2021 Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop Review | One PC Panda

Acer Nitro 5 is a fair favorite usually prices just below $1000. A machine with a lot of performance inside of it. It's pretty much the same way the same feel the same thickness and the same design but there are some slight cosmetic changes that I think look more appealing compared to the previous one. for example on the 2020 model had these metal grills on the left and right-hand side. Acer removed them and what you get instead is a more clean design you have these lines going towards the top of the lid but overall the laptop just looks stealthier.

Design Changes

I also find that Acer is starting to remove the red accents at least a little bit more every single year. If you remember on the previous model the hinge was completely red now with the black with just the lettering in red the port setup is very familiar. On the left-hand side you have an RJ45 to USB ports audio Jack and then on the right-hand side full-size HDMI USB and USB type C. This is not thinkable because this is an AMD laptop, but the cool thing is they removed the power connector from the side and placed it on the back of the laptop. The previous Nitro five had a complete black grille going across the back. Now you just see the grill where the vents are and then in the middle is your power connector this is always preferred because if you're connecting a power cord to it placing it on the back is cleaner.

Keyboard and Keypads

The keyboard is exactly the same as the previous model in fact this is the same keyboard that Acer's been using on the Predator Helios and Nitro for the past five years numeric keypad on the right-hand side rubberized keys and pretty good travel distance. You could either keep it with just one color of red or spend more money and get up to four zones. The other edition is no more red border around the touchpad. I thought that looked super tacky so I'm glad Acer removed it from the 2021 model.

Monitor and Display Upgrades

Now, the cool thing is this year you're not stuck with just 144 Hertz you can literally spec this display up to 360 Hertz. Now, I truly don't suggest you do that on a Nitro product because the GPUs will not be able to get 360 frames per second unless you're playing super old titles. I still think 144 Hertz is the sweet spot for 1080P on a Nitro 5 but you can now get the Nitro five with a QHD panel in 165 Hertz. This is awesome, you're going to see a lot of laptops coming out this year with QHD displays gaming laptops specifically QHD with up to 240 Hertz.

Not only is this a dream for gamers but this is also a dream for content creators because you're starting to get the best of both worlds. The camera still in the exact same position I was hoping that we'd see some improvement webcams in 2021. But still, the same bad webcam and speakers are still on the bottom of the laptop.

Performance

Now the biggest update is obviously performance this is rocking the 5000 series AMD processors. The Ryzen 5 5600 each paired with a GTX 1650 now. Yes, the GTX 1650 is still living on but you can spec this laptop with NVIDIA 30 series GPU. The Ryzen 5 5600 CPU has a 300 Hertz faster base Clock and about 240 megahertz faster boost Clock. So there should be a nice performance bump compared to its predecessor.

Will it be faster than last year's i7 4800 H?

No, but it will be a nice boost nonetheless last year's internals were a bit chaotic because there are two different SKUs going around. If you bought the Nitro five with an RTX 2060 you got the old 2019 fan layout meaning the fans were right beside each other and heat dissipation wasn't as good. But there was another model that had the fan layout looking like this.

Thankfully in 2021, everything's going to be streamlined and heat dissipation should be better overall. There are three slots for storage, you have two NVME drives which can be bumped up to 2 terabytes, or a slot for an SSD or full hard drive to slots to upgrade your RAM potentially 64 gigabytes and a swappable Wi-Fi 6 card.

What about Battery Life?

The cool thing though is that this year you get a slightly bigger battery. Last year the model I think was around 53 Watt-hours this year they popped it up to 55.

Conclusion

So overall, we have a lot of little improvements to the natural lineup I do love the fact you can finally buy gaming laptops with QHD displays this is something I've always wanted as a gamer.

I'm super curious to see how these Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 5000 series CPUs perform? Let me know by commenting below. After all, I'm One PC Panda.