Acer Nitro 5 (2022) Review

The Acer Nitro 5 is an old friend—this is the sixth time since 2017 we've reviewed the 15.6-inch budget gaming laptop positioned below Acer's Predator series, not counting our two looks at the 17.3-inch version. Now starting at $699.99 and $1,099.99 as tested, the smaller Nitro 5 is a decent 1080p gaming rig, but this year's model doesn't impress us as the dirt-cheap 2020 edition did, nor as the MSI Katana GF66 does with a faster GPU and twice the storage for $100 more.

A Hard-to-Read Keyboard 

The cheapest Nitro 5 combines an Intel Core i5 processor with Nvidia's aged GeForce GTX 1650 GPU. Our $1,099.99 test unit (model AN515-57-74TT) heats things up with an eight-core, 2.3GHz Core i7-11800H chip and 4GB GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, plus 16GB of memory and a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive. The full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) non-touch display has a 144Hz refresh rate. The top of the line is identical except for 6GB RTX 3060 graphics; it's $1,299.99.

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(Photo: Molly Flores)

Clad in what Acer calls Shale Black plastic, the Nitro 5 measures 0.94 by 14.3 by 10 inches (HWD), a near match for the Katana (0.98 by 14.1 by 10.2 inches) though unnoticeably lighter at 4.85 versus 4.96 pounds. I'll complain for the third time that its dark red keyboard lettering is just about invisible against the black keys, so you can only tell what the top-row keys do in a dim room with the backlight turned all the way up. 

Medium-thick bezels surround the display; there's a fair amount of flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck. Would-be Windows Hello users will be disappointed to find neither a fingerprint reader nor a face recognition webcam. This year's model continues the Nitro 5's welcome tradition of expandable storage—removing a dozen screws and the bottom panel reveals a second M.2 SSD slot and a 2.5-inch hard drive bay, and there's a drive cable in the box.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

Prominent cooling vents are joined on the Nitro 5's sides by an array of ports, though Thunderbolt 4 and an SD or microSD card slot are missing in action. On the left flank are two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, an Ethernet port, and an audio jack. Two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (one Type-C, and one Type-A with device charging) are next to an HDMI port on the right. The AC adapter plugs in at the back.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

A Nice Enough, But No Frills, Feature Set 

Except for being extremely hard to read, the red-backlit keyboard has its good points, including dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys in the top row (though they and the Escape and Delete keys are small, and Delete is in the middle of a group of three rather than its usual position in an upper right corner). 

There's a numeric keypad and a special key to launch the NitroSense utility (more on that in a minute). The keyboard has a shallow, spongy typing feel but permits a brisk pace with a little practice. A buttonless touchpad glides and taps easily and has a slightly stiff click.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

The webcam has the usual cheap, soft-focus 720p resolution; it captures relatively well-lit and colorful images with a bit of static. It has no privacy shutter, though one of the top-row keys mutes the microphone for conference calls. Bottom-mounted speakers produce hollow sound that's barely audible even with the volume cranked up; bass is unnoticeable, though you can dimly make out overlapping tracks. 

The 1080p screen isn't particularly bright and white backgrounds are a touch dingy, but contrast is fair and colors are relatively vivid. Fine details are quite sharp for an economy panel, and the 144Hz refresh rate makes games and videos look smooth. Viewing angles are broad.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

The NitroSense pop-up lets you boost fan speed to stay cool during gaming and choose a thrifty, balanced, or high-performance battery plan (we used the last for our benchmark tests). It offers shortcuts to the GeForce Experience video control panel and DTS:X Ultra audio presets such as Music, Movies, Shooter, and RPG. Acer Care Center handles system updates and storage cleanup. Promotions range from Norton Security Ultra and Acer's Planet9 gaming community to ExpressVPN and Aura Privacy monitoring.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

Performance Testing: An Affordable Gaming Melee 

For our benchmark charts, we compared the 2022 Nitro 5 to four other under-$2,000 gaming laptops, with prices ranging from $784 for the Dell G3 15 to $1,699 for the MSI Delta 15. The MSI Katana GF66 and HP Victus 16 landed in between. You can see their basic specs in the table below.

Productivity Tests 

The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10's Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop's storage.

Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better). 

Our final productivity test is Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The quintet performed well overall. Even the humble Core i5 Dell surpassed the 4,000 points in PCMark 10 that indicate excellent productivity for Microsoft Office apps, and the Acer shone in our CPU tests and took the silver medal in Photoshop. These laptops are well suited for double duty as gaming platforms and daily drivers. 

Graphics and Gaming Tests 

We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). 

We also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better. 

Our next three tests involve real games—specifically, the built-in 1080p benchmarks from an AAA title (Assassin's Creed Valhalla), a fast-paced esports shooter (Rainbow Six Siege), and a sports racing sim (F1 2021). We run each benchmark twice, using different image quality presets for Valhalla and Rainbow and trying F1 with and without Nvidia's DLSS anti-aliasing technology.

The Nitro 5 performed admirably in Rainbow Six Siege, surpassing its 144Hz screen's capabilities and staking a solid claim to esports players on a budget. Unfortunately, it joined the Dell at the back of the pack in our other games and simulations, proving that Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3050 Ti is the GPU you get when you can't spare the extra cash for an RTX 3060. Systems priced $100 or $200 higher will make you a much better fragger. 

Battery and Display Tests 

We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off. 

We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

The Acer's nine-hour battery life is impressive for a gaming rig, but the budget laptops' displays are less so; none was as bright as we like, and the Nitro 5, G3 15, and Katana GF66 showed poor color coverage.

A Viable Esports Option, But Not a Star 

It's annoying that Acer has heard our gripes about the Nitro 5's hard-to-read keyboard for years without fixing it, but the laptop has otherwise shown steady improvement, moving from the 30fps to 60fps threshold and now taking a step nearer the big leagues with a 144Hz display.

(Photo: Molly Flores)

Unfortunately, the competition has improved too—it's easier to stand out in the $700 or $800 segment than the fierce, crowded $1,100 or $1,200 arena. We still like the Nitro 5, but it's no longer our first pick.