Appearance-wise, this laptop does not disappoint and had been thoughtfully designed. Acer placed each element carefully to optimize the thermal airflow. There are two cooling fans and dual exhausts to keep the machine cool during your gaming sessions.
There is still the red theme and red-backlit keyboard in this model, which makes it look cool. The plastic material dominates the design which is reasonable at this price point, but it feels solid, and it even reduces the weight. The high-quality plastic material also helps to keep the temperature low while gaming.
Physically, it is not too bulky for a 17-inch gaming laptop. The weight is even not far from the Acer Helios line up, about 0.20 Kg more, but the Helios is a 15-inch device. In short, it is probably the lightest 17-inch gamer laptop on the market, so you can still carry it around a lot.
The dedicated Nitro key on the keyboard is a nice addition. The key allows you to access the fan control of your laptop in seconds instead of searching the shortcut keys.
Superb Performance
Superb performance is what you would expect from the 11th Generation of i7-11800H Intel processor combined with the RTX GPU, 16GB RAM, and 1TB Storage (SSD). Yes, this AN517-54-79L1 model is the updated version from its previous generation. This unit unifies the up-to-date internals that can make this laptop capable to handle your games. Needless to say, the performance of this laptop is blazing fast.
i7-11800H CPU Rocks!
AN517-54-79L1 rocks the new 11th Gen i7-11800H processor. It is one of the fastest CPUs in the laptops category at the moment. This chipset alone would cost about $400, so to get it inside this laptop with the other functional features in this inflation and chip-shortage condition is a great addition.
This processor has a 2.30 GHz base CPU frequency, and it can boost up to 4.60 GHz with its maximal Turbo speed. This said this chip brought over improvement when compared to its predecessor which has only 4.50 GHz max. Turbo boosts speed. It also outperforms the 10th Gen i9 chip by 13%. For a processor’s performance, this number is quite significant.
Intel i7-11800H CPU Comparison
i7-11800H vs i9-1088H
Other than the speed, the increase of its Cores and Threads also help the performance. This 11th Gen i7 packs 8-Core rather than 6, and 16 Threads rather than 12 with its predecessor. This chip is also in the top 13 laptops’ CPU when we wrote this review.
i7-11800H is on the top 15 CPU for laptops
The 11800H chip tops a lot of powerful CPUs in this benchmark
In other words, the AN517-54-79L1 is a machine with a high-end CPU for a competitive price. For a non-gamer notebook with a similar processor look at this Acer Aspire 5.
Discrete RTX 3050 Ti GPU
So we got the great CPU, now what about the GPU? Well, when talking about a laptop to game we can’t ignore its GPU. This AN517-54-79L1 has the RTX 3050Ti rather than the non-Ti GPU. The 3050 Ti is a faster version of the non-Ti chipset and is a GA107 ampere Graphics chip. It boasts 20 Ray Tracing, 80 Tensor Cores, and 2560 CUDA to significantly increase the graphics rendering speed.
This GPU is also equipped with the genius Artificial Intelligence, RTX, and DLSS technologies which are ready to slice through your gaming sessions. The RTX technology enhances your games to be better looking, lighting, reflection, shadow graphics, and so forth. RTX makes your game more realistic, which did not exist in the PC gaming industry before. It’s quite impressive to be able to see your enemy’s reflection from the glass window in front of you in a game. That’s where the Ray Tracing technology comes in, it can enhance the visual graphics of your game. So it is amazing that your new laptop has this technology.
Ray Tracing vs No Ray Tracing difference
Ray Tracing is turned on on the right picture – better looking!
Another thing to think about is, there will be more and more developers who are developing games with RTX in mind, so older Graphics cards will be left behind.
Many Values with this AN517-54-79L1
This machine comes with many good values for its competitive price. The immense SSD storage space? The useful I/O ports? I think we are going to start with the feature which you will use most of the time, the screen.
Panel for Gamers
One of many crucial details in a gaming rig is your screen. It does not matter how powerful your laptop is, if the screen can’t offer smooth graphics, it’s hard to defeat your enemies. However, this AN517-54-79L1 laptop offers exactly that. Its screen is probably the first reason why people will want to get it. This unit comes with a bigger 17″ display, yet its portability is comparable to the 15″ Acer Helios lineup.
Acer Nitro 5 AN517-54-79L1 Gaming Laptop | Intel Core i7-11800H | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050Ti Laptop GPU | 17.3″ FHD 144Hz IPS Display | 16GB DDR4 | 1TB NVMe SSD | Killer Wi-Fi 6 | Backlit KB | Win 11
The screen is a 17.3 inch IPS display with 1080p screen resolution with bright and beautiful colors. This is a fantastic panel because it offers you more viewing estate for your productivity applications and games. More real estate of the screen is very helpful when you use Adobe After Effects, Premiere, or other graphic editing software, or when playing shooting games. It is also more enjoyable to watch movies or videos on a larger screen.
