What is the best laptop that doesn’t cost an organ? Does it stay fast in the long term? Can it run games like PUBG smoothly? These are the list of questions that could go on and on when many of my friends turned to me for advice of a decent performing laptop, and when I start to suggest gaming laptops, the impression of these devices being bulky and having short battery life seems to have been implanted on their minds. Last month, I had the privilege to receive the Acer Nitro 5 as our work laptop during our trip to COMPUTEX, as we needed a laptop that could process our heavy load of video footage and photos from the event, I continued to use it after we got back from the trip and switching it between my 15-inch MacBook Pro, and the Nitro 5 has exceeded my expectations as a mere gaming laptop.
Many gaming laptops I’ve tested, even the ones that are priced two times the price of the Nitro 5, have either mediocre keyboards and trackpads, which you will usually find cramped keys or unprecise tracking respectively, it isn’t something great when you don’t have the space to connect external peripherals when working on coffee tables. This isn’t something that you will find on the Nitro 5, as Acer has made the alphabet keycaps a lot wider than the function and numpad keys, it offers a great typing experience while allowing sufficient key travel distance. The trackpad may not have the widest space that I can use to perform gestures, it has decent tracking precision that won’t annoy you of selecting the wrong stuffs.
I find it extremely absurd when some expensive gaming laptops are fitted with crappy speakers, especially when manufacturers claim that gamers are hooked on to headphones or an external speaker, there’s simply no reason why a gaming laptop shouldn’t be fitted with good sounding speakers. I’m glad that Acer didn’t do that on the Nitro 5, the speakers are specially tuned and optimized by Dolby Audio software, though most would think its gimmicky, my personal experience with it have proved otherwise, its loud, and produces an impressive sound stage and some decent amount of bass when I’m playing my K-Pop playlist (yes, I listen to K-Pop) on Spotify, it has been especially useful at one time where I needed to show our client a video we have done at a noisy restaurant.
I’m not going to brag about the performance of the Nitro 5 as you can read it all at our review, my Nitro 5 Limited Thanos Edition is equipped with a 7th Gen Core i5 CPU and a GTX 1050, which could run most competitive games without issues on mid-high graphics. However, what I’m really happy about the Nitro 5 is the ability to upgrade my hard drive and RAM without any complications, as Acer has designed two dedicated compartments at the base for doing so, this is going to be so easy for users who want to perform upgrades on their own without the need to perform any complicated disassembly that could potentially cause damage to the system.
The Acer Nitro 5 is currently available with new 8th Generation Intel Core processors and should have significantly better performance than the current one I have, if you prefer the red camp, the laptop is also available with a mobile AMD Ryzen 5 processor that retails less than RM3000 all thanks to AMD’s Ryzen 5% cashback promotion, making this one of the best mid-range gaming laptop that doesn’t feel too flashy to use at the workplace.
Get the Acer Nitro 5 at Lazada or 11street.
