclusion, it is worth highlighting two main advantages of the Nitro 5 over its competitors. First, it’s a relatively affordable cost. In the same price range, it is difficult to find a laptop with similar specifications in online stores. Is that the HP Pavilion. A relatively affordable mid-budget MSI costs about UAH 40,000. The second advantage is a balanced configuration, well-chosen components.
