The Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop Review: Absolutely AMD - Ryzen Plus Polaris
by Brett Howse on February 15, 2019 8:30 AM EST
In the last year we’ve taken a look at a couple AMD Ryzen APU-powered (Raven Ridge) laptops, and while these laptops have had their ups and downs in terms of battery life, one area where AMD has never shied away from is total performance. Even in a mobile form factor, the Zen architecture is fast. And in AMD’s APUs, this also gets paired with AMD’s highly capable integrated Vega iGPU.
Overall a performant combination, a single APU is still at times limited – if not by its own innate performance than by the clockspeeds and total throughput the low-TDP part can sustain. So what do you if you need more performance, particularly GPU performance? As always, you go the tried and true route: you add a discrete GPU. Acer has done just this with their Nitro 5 laptop, which in the case of the model we're looking at today, pairs up a Ryzen APU with a Radeon RX 560X GPU in order to produce a thrifty, entry-level gaming laptop.
All told, the Acer Nitro 5 is one of the least expensive ways to get into laptop gaming. Acer offers several models, with the lowest cost offering coming in at just $669.99 MSRP, while the top of this range capping out at $999.99. Regardless of the price range you are looking at, all of the Acer Nitro 5 models offer pretty reasonable feature set, with a dGPU at least 8 GB of RAM, and other than the lowest-priced tiers, SSD storage as well. There’s a lot of laptop here for the price, and Acer has options for this entire end of the market with the Nitro 5.
The Nitro 5 can be had with either AMD or Intel offerings on the CPU, and AMD and NVIDIA GPU offerings as well, which is rare to see. AMD sent us the Nitro 5 AN515-42-R5GT model, featuring an AMD Ryzen 5 2500U processor, and the AMD Radeon RX 560X GPU, coupled with 8 GB of DDR4 and a 256 GB SSD. The AN515-42 also comes in a slightly less expensive model which foregoes the SSD for a 1 TB HDD. With the size of today’s games that might be tempting, but the everyday performance benefits of the SSD mean that it should be the default choice, especially since you can add the HDD later if necessary without having to reinstall the OS.
The dGPU coupled with the Ryzen CPU is the AMD Radeon RX 560X, which launched in April 2018. AMD hasn’t had a lot of traction in the laptop gaming market, and although they’ve moved to their latest Vega architecture on the desktop and integrated with Ryzen, the RX 560X is based on Polaris 11, built on Global Foundries’ 14nm node, and offering 16 CUs / 1024 Stream Processors coupled with 4 GB of GDDR5 in the Acer Nitro 5. Despite being an older architecture than the Vega GPU integrated with the Rzyen 5 2500U, there’s far more GPU available, so it’s still a significant boost in gaming performance over the integrated model.
| Acer Nitro 5 - Model Tested AN515-42-R5GT | |||||
| Models | AN515-42 Ryzen 5 2500U RX 560X | AN515-53 i5-8300H GTX 1050 | AN515-53 i5-8300H GTX 1050 Ti | AN515-53 i7-8750H GTX 1050 Ti | |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 2500U 4C / 8T 2.0 - 3.6 GHz 4MB Cache 15W Nominal TDP 12-25W Configurable TDP |
Intel Core i5-8300H 4C / 8T 2.3 - 4.0 GHz 8MB Cache 45W Nominal TDP 35W Configurable TDP |
Intel Core i5-8300H 4C / 8T 2.3 - 4.0 GHz 8MB Cache 45W Nominal TDP 35W Configurable TDP |
Intel Core i7-8750H 6C / 12T 2.2 - 4.1 GHz 9MB Cache 45W Nominal TDP 35W Configurable TDP |
|
| GPU | AMD Radeon RX 560X 1024 SP / 16 CU 16 ROPs 1275 MHz 4GB GDDR5 7Gbps Polaris 11 |
NVIDIA GTX 1050 640 CUDA Cores 16 ROPs 1493 MHz 4GB GDDR5 7Gbps GP107 |
NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti 768 CUDA Cores 32 ROPs 1620 MHz 4GB GDDR5 7Gbps GP107 |
NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti 768 CUDA Cores 32 ROPs 1620 MHz 4GB GDDR5 7Gbps GP107 |
|
| RAM | 8GB Single Channel Two SO-DIMM Slots |
8GB Single Channel Two SO-DIMM Slots |
8GB Single Channel Two SO-DIMM Slots |
8GB - 12GB Two SO-DIMM Slots |
|
| Display | 15.6" 1920x1080 IPS Acer ComfyView |
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| Storage | 1 TB HDD (AN515-42-R5ED) 256 GB SATA SSD (AN515-45-R5GT) |
1 TB HDD | 256 GB SATA SSD | 1 TB HDD + 16 GB Optane (AN515-53-70AQ) 128 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD (AN515-53-7366) |
|
| Network | 802.11ac 2x2:2 Gigabit Ethernet |
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| I/O | 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C 1 x USB 3.0 2 x USB 2.0 HDMI SD Reader Headset Jack |
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| Battery | 47 Wh Li-Ion 135W AC Adapter |
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| Dimensions | 391 x 267 x 28 mm 15.4 x 10.5 x 1.1 inches |
