Acer Nitro 5

This gaming laptop undoubtedly broadens your choices for a low-cost laptop capable of handling the most taxing PC games, making it ideal for thrifty gamers looking to extend their gaming library. Because it offers more for less, the Acer Nitro 5 can be purchased for as little as $749 (£899, or around AU$1009) in today's market.

Undoubtedly, the Acer Nitro 5 is one of the laptops on the market that offers the best value due to its affordable price, sufficiently powerful specifications, and nice feature set. You will have to make some concessions. Still, none of them will have a significant enough impact on the overall performance of this laptop for it to be a deal breaker, especially considering the cost savings it provides.

Price and Availability

The Acer Nitro 5 is one of the gaming laptops that offers the best value for the money on the market today. The model we tested has a starting price of $749; for that price, you get the device in its most basic configuration. The same configuration is offered in the UK, albeit at a price that is approximately £335 more expensive. However, this particular specification is not offered in Australia. According to the information provided on the Acer website, the most fundamental configuration that can be purchased there costs AU$1,999 and features an Intel Core i7-8750H processor, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 with 4GB of memory, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and a 128GB solid-state drive.

There are a few additional available configurations for the American market, the most costly of which is the one that costs $1099. Although its graphics processing unit (GPU) and hard drive remain the same, the laptop now comes equipped with an Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor, 16 gigabytes of random access memory (RAM), and 256 gigabytes of solid-state storage (SSD).

Design

The Acer Nitro 5 leaves much desired regarding its appearance and general impression. That's not to say it's bad – in fact, there are things we appreciate about it. We are fans of the understated gamer aesthetic, which has red accents on the console's keyboard backlight, trackpad, and top rear bar. The display's hinges have a solid and reliable feel, and the abundance of available ports is a definite plus. The laptop has a cooling system that the user can control and a comfy keyboard (more on those two topics later.)

The design of the Acer Nitro 5 is likewise nothing to get excited about and deserves no praise. It is not very impressive, and the fact that it is a low-cost laptop implies that there will be visible traces of cost-cutting, which are there. These reductions can be seen. The screen cover, for instance, is manufactured from low-quality plastic.

Keyboard

Going back a step, the keyboard on the Acer Nitro 5 is a significant strength of this laptop. There is nothing unusual or noteworthy about it at all. Red is used for the symbols, the backlight (which is only engaged when plugged in, so the keys are difficult to see in the dark when it's not), and the paint used to highlight the WASD keys. All of these features are present.

This standard keyboard falls somewhere in the centre of the pack. We feel that it is not only pleasant but also highly dependable. It is quick and responsive, and there have been no delays, missed buttons, or unintentional pushes that we have encountered with it. That matters, whether you're typing or playing a game.

Trackpad

Now, we get to the point where we discovered the most significant complaint. We agree that gaming laptop trackpads are typically looked down upon in the PC gaming community, particularly for first-person shooters, role-playing, and action games. However, the trackpad on this laptop is of such poor quality that you will not want to use it for even the most basic computing operations. Because the trackpad has a lot of travel and is quite stiff, you have to push down hard for anything to register, which might lead to early finger fatigue. The trackpad also has a lot of motion.

Display, Audio, And Video

Regarding these three topics, we have a neutral attitude. The camera produces blurry footage even at its maximum setting, which allows it to shoot video at 720p at 30 frames per second. It works good for web conversations, but you shouldn't expect to create many high-quality images on this platform. Even though the sound may be customised using the equalisation that is included in the Dolby Audio programme, the sound produced by the laptop is too emphasised on the high-end and quite echoey. In a nutshell, it's just another laptop with poor audio quality, which is quite standard nowadays.