On the Geekbench 5.4 overall performance test, the Nitro 5 scored 9,148), nearly doubling the 5,480 budget gaming laptop average. Each with an Intel Core i7-11800H CPU, the Katana GF66 (8,897) and Inspiron 16 (8,031) couldn’t keep up, but somehow the Victus 16 (9,426) excelled.

Acer’s 512GB SSD features a transfer speed of 1,241 megabytes per second, which outmaneuvered the 955-MBps category average. It left the SSDs in the Katana GF66 (651 MBps), Inspiron 16 (638 MBps) and Victus 16 (161 MBps) shaken in place. Acer Nitro 5 (2022) battery life There’s also Acer Care Center, where you’ll update drivers, view your serial number and clear up disk space. DTS:X Ultra is a little extraneous, as it has the same audio control functions as NitroSense, but DTS Sound Unbound lets you enable DTS:X for your headphones. That's a useful feature, but this probably could have either been turned on from the start or rolled into another app. Finally, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 will show you what paying up for a smaller, more powerful system will do, and whether the performance gap is worth hundreds of dollars more. Expect it to lead most if not all of these tests, as it's the most expensive contestant. Productivity Tests All the Nitro 5 machines I’ve reviewed to date have had rather mediocre 144Hz panels but this new model has a rather more sophisticated 165Hz unit, although the resolution is limited to 1,920 x 1,080. Technically, it performs well, with a maximum brightness of 357cd/m², a contrast ratio of 1,170:1, and it’s capable of reproducing 99.5% of the sRGB colour space. The DCI-P3 figures are a bit low at 70.5% but, on the plus side, it’s colour accurate, scoring a Delta E of 1.74. It’s the best-quality panel I’ve encountered on an Acer Nitro 5 by some margin.

The Acer Nitro 5 was reasonably cool during our non-gaming heat test, where we play 15 minutes of streaming video before taking temperatures, but could get warm during our gaming heat test, where we take temperatures during the sixth consecutive run of the Metro: Exodus Ultra benchmark.

Oddly, our review unit was equipped with a 1TB Samsung PCI-E NVMe SSD, although the retail model only comes with 512GB of space. Regardless, the SSD I tested performed well in our sequential read and write test, with speeds of 2,127MB/s and 1,615MB/s respectively.The laptop’s sound is a little hyped on the high-end and very echoey, though you could personalize it with the equalizer in the Dolby Audio software. In short, it’s yet another laptop with subpar audio – par for the course, basically (unless you’re Origin). There’s no point beating about the bush, since this thing goes like the clappers. Our standard 4K media-processing test returned the second-highest score we’ve ever seen from a laptop, with a total of 323 points. It’s actually a little bit thinner and lighter than last year’s Nitro 5 model. This is thanks to some changes Acer has made to the design, most noticeably by slimming down the bezels around the screen. Acer tells us that the screen-to-body ratio is now 80%, with the bezels narrowed to 7.02mm. Not only does this allow Acer to shrink the overall size of the Nitro 5 (2021) without reducing the size of the screen, but it also makes the new Nitro 5 feel more modern and premium. The absence of per-key RGB is a bit annoying and the battery life is short, but I’d take those shortcomings given the performance per pound on offer here.

All that raw power dramatically takes its toll on the Nitro 5’s unplugged stamina, though, which is further exacerbated by its small 58Whr capacity battery. In our video rundown test, the Nitro lasted for just 6hrs 30mins before running out of juice.This may be the first Nitro 5 to really make an impression with gamers, especially ones who want a great gaming experience, but don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on a laptop. The Nitro 5’s screen is a bit on the weak side and the battery life is verging on the dismal, but other than that it’s hard to fault the Nitro 5 when it offers such stunning performance at such a low price. These games have become largely CPU-limited even at the more demanding presets, so the differences among this group are minimal. That said, the numbers suggest that the Nitro 5 will have performance to spare for running games at its native 1440p resolution. Battery Rundown Test I like that you can use the dtsX Ultra control panel to modify the sound profiles, too. The “Shooter” setting certainly increases directional awareness when engaged so it’s a piece of software worth tinkering with.

The most obvious one out of the box is NitroSense, which is where you’ll do most of the configuring for this device. That includes adjusting audio, power plans, fan speed and lighting. As a nice bonus, you can also open GeForce Experience from here. We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Two more tests from GFXBench 5.0, run offscreen to allow for different display resolutions, wring out OpenGL operations.The Acer Nitro 5 lasted 5 hours and 9 minute battery life in our benchmark, which continually runs OpenGL tests, browses the web and streams video at 150 nits of brightness. That’s respectable for a gaming laptop. By comparison, the Alienware m15 Ryzen Edition had a 3:29 battery life on the same test. The ROG Zephyrus M16 was somewhat longer-lasting with a 6:22 life, and the ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition had an unusually massive battery life for a gaming laptop at 10:14. Heat on the Acer Nitro 5 The Nitro 5 transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in just 5 minutes and 58 seconds on our HandBrake benchmark, which flew over the category average (7:06), the Katana GF66 (6:37), the Inspiron 16 (7:13), and the Victus 16 (7:12). In the trailer for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, I could make out some detail in the hundreds of faces staring at the lich-like being during the craned camera shot. But in the wide angle shots of the chaotic cities, lush forests, and volcanic caverns, it looked lifeless. READ NEXT: Keep things running smoothly with the best laptop cooling pads Acer Nitro 5 review: Design and build quality The Nitro 5’s 15.6in matte finish IPS display isn’t the greatest. The maximum brightness of 257cd/m² and sRGB gamut volume of 61.4% are both quite poor, and the screen’s average Delta E (colour accuracy) was badly adrift too, at a depressingly high 6.97.