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| Weight | 2.7 Kg / 5.95 lbs | ||||
| MSRP | $669.99 AN515-42-R5ED $699.99 AN515-42-R5GT |
$749.99 | $849.99 | $949.99 AN515-53-70AQ $999.99 AN515-53-7366 |
|
The 15.6-inch laptop does offer a 1920x1080 IPS display, which is great to see, since gaming laptops can tend to gravitate to TN panels. These are useful if you want a high refresh rate, but are much less useful the rest of the time. The 8 GB of DDR4 is unfortunately single-channel, but this is less of an issue on this machine because the dGPU has its own 128-bit GDDR5 memory pool. The upside is that the RAM is also upgradeable and easy to access.
Wireless in the AMD version is based on the Qualcomm Atheros 2x2 802.11ac adapter, and the laptop offers plenty of I/O with two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, and even a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port. The laptop also offers HDMI, and Ethernet.
To get to the price range, there’s definitely some corners cut, but lets take a look at the design and see how they did.
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GreenReaper - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
People who are just coming here to find a review of a particular laptop may not know that.I agree that it would be nice to know for sure if it was stuck in single channel, as I seem to recall that being a criticism of its other AMD model. At the same time it's possible that the impact is less given the separate graphics hardware with 4GB dedicated GDDR5.
jgraham11 - Thursday, February 21, 2019 - link
Brett, thank you for commenting back. Bottom line is that when people are choosing a laptop to purchase, most people that don't have an unlimited amount of money or a specific design requirement want to know what they can get with the money they have. By comparing notebooks that are double, triple or more the price and not indicating price so distorts the perception of this product in a negative way. To solve this, label the price of each notebook (you would get crucified for making such outlandish comparisons) or only compare to other notebooks that have a similar price tag.If you don't do that, you are supporting an Intel monopoly, please say that isn't the case.
Annnonymmous - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
It actually shows how much of a bargain this laptop is. Why spend all that money when a bargain bin laptop gets you within a similar level of performance. I own this laptop. It won't disappoint you.Vitor - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Wow, what a dismal ips display. That's depressing actually.niva - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I said to myself:. Wow, finally, an AMD laptop with a good ips display!Then I saw the results. It's clear that unless AMD makes their own machines directly, no manufacturer will get it right.
mr_tawan - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Based on my own experience with Acer's machines. ... This is about just right :P.Well I've never come across Acer's machine with good stuffs in it before, they are pretty much all budget-oriented. That said things, might have changed.
TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
I've been saying this same thing for years. AMD has had great notebook chips for awhile, but no OEM takes them seriously. They should partner with sapphire or clevo and build a range of proper Radeon-books or such.michaelflat1 - Thursday, February 21, 2019 - link
Clevo and MSI are not going to use AMD's 7nm mobile chips on their release.. so we are out of luck on that front.. some budget laptop chinese companies are locked into a contract with intel, they get cheaper chips but not allowed to sell any amd laptops.. only one amd ryzen embedded laptop to come out of china :( (not regarding matebook D)If AMD's 7nm goes right hopefully we can get a big OEM onboard, microsoft? Dell? Apple!?! that would probably be dreaming..
I think the high idle consumption is keeping them out of high end laptops, and stuff like video playback/streaming on youtube has too much of a hit on battery life.. maybe 7nm will fix this (we hope)
tipoo - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
Yep, manufacturers seem to fall into the trap of them being slightly cheaper than Intel/Nvidia parts meaning they have to penny punch every other component. Would be a pretty great system with a decent display, and preferably dual channel memory, though as noted that doesn't choke a CPU much since this has dedicated VRAM.Oxford Guy - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
It would be useful to see calibrated results. Products like the ColorMunki are not expensive.Since the black depth wasn't as bad as some of the other screens here it may be the case where this panel isn't quite so bad with calibration.