Acer Nitro 5 An515-55 Review

[Mirta Dozar]

Asfar as the practical aspects go, I will complain about a few details, such as the fact that the status LEDs are annoyingly placed just beneath the screen and the front lip and corners are too sharp for my liking. For the most part, though, this is a fine laptop. Acer put grippy feet on the bottom, implemented a hinge that allows one-hand operation and can get the screen to about 160 degrees on the back, and placed a fair selection of ports on the sides.

Acer offers a couple of different screen options for the Nitro 5 series. Once more, our sample gets the higher-tier variant, which is a fine IPS FHD panel with 144 Hz refresh rate and fairly good response times.

This is a solid choice for gaming and daily use, with 100% sRGB color coverage, wide viewing angles and almost 400-nits of brightness at its highest setting. Blacks are fairly washed out, though, and that also impacts the overall contrast.

With that out of the way, we then went ahead and further verified our findings with the longer Cinebench R20 loop test and the gruesome Prime 95, on the High Performance profile. The CPU runs at 45+ W on both tests, with fairly quiet fans and solid temperatures of around 75-80 degrees C.

We also ran our combined CPU+GPU stress tests on this notebook. 3DMark stress runs the same test for 20 times in a loop and looks for performance variation and degradation over time, and this unit passed it fine. Luxmark 3.1 fully loads both the CPU and GPU at the same time. The CPU stabilizes at around 45W and 90+ degrees C, with the GPU running at around 80W and 82+ C.

By default, both the CPU and the GPU run at high temperatures here, averaging 90+ degrees for the CPU and 78-80 degrees for the GPU between the tested titles. At the same time, the fans spin quietly at around 43-44 dB at head-level.

Switching over to the fans Max profile while the laptop sits on the desks has an even greater impact over the CPU and GPU, both running at slightly higher clocks. However, while the GPU drops to about 72-74 C in this mode, the CPU still averages 90+ C, but this time it runs close to its Turbo max frequencies. Even raising the laptop from the desk and switching the fans to Max is not enough to properly tame-down the CPU, which keeps running at high temperatures in this unit.

On the other hand, the high CPU temperatures with games, paired with only limited performance in CPU-heavy loads, plus the poor speakers and smudge-prone black plastic build are some of the aspects that could lead you towards something else. But even so, the 2020 Nitro 5 lineup is competitive in its segment, where some compromises have to be made to hit the lower price tag.

i got tired of skylake. i7 my ass. clearly worse than ryzen 5 4600h. and i got tired with those messy amazon links. somehow, they are everywhere, i keep getting them from each of youtuber and media guy.

"acer nitro 5 10750" in the amazon search field is a mess, not helpful and pisses people off. stop it please.

anyway, i have a technical question. i know psref.lenovo its a good place. do other manufacturers have a similar database?

As HP Omen with RTX2060 GPU and 10750H CPU is our of stock everywhere near me (for where the price isn't too high), same with Lenovo y540 which was my first choice, I'm trying to choose between the nitro with the 2060 and 10750, and omen 2060 and 9750h.

Seeing as you say that the performance of the 10750 for the nitro doesn't perform as well as the same CPU in other models, do you think it's possible that the Omen is better in that config?

Surprisingly the omen also cost about 170USD more while having weaker CPU, and 16gb ram compared to the 32GB of the nitro. How would you compare both laptops given these specs?

I see.

Thanks for the response.

Quick addition after more thorough search:

I found a Lenovo p5 with the same GPU rtx2060, and 10875h cpu, 16GB ram, 1T.

It is roughly 160USD more expansive.

I prefer its esthetics, and with the better GPU it seems worth it.

Do you have an opinion about how it compares?

i wanna laptop with an rtx 2060 and an intel processor but cant really make up my mind, my top picks are the acer nitro 5 and the helios 300,can you give any advice on which is better and more budget friendly or a kinda versus review?

