Recently, we discussed that when choosing a laptop, first of all think about the price and how to get the maximum performance and quality for less money. We, in fact, talked about one of these laptops at the link above, and today we took the Acer Nitro 5 based on the Ryzen 5 4600H and the younger GTX 1650 for the test . The price is around 71,000 rubles, for which we are promised a strong thin body, a 144 Hz screen, and even a gaming keyboard.
Appearance
Nitro is delivered in a regular cardboard box, inside there are instructions and a 135 W power supply weighing 250 grams. The laptop itself weighs 2.4 kg and its thickness is only 2.39 cm, which is quite small for a 15-inch machine in this class.
Everything is assembled from plastic: slightly rough at the bottom and smooth around the keyboard. By design, we have a classic gaming laptop: a molded lid and thoroughly beveled edges. The screen frame on the sides is not very thick – 9 mm, but from the top and bottom it is already 24 and 15 mm. However, the upper bar is justified by the built-in 720p webcam at 24 frames. The picture does not shine with quality and is noisy, but enough for Zoom.
The layout is standard for connectors. On the left are LAN, two USBs of the third version, and a 3.5mm jack. On the right is HDMI 2.0 and a couple of USBs, one of which is Type-C. The food is located in the back, and in the reviews, many complain about it: they say, it is inconvenient and falls out. But we did not notice this: the fork is small, L-shaped and is normally held by the built-in lock.
The matrix raised much more questions. Officially, this is IPS with Full HD resolution and 144 Hz. In terms of speed, viewing angles and brightness level, everything is really normal for her, but it’s difficult with colors. According to our measurements, the screen displays 52% of the standard sRGB, which naturally affects the image quality.
But the keyboard pleased me. You can argue about the convenience of the red backlight, but with the buttons Acer hit the mark. The caps are full-sized, the stroke is light, but at the same time there is a clear feeling when the key has worked and when not. And the cool thing: in the game area – these are the rows QR, AF and ZV – there are no locks, that is, you can hold down at least all the keys at once. Usually in this price category they don’t bother with this. But the touchpad is again a panel without buttons. However, it is large, correctly delineated and slightly recessed into the body so that the finger does not fly out for it – for Windows and Crusader Kings 3 is enough.
For additional control, everything is standard. Functions like volume, touchpad mute, display switching and backlight brightness work via FN . From the unusual, we highlight only the Nitro hotkey, which launches the fan control program of the same name, and the unsuccessfully located power button. It is inscribed in the upper right corner of the keyboard, where, as a rule, Delete is put. Usually we swear at this a lot, but this time the button is configured correctly: it works only after a long press.
The speakers sit on the sides below and are slightly tilted so as not to play on the table. This makes them harder to cover, and additional reflections enrich the sound a little. Of course, they do not convey all the charms of the same Call of Duty , but they cope with speech on YouTube – unless we would add volume to them.
Finally, let’s note the networking capabilities: they are well above average. Firstly, there is WiFi 6. Secondly, Killer chips with flexible settings for priorities and bandwidth restrictions are responsible for control .
Iron
Now let’s talk about basic hardware. Let’s start with the stone – this is the latest Ryzen 4000 series mobile . Lest you get confused: In the notebook world, AMD adds 1,000 to its processor names. We don’t know why, but these are analogs of home 3K models based on Zen 2 architecture . And this means separate CCX blocks of four cores in each, the Infinity Fabric bus between them and, accordingly, the dependence on RAM.
Now AMD has two lines that are relevant to us. These are “office-mobile”, which is identified by the letter U at the end of the name (for example, R5 4600U ) and “game / work” with the letter H, like our Ryzen 5 4600H. According to the nomenclature of AMD itself, this is the third oldest processor. First comes Ryzen 9 4900H and 4800H with 8 cores and 16 threads, and then ours – 6 cores and 12 threads. And in terms of characteristics, this is almost on par with the pre-top Core i7-10750H .
Loses Ryzen in official frequencies: four against five gigahertz from a competitor. However, looking ahead, we note that Ryzen’s “four” are honest, while Intel’s “five” can be seen only on the desktop. The standard is talking about 4.3-4.4 GHz.
