These days, it’s hard to find a true budget gaming laptop, but the new Acer Nitro 5 makes a strong case for itself. It’s easy on the wallet and does a good job for a beginner. Its 12th Generation Intel Core i5 CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, and 144Hz refresh rate display make 1080p gaming comfortable. A little more storage space would be nice, but the 512GB solid-state drive keeps the price under $1,000, making this a great choice for mainstream gamers who want to save a buck. But players who want more than 60fps should look for a laptop with a step-up GPU, like the MSI Katana GF66.
With the Nitro 5, Acer hasn’t tried to change the way gaming laptops work. It has a simple design with a bit of gaming flair thanks to an RGB backlit keyboard with four different zones, red Nitro text, and a pinstripe-like effect on the lid. The Nitro 5 is quite thick and big. It’s 14.19 inches long, 10.67 inches wide, and 1.06 inches thick, and it weighs 5.51 pounds, so you’ll definitely know when it’s in your backpack.
There are ports on three of the four edges. On the right side, there are two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports. One of them can charge a device like a smartphone even when the Nitro 5 is turned off. On the back of the Nitro is a charging port, a Thunderbolt 4/USB-C port, and an HDMI 2.1 port. There is a 3.5mm audio jack on the left side, a standard USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, and an RJ45 Ethernet jack.
The 15.6-inch screen has a refresh rate of 144Hz and a resolution of 1920×1080. The bezels around the screen fit with the rest of the Nitro 5’s design. In other words, they aren’t skinny. A 720p webcam is on top of the screen. Below the screen is a standard keyboard, and a small number pad on the right side of the housing. On the left side of the deck is a medium-sized touchpad. The keyboard and touchpad work well, even if they are simple. Overall, the Nitro 5 looks and feels like any entry-level gaming laptop from the last few years.
In an overall performance test that put a lot of weight on the CPU, the Nitro 5 got a score of 1,652 for a single core and 9,148 for multiple cores. The TUF Gaming F17 (Core i5-11260H) had a multi-core score of 5,045, so this is a nice improvement. It also did better than the MSI Pulse GL66, which had a Core i7-11800H from the previous generation. The Acer laptop copied 25GB of files at 1,240.65 MBps, which was faster than both the TUF Gaming F17 and the MSI Pulse GL66.