Acer Nitro 5 AN515-57-79TD

The laptop alone weighs under 2.3kg or 5lb, then under 2.9kg or 6.3lb total with the 180 watt power brick and cables, so not too heavy. The size is pretty standard for a modern 15” gaming laptop, it’s not super thin or anything but still portable. Both laptops have the exact same 15.6” 1080p 144Hz panel. Unfortunately there’s no MUX switch to disable optimus, and they didn’t have FreeSync or Adaptive Sync. Color gamut was on the lower side, so probably look elsewhere if you’re a content creator, but contrast was good. The brightness levels on both screens are extremely similar as they’re the same panel, but at under 260 nits when maxed out they’re on the dimmer side. The screen response time of both was basically the same and within margin of error, again same panels so similar results are expected, however they’re on the slower side compared alternatives, but at least not as slow as the TUF A15. They’re both also the slowest results I’ve recorded so far in terms of total system latency, the amount of time measured between mouse click and a gun shot fire in CS:GO, and the AMD system was a little faster compared to Intel here. The Acer website notes a 3ms response time, so I’m assuming that refers to the 165Hz 1440p panel option that I didn’t have, because the 144hz screens are slow. Backlight bleed wasn’t too bad on either, both had some subtle glow patches but I never noticed this during regular use, but this will vary between laptop and panel. There’s a 720p camera above the screen in the middle, no IR for Windows Hello though. The camera and microphone seem to be the same on both the Intel and AMD models. This is what it sounds like while typing on the keyboard, and this is what it sounds like if I set the fan to full speed, so you can still hear me alright over the fan noise. Both of mine had 4 zone RGB keyboards which lit up all keys and secondary functions, however I think there are also red only options. I thought the lighting looked decent, and there are some effects available through the Acer’s Nitro sense software, the control panel for the laptop. It’s got 4 levels of key brightness which can be controlled through software, or with the function key plus F9 and F10 shortcut keys. It’s got 1.6mm of key travel, and personally I had no problems typing on it. My partner on the other hand thought the numpad was annoying to use because the right arrow key is where zero usually is, and the nitro sense shortcut shuffles things around a bit. The precision touchpad is plastic, I thought it worked alright but my partner also noted bad palm rejection, but I wasn’t able to replicate this, so your mileage may vary. The left has a Kensington lock, air exhaust vent, gigabit ethernet port, two USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports and a 3.5mm audio combo jack. The right has a USB Type-C port, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A port, HDMI 2.1 output, and there’s an air exhaust on this side too. Now the Type-C port on the Intel model does offer Thunderbolt 4 support, which is not present in the Ryzen model, but one of the requirements of Thunderbolt 4 is to offer Type-C charging, but I didn’t find Type-C charging on my Intel model to work, so I’m not sure what the deal is, and Type-C charging wasn’t available on the Ryzen 5 model either. Both of those Type-C ports offer DisplayPort output, however they both connect to the integrated graphics. Both of the HDMI ports on the other hand connect directly to the Nvidia GPU, so connecting an external screen should bypass optimus, and I’ll show you how much of a speed boost this gives in games later. I also want to note how annoying the ethernet port was. It might be fine with brand new cables, but most of mine have weak or broken clips, which is fine for most laptops I test, but I often had to get the laptop sitting just right for the network to work with the Nitro 5. The back just has the power input near the middle with more air exhaust vents out towards the corners. As with previous Acer laptops, you really need to push the power plug all the way in. It can feel like it’s in but it’s not, it’s almost like it has a second level to clip in, which was a bit annoying. The front has no indentation for opening the lid, but I still found it easy to do. There’s some flex to the interior, which is to be expected from an all plastic machine, but it still felt alright when using it normally. Likewise there’s a bit of flex to the plastic lid, and at times I did find it to wobble a bit when carrying it around. Getting inside requires removing 11 Phillips head screws of the same length. I found it easy to open using the tools linked in the description below, and here we can get a better look at where the holes are actually placed for air flow. Once inside we’ve got the battery down the front, a 2.5” drive bay to the left of that, two M.2 slots above on the left and right, Wi-Fi 6 card above the SSD, and two memory slots in the middle. Both laptops also came with the necessary screws and cables to install a 2.5” drive. I also need to note that my Ryzen model came with MediaTek Wi-Fi, while the Killer Wi-Fi in the Intel model was able to perform 55% faster. Not really sure why the AMD model uses a slower Wi-Fi card, and it also had more trouble finding my 5GHz network. Now there are some very important differences between the stock memory in these two laptops that we need to discuss. I’m currently borrowing the Intel i5 model from Acer and it comes with one 8 gigabyte stick of x16 memory, while the Ryzen 5 model that I bought with my own money also comes with one stick, but it’s 16 gigabytes and faster x8 memory. I’ve shown in previous videos how the memory bank difference can affect performance, so purely based on these specs I would expect the Intel model to perform slower in games compared to Ryzen, at least with the stock memory that both of my units came with. Now I know the Nitro series is meant to be a more budget friendly option so that’s probably why it came with just one stick of memory in single channel, but the fact is performance is being left on the table by not running two sticks in dual channel. I guess I’d be more fine seeing this in the lower cost GTX 1650 model, but seeing single channel x16 memory in RTX 3060 laptops is a bit disappointing. I guess that’s just one of the reasons that it’s generally cheaper than others. The two speakers are found underneath on the left and right sides towards the front. They don’t sound great, tinny with no bass and definitely below average, but the latencymon results were looking acceptable from both AMD and Intel configurations. Both configurations have the same 57Wh battery inside, however the Ryzen model was lasting significantly longer than the Intel one. I tested this twice to confirm and got the same results, the i5 model was one of the worst results recorded while the Ryzen 5 model lasted 52% longer in the YouTube playback test. Both were miles behind the last gen nitro 5 which is closer to the top. Let’s check out thermals next. Acer’s Nitro Sense software is very basic. You’ve got the option to set the fan speed to auto, which is default, you can customize the two fans separately, or you can just press one button to set them to max speed. There aren’t any performance modes, the power plan section is just a front end for changing the Windows power plan. There’s lots of thermal data here, give me a moment to explain. Basically blue results are the Intel Nitro 5, while red are from the AMD model. The lighter colors represent the CPU, while the darker colors show the GPU. The idle results are down the bottom and Ryzen was a few degrees warmer than Intel. I’ve run stress tests with both the CPU and GPU loaded up to represent a worst case, as well as playing an actual game. With the fans in their default auto speed, the RTX 3060 graphics in the AMD model was running cooler, as per the darker bars, and the CPU was a little warmer on Intel too. With the fans manually set to max though, the GPU temps are much closer together, though still an edge to the AMD model, however the processor on the Ryzen model was still thermal throttling around its 90 degree limit. The cooling pad that I test with, linked in the description below, is able to get the Intel model cooler in all regards, and although the AMD CPU is still throttling in the stress test with it, this was removed in the game test. These are the clock speeds from the same tests, and it’s worth noting the i5-11400H has an all core turbo boost speed of 4.1GHz which was being hit, so full performance in some cases even with the GPU under load.