With the advent of Ryzen, laptops have changed the way they think about RAM. If before they always set the bars at 2667 MHz, now they take into account the features of Infinity Fabric – and even in the fifth Nitro they used two 8 GB bars with a frequency of 3000 MHz.
And finally, the video card. The Nitro series includes GPUs up to RTX 2060 , but with Ryzen, the models reach a maximum of GTX 1660 Ti , and in our version there was a younger 1650 . Of course, in terms of characteristics, it is weak, especially in terms of video memory (only 4 GB), but playing with it is more than realistic.
The same Assassin’s Creed Valhalla works confidently at medium settings. There are microfreezes, but not so frequent as to recognize the project as unplayable. In Watch Dogs: Legion, the “high” settings get 47 fps at 23 frames of 0.1%. And in Horizon Zero Dawn at the same “high” settings, 50 frames per second are released.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about this laptop is the direct comparison with the Core i7-10750H. This is where miracles begin. This Nitro on AMD costs from 68 to 72,000 rubles, and on the basis of Intel it goes in the range from 77 to 90 thousand rubles. So, the difference in price is not felt in all work programs.
Intel clearly leads Matlab – due to AVX instructions – and in 3ds Max , Photoshop and WinRar . The difference is from 15 to 30%. But in video rendering and archiving via 7-Zip, the gap is reduced to 1-2%, and in Cinebench there is generally parity between processors.
That being said, Ryzen is incredibly cold. While Intel is usually driven into “burn out, but keep the frequency down,” AMD is tuned according to the principle “let’s not exceed 70 ° C”. Yes, this affects performance – in the same 3dsmax, the stone drops to both 3.6 GHz and 3.4 GHz – but the processor and the laptop itself remain cold. And you can really just lie on the couch, put the laptop on your knees and play calmly, and not strain with stands so as not to burn your legs. In addition, this behavior makes the notebook very quiet. The turntables, of course, turn on, rustle, but even after an hour of playing in Valhalla, they don’t think to accelerate to 100%.
In conclusion, we will mention a couple of missing characteristics: drives and battery. According to the first, we had a version with one 500 GB SSD and a speed of 2.26 GB / s, but there are options for sale with a combination of an SSD and a hard drive. Well, in terms of battery life, everything is standard: it is an hour and twenty in games and four and a half hours in office mode.
Eventually
In April, when testing the first laptop on Ryzen, we said that if Intel did nothing, it would be extremely difficult. In response, Intel released the tenth series of processors, in which it really did not really come up with anything , and again put four cores on the i5 in the middle segment.
You can see the result for yourself. Yes, AMD still needs to work on frequencies and finally make friends with Adobe and Autodesk in order to keep up with Photoshop and 3dsmax out of the blue. But a start has clearly been made, and we are confident that AMD will unveil a new generation in January that will already run on Zen 3.
As for the fifth Nitro, we have known this series for a very long time – and in terms of price / quality ratio, this is one of the best gaming offers on the market. Yes, we would have changed the matrix here and put 60 Hz with normal coverage, but in general, this is the only complaint about the Nitro.
Specifications
Display: 15.6-inch, 1920×1080, IPS, matte, 144 Hz
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 4600H, (6 cores, 12 threads, 3-4 GHz, 45 W)
Memory: 2x 8 GB DDR4-3000 (Micron 8ATF1G64HZ -3G2J1)
Video card: AMD Radeon Vega, GeForce GTX 1650 (1400-1560 MHz, 4 GB)
Disk subsystem: 512 GB NVMe SSD Hynix HFM512GDJTNI-82A0A
Sound : Realtek Wired
network : 1 Gbit Ethernet (Killer E2600) Wireless network : Wi- Fi 802.11ax (Intel AX200), Bluetooth 5.0 Connectors : 3x USB 3, USB 3 Type-C, HDMI 2.0, 3.5mm jack, RJ-45, SD / SDHC / SDXC card reader
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Optional: webcam, 720p
Dimensions: 36.3×25.5×2.4 cm
Weight: 2.4 kg
Price for November 2020: 71,000 rubles ($ 925)