Was told this was a top of the line gaming laptop for my budget (total was $1400 cdn from Walmart) i brought it home went to install my game there is no disc drive, has to attend an extra $50 to install the game on my to of the line gaming laptop top, it only has 1080p screen, dosen't have 4k abilities. I have a Google Pixel 3a running Lord's mobile with 3 accounts simultaneously 24/7 while still using my phone for everything else i need and never have any issues, i run 3 accounts simultaneously the laptop crashes and needs to be restarted. All i have done with it so far is play spore (am 8 year+ game that is no where near to of the line graphics and the game is constantly lagging and glitching and freezing. I've had the computer a month and it needed to be hard reset 4 times so far from freezing. The battery life is essentially non existent full charge 100% the laptop will crash with 0 battery in less than 2h of watching Netflix, (don't plan to use it to binge watch on a bus or plane) and all together i feel like my Toshiba from 8 years ago for $400 cheaper was equivalent to this machine, my Google Pixel 3a i feel is a superior machine, and have been nothing but disappointed with the acer nitro 5 i7 since i got it

My laptop has very QUIET fans, particularly compared to others I've used, even while running the game. I use the Acer Nitro 5 and recommend it. -nitro-5-15-6-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-16... This version is very good (ignore how best buy tells you it has a crappy graphics card). Take a look at the comments and you'll be convinced. Buy it, then buy another 8 gb of ram for it if you want even better performance if you want, but I don't have it. The reason this laptop is "cheaper" is because it comes with great hardware, but is easily up-gradable like with the ram, which is super high quality ram. Or you could add another hardrive to it for more room (I did this).

If I want to upgrade the storage capacity from 256 GB to 512 GB or more, is there a certain brand of storage that you recommend I buy? And how much should I add just for better overall performance of the laptop?

For another SSD, that depends on whether you'd be adding an M.2 drive or a SATA. Samsung is the gold standard of SSDs, but its products are more expensive. Something from WD or Crucial would be more than fine for everyday gaming use.

For RAM, you want to match the speed and timings of the existing module. The easiest way is to order an identical stick by the listed product number, but you can also look up the module's specs and find something equivalent. Your user manual will probably also list recommendations. Memory is easy to make well and usually comes with a longer warranty than the expected life of your laptop, so if you buy from a reputable manufacturer, you should be fine.

Hello @puzzlezaddict I read that the 11th Gen Intel chip is out now, and that people should buy a laptop with the new chip in it instead of the old 10th Gen Intel chip. I went on Best Buy's website and found the same Acer laptop that we were talking about but now it has the new 11th Gen Intel chip in it. What are your thoughts on that? How will this new upgraded Acer run TS4?

Another question: I know Windows 11 is coming out in a few months. Will the new Acer laptop be able to upgrade to Windows 11? There's a site detailing the system requirements needed to upgrade to Windows 11 but with my lack of computer knowledge I can't be sure if it can upgrade or not. Do you think it will be able to?

@sims929292 As far as Sims 4 is concerned, getting an i5-11400H rather than an i5-10300H won't make a noticeable difference. If you'd like a newer processor anyway, this Acer looks fine and is based on a design that works well, although I haven't seen reviews of this specific configuration yet. I can have a look if you really like the Acer in particular but want to be thorough, or I can look for other options if you're interested.

Windows 11 also requires that a certain security chip be active; google TPM 2.0 if you're curious. Any new-ish computer should have the chip, certainly any that also has an 8th-gen or newer Intel processor, but it may not be activated. You can do that yourself, provided the option exists within the BIOS, but some laptop BIOS configurations don't allow for many user adjustments. However, I'd expect most laptop manufacturers to release a BIOS update to make their recent products compatible with Windows 11 if they aren't already.

The short answer is, I would expect this laptop to support Windows 11 out of the box or be updated to support it, but it's not an absolute guarantee, just highly likely. You could also visit a Best Buy that has one of these on display and check whether TPM 2.0 is enabled: if it's in the display model, it would be in yours too.

Anyway, it's a moot point if you're looking to spend more money. I think you can do better than the Raider though. Since we've been talking about Acers, this one has the same graphics card, a processor that's more than fast enough and runs cooler, and is much cheaper. You wouldn't need the extra storage for Sims 4.

This laptop isn't perfect by any definition: for example, the battery life isn't good and the screen could be better, but the point is that you don't need to spend as much to get the same performance. But the MSI's screen isn't an improvement, and in-game performance, at least for games like Sims 4, doesn't have much room to improve.

This is an example of a higher-quality laptop that's still cheaper than the MSI. It runs cooler and quieter than the others and has very good performance in gaming. It does only come with 8 GB RAM, but you could upgrade that relatively cheaply and still come out ahead.

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