Acer Nitro 5 AN515-51-55WL Review

Acer Nitro 5 AN515-51-55WL Highlights -

Pros: Competitively priced. Solid Full HD gaming pace. Attractive design.

Cons: Average battery life and display quality.

It’s time to say goodbye to all those bulky gaming laptop computers with processors that can barely handle the latest games and can cost as much as $2000 or more. The days of gaming laptops too rare and valuable to ever leave your desk are a thing of the past. Enter the Acer Nitro AN515-51-55WL Laptop. With the release of Nvidia’s new Pascal graphics card coupled with the Intel's 7th Generation Kaby Lake chip, the Nitro delivers a level of game rendering performance that mobile systems have never seen before - especially at this price point.
The Nitro represents a whole new generation of gaming laptops that can be had for under a grand, laptops that are portable, sturdy and generate satisfying frame rates - even at top game settings. Acer has discovered a few key corners that could be cut in order to create these impressive capabilities at this price level. The Nitro will satisfy casual gamers, and even perform admirably in full HD. Here’s a peek under the hood.

Main Features at a Glance:

* NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4 GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM
* Intel Core i5 7th Gen 7300HQ (2.50 GHz)
* 8GB DDR4 2400MHz Memory and 256 GB SSD
* 15.6" 1920 x 1080 Wide viewing angle screen
* 1 x HDMI 2.0, 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C (up to 5 Gbps), 1 x USB 3.0 (featuring Power-off Charging) and 2 x USB 2.0

Design Specifications
The Acer Nitro has a nice clean exterior profile, but it still has a fairly imposing design. The artfully sculpted lid features the ever-present raised silver Acer logo. There’s a big connector strip on the back and a large enough cooling grille to kick out plenty of hot air. It’s flashy enough to signal its gaming street cred without being too over the top or wasting too much power via lighted flare.
It measures 15.4 by 10.5 inches and weighs 5.51 pounds placing it in about the same weight category as the majority of 15-inch laptops like the Dell Inspiron 15 i5577-5335BLK, the Acer Predator Helios 300, and the Lenovo Legion Y520 - all of which weigh in around 5 pounds and some change.
6 pounds is about the upper weight limit for this class of computer, bringing the Nitro in near the middle of its peer group - but it’s got a lot more going for it on the inside than most of its contemporaries.

Keyboard & Display
The Nitro’s 15 inch HD display utilizes in-plane-switching for wider view angles. It also has an attractive matte finish that takes a lot of the sting out of screen glare. Inside, the Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti renders well enough but doesn’t have the level of power some of the pricier models can boast of. But it still delivers more than sufficient frame rates for even the most hardware intensive games to be playable at 4K resolution.
Its backlit keyboard offers nice ergonomics but without many of the customizable light features that many serious gamers have grown accustomed to, but the WASD keys (W, A, S, and D keys or WASD keys allow the gamer to have access to more of the keys around them, which means more keys may be assigned to other tasks in the game) offer some helpful tactile cues to keep your hands on the mark even if you like to keep the lights low.

Click here for a closer look and buyer reviews.

Storage & Connectivity
The port selection is very good. You get two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, an HDMI port, Ethernet, and a USB 3.1 Type-C. And there’s also an AC adapter jack, a headphone jack, and a Kensington lock slot for a little added security- which can be useful at gaming conventions. There are not as many ports as are featured on many of Nitro’s rival gaming laptops, but the I/O ports are more than enough. For wireless, the Nitro uses fast, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and 4.0 Bluetooth. Storage is more than sufficient for three or four of your favorite games and your most important files. You can attach an external drive if you need more storage.

Performance
A machine built for gaming should easily satisfy everyday computing performance. The Acer Nitro 5 AN515-51-55WL delivers nominally, but solidly, in this regard with an Intel Core i5-7300Q processor. The 2.5GHz CPU earns 6867 points on the standard Mark test. That’s lower than the score of 8904 you get with the Acer Predator Helios 300,. Still, the 2.5GHz chip, when paired with the available 8GB RAM is more than sufficient for everyday computing. It can still keep up with its competition in the same price range with very little effort. The Nitro’s performance is commensurate with the Dell Inspiron 15 i5577-5335BLK gaming laptop, with identical processors and a GTX 1050 graphics card. Serious gamers will not be satisfied on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card. Most of the newest games are extremely resource intensive, pushing GPUs to the limit. But, if you are not a huge stickler for the insanely high frame rates that professional gamers expect, the Acer Nitro is a great choice. It does an excellent job rendering most titles like FIFA 18, Battlefield 1, and Overwatch at satisfying frame rates.

Battery Power
As game systems become more and more portable, battery life is one of the most common aspects where people tend to compromise- after all you can always plug it in. Fortunately, battery life is one aspect of performance where the Acer Nitro does not cut corners. Its battery will keep the Nitro running for just under nine hours. That’s nearly double what you get with Asus, Lenovo, and other competing machines. However, you should keep in mind that you won’t achieve battery life like these if you play hardware intensive games.

The Acer Nitro 5 AN515-51-55WL is priced to move and is a great choice for anyone who doesn’t mind moderate frame rates while playing some of the latest games with high GPU demands. If you’re a casual gamer, the Nitro 5 offers plenty of value that’s going to be pretty hard to find anywhere else.

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