The Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-57) is a refreshed device that surprises us with its decent performance. The price tag of it isn’t too wallet-stretching but at the same time, it offers a lot of bang for its money. The build quality is just fine for this kind of notebook, sure, that’s an all-plastic build but the device feels sturdy and rigid despite its not-so-premium build materials. The GPU is an Nvidia RTX 3070 Laptop running at around 80W in our tests as of right now. However, with Dynamic Boost 2.0 this should ramp it up to 85-90W on the retail models, based on our experience with other Nitro models, and that might impact some of our findings. We’ll explain below. The 3060 variant should run at similar power levels, while the 3050Ti is a 60-80W variant. If interested, here’s a comparison of the 3050Ti, 3060 and 3070 graphics chips at similar power levels. For people who don’t need so much power, there are a lot more not-so-powerful and wallet-punishing setups. In the past, some Nitro laptops were suffering from high CPU and GPU temperatures during heavy loads but right now things are changed. The inefficient and hot Intel Coffee Lake and Comet Lake-H CPUs are gone for good and the refreshed laptops with the Intel Tiger Lake-H CPUs don’t heat too much as the previous-gen devices thanks to the newer CPU chips. So, let’s see how capable the new one is. All in all, this i7+RTX 3070 configuration of the Nitro 5 AN515-57 is an excellent performer in games, even if it doesn’t offer a MUX and the display is connected via the iGPU. The impact of Optimus or the fact that Acer puts dual-channel SR memory on this series seems to be considerably more reduced here than on the AMD variants, something to keep in mind if gaming sits high at the top of your priorities’ list. I would advise straying away from this AU Optronics panel though and try to find a configuration with the superior BOE FHD 144hz panel instead. Noise, Heat, Connectivity, speakers, and others The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

Nonetheless, I’d look for a configuration with the higher-quality BOE panel (300+ nits, 100% sRGB, faster response) that we’ve tested on the previous Nitro 5 2021 model, it’s a much nicer screen overall and better suited for fast-paced games, thanks to the improved response times. Hardware and performance The cooling solution looks almost the same as the one that we found in the Predator Triton 300 (PT315-52). This means that it has three heat pipes – one of them is shared between the CPU and the GPU and the other two are solely dedicated to these chips. The cooling solution is complimented by four heat sinks and two big cooling plates that cover the video memory and the voltage regulators. There’s still only a 58Wh battery inside the Acer Nitro 5 series, as the rest of the space is occupied by the 2.5″ storage drive. This is smaller than what the competition offers these days. The display is a mixed bag – it’s a PWM-free panel which is good for your eyes during long gaming sessions. Also, it has a good contrast ratio and comfortable viewing angles. On the other hand, the color coverage is too narrow which isn’t a big problem if you use it mainly for games but if you want to do some color-sensitive work you should look somewhere else for a machine with a better panel. Unfortunately, the pixel response time is on the slow side so if you want to play fast-paced online shooters probably you’ll spot that.As expected, the Intel platform is not as efficient as the AMD models tested earlier, and when paired with the small battery, the runtimes end up this short. The fact that the screen runs at 144 Hz on battery and does not switch to 60 Hz takes a toll as well, so you might want to manually switch it over to further increase the runtimes. All in all, don’t expect more than 2-4 hours of daily use on a charge on this Nitro 5 model. With daily use, the fan noise (on the Balance and Power Saver modes) is limited and only audible in a quiet room, especially when using the laptop unplugged. The two fans are always active though, so never go idle. Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day. Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – light emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light. Conclusion

The Nitro 5 also features Acer’s CoolBoost technology which can automatically boost fan speeds by a further 10% when needed. All in all, there is still only an 80-85W 3070 in this Nitro 5, so proper higher-power implementations will outmatch it in performance. And the same can be said about the 3060 configurations, although those are more likely better value for your money in this chassis, with their more affordable pricing.The RTX 3070 configurations would demand 200-300 USD/EUR extra over the 3060s, for a roughly ~20% gain in GPU performance. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend a 3070 in this sort of chassis, but our test unit performed really well and even outmatched the 3070 Predator Helios 300, so unless Acer somehow limit the retail models with future BIOS updates, the 3070 configurations might not be a bad deal here. Just beware of those internal temperatures. Acer offers a couple of different screen options for the 2021 Nitro 5 series, with several FHD 144Hz options and a QHD 165Hz panel for the higher-tier configurations.