Harsh typing isn’t a problem, we observe slight bending in the zone between the “Space” key and the touchpad. Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-57) is equipped with a Full HD IPS panel, model number Innolux N156HRA-EA1 (CMN1521). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution is 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 142 ppi, and a pitch of 0.18 х 0.18 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at a distance equal to or greater than 60cm (24″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop). To put these findings in perspective, the Intel Core i7-11800H in this Nitro 5 fares similarly to the same i7 implemented by Acer in their Predator Helios 300, but runs at lower power and higher temperatures here. The same i7-11800H can perform faster in designs that allow for even higher-power allocations, while the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor tends to outperform the i7 at even lower power in various designs, including the AMD-based version of the Nitro 5.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-57)’s display (CMN1521) is PWM-free which is definitely good for your health no matter how long you plan to stay in front of the laptop. We also ran the 3DMark CPU profile test, where the Intel i7-11800H in this Nitro came about 10-15% behind other higher-power i7-11800H models we’ve tested, which is on par with the results above. Finally, the camera is placed on top of the screen, flanked by microphones. It’s OK for occasional calls, and I might argue slightly better quality than what you’ll normally get on mid-range laptops these days. Battery life

For people who don’t need so much power, there are a lot more not-so-powerful and wallet-punishing setups. In the past, some Nitro laptops were suffering from high CPU and GPU temperatures during heavy loads but right now things are changed. The inefficient and hot Intel Coffee Lake and Comet Lake-H CPUs are gone for good and the refreshed laptops with the Intel Tiger Lake-H CPUs don’t heat too much as the previous-gen devices thanks to the newer CPU chips. So, let’s see how capable the new one is. The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light. Far Cry 5, Middle Earth, Strange Brigade, Red Dead Redemption 2, Tomb Raider games – recorded with the included Benchmark utilities;

The GPU is an Nvidia RTX 3070 Laptop running at around 80W in our tests as of right now. However, with Dynamic Boost 2.0 this should ramp it up to 85-90W on the retail models, based on our experience with other Nitro models, and that might impact some of our findings. We’ll explain below. The 3060 variant should run at similar power levels, while the 3050Ti is a 60-80W variant. If interested, here’s a comparison of the 3050Ti, 3060 and 3070 graphics chips at similar power levels.

The display is a mixed bag – it’s a PWM-free panel which is good for your eyes during long gaming sessions. Also, it has a good contrast ratio and comfortable viewing angles. On the other hand, the color coverage is too narrow which isn’t a big problem if you use it mainly for games but if you want to do some color-sensitive work you should look somewhere else for a machine with a better panel. Unfortunately, the pixel response time is on the slow side so if you want to play fast-paced online shooters probably you’ll spot that. We tested the laptop with a cooling pad and with the fans ramped up to their max state. With the cooling pad, the GPU frequency is a bit higher while the temperatures are the same compared to the default fan settings. Now, there is an improvement if you set the fans to max speed but good god almighty – the CPU fan spins at 5000 rpm and the GPU one is rotating with 6000 rpm. Nope, in this mode the laptop isn’t just a vacuum cleaner – it’s a fighter jet that flies near you. Comfort during full load The measured maximum brightness of 306 nits in the middle of the screen and 278 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 14%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6930K – slightly colder than the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K.

The popularity of Acer’s Nitro series is undeniable. The main reason for this is the fact that these devices combine decent hardware with a reasonable price tag. The Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-57) is a typical representation of what you can expect from a new Nitro laptop – every year the laptops get some refresh treatment. Expectedly the improvements for the new devices take place under the shell of the notebooks. The looks of this particular device seem (almost) unchanged compared to what we saw last year. In short, the refreshed AN515-57 devices can be configured with Intel Tiger Lake 45H and NVIDIA Ampere GPUs – that sounds modern enough no matter if you’re going to use it for gaming, office, some productivity task, or something else. As always, the base configurations are a bit shy when it comes to power but the best possible one sounds intriguing for a Nitro 5 chassis (and perhaps it’ll be challenging for the cooling as well) – an Intel Core i7-11800H and GeForce RTX 3070 (100W). We think that’s the first time when a Nitro device can house such a powerful graphics solution. Here’s what we got on our review unit, with the screen’s brightness set at around 120 nits (~70 brightness).W (~3-4 h of use) – 1080p fullscreen video on Youtube in Edge, Power Saver Mode, screen at 70%, Wi-Fi ON;