What is even more attractive, the screen registers 144Hz refresh rates. What is the difference between 144Hz and low refresh rates? The 144Hz screen will make your gaming experience smoother, see how smooth a 144Hz screen can be when compared to the lower Hz refresh rates.
Games are smoother on a 144Hz screen vs on 120 or 60Hz
On top of that, Acer includes the DTS:X Ultra audio to use with this screen and an HD built-in webcam for video chats.
RAM & SSD Do It Well
So onto the inside of this laptop, is the 16GB of RAM out of the box, and preinstalled Windows 11 Operating System. If you wish to have the Windows 10 version, get this unit, you can always update to Win 11 later. Moreover about the RAM of this laptop, the 16GB without doing upgrade is pretty awesome, since most of gaming laptops at this price come with much less RAM capacity (8GB). So you are getting a new gaming machine with plenty of RAM onboard here, 16GB!
The 17-inch Acer Nitro 5 boasts Windows 11 and many solid ports
Windows 11, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD on board
Also, the AN517-54-79L1 comes with a 1TB SSD which is also proving to be plenty of SSD storage (1TB!). A lot of gamer laptops come with only 512GB or even 256GB these days, and shockingly they even cost more, like this for example.
Sure, you can use external drives via its USB ports, but you will need to carry around your external drives while on the go, so it can be cumbersome. Our guy here has a massive 1TB SSD, which is a good value at its price.
Acer also allows you to upgrade the memory and add a storage drive if you intend to upgrade in the future. Although the pre-installed RAM and SSD are already more than sufficient for all PC tasks and performing well. It is always nice to have this option on board.
Chiclet Lighted Keys
This AN517-54-79L1 has a nice backlit keyboard with chiclet-styled keys, as well as Numpad on the side. They also enhance the dedicated WASD keys with extra color so you can find them quickly while gaming. The backlit keys are bright and responsive, they are great if you often work in a dark environment. What is lacking, is the ability to change each color of the keys (not per-key RGB), but it is not a deal-breaker. If you fancy the RGB keyboard on a laptop, opt for this unit or this one.
The trackpad is pretty large and functional. It also supports Windows precision drivers to navigate with a more accurate and responsive gesture on your trackpad.
Monitor your PC’s temperatures and resource usage with the included Nitro Sense software.
Next to the backspace keys on the top of the key ‘7’ is the Acer’s NitroSense button. This button allows you to go to the dashboard of NitroSense software. It allows you to see thorough settings about your laptop’s real-time performance details such as CPU & GPU performance, cooling, fans speed, noise, energy-saving, and other options. It is a robust software to help you manage your laptop’s configuration.
Battery Life & Fan Noise
Before we discuss the battery life, we want to emphasize that this AN517-54-79L1 is a machine with power inside. So if you are expecting a new laptop with a longer battery lifecycle, we would suggest you look at other options out of the gaming laptops category.
The battery life of AN517-54-79L1 is fine for a gaming machine. You can reach 7-8 hours if your PC does not perform heavy tasks. But if you are playing games, due to its powerful processor and GPU, the battery will drain faster.
Your laptop’s battery life depends on your usage, many other configurations, and settings.
For the fan noise, as expected in most gaming laptops, it can get loud occasionally but nothing is serious. It won’t be that loud that it would disturb your chats or something like that. The two fans perform well, which is good so you won’t experience thermal throttle, thanks to the chassis too, as it is optimized to release the heat.
AN517-54-79L1 Acer Nitro 5 has exceptional thermal with its dual fans and exhausts
Modern I/O Ports
Along with internals, this AN517-54-79L1 has a pretty solid selection of I/O ports you may need for modern gameplay. There is an HDMI version 2.1, a 3.5mm Audio combo jack, 3x USB ports, one of them is USB Type-C & Thunderbolt that supports Power Delivery, and USB-Charging 5 V; 3 A. You won’t have it with a Ryzen-powered notebook.
In addition to those ports, the AN517-54-79L1 also has a LAN port, Bluetooth, and the newest Wi-Fi 6. Bluetooth is very helpful if you want to sync with your Xbox One controller. The Wi-Fi 6 offers strong and fast network performance. The Ethernet LAN port is also there in case you bring your laptop where the wireless network is not available or weak.
What I like is the placement of the power port which is very convenient on the back of the laptop, so less clutters while gaming.
Summary
Summarizing this review, if you are looking for a 17″ gaming laptop that has the newest CPU, RTX GPU, get this one. The 16GB rather than 8GB RAM, and monstrous 1TB rather than 512GB SSD storage are good values.
Acer Nitro 5 AN517-54-79L1 Gaming Laptop | Intel Core i7-11800H | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050Ti Laptop GPU | 17.3″ FHD 144Hz IPS Display | 16GB DDR4 | 1TB NVMe SSD | Killer Wi-Fi 6 | Backlit KB | Win 11
in stock – high demand
The 144Hz refresh rate, backlit keyboard, and so many ports onboard are very welcome, too. It has a reasonable price due to the difficulties of the shipment of the chips right now, and this Acer Nitro 5 AN517-54-79L1 won’t disappoint.
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