Acer Nitro 5 5600H + RTX 3060 Review – £1000 Gaming Laptop

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On the face of it, spending around £1000 or $1100 on a gaming laptop that comes with an RTX 3060 seems like a good deal especially when it’s paired with a CPU that isn’t a quad core being sold as an i7 in 2021. But, there are a few tradeoffs you’ll be making that you should know about – so let’s take a look at this, Acer’s Nitro 5 and I’ll explain everything.

First is the specs, I have the AN515-45-R8CM model which seems to be a lot less common to find than the slightly higher spec’d R21A version – but both use a Ryzen 5 5600H 6 core 12 thread CPU that’ll boost upto 4.2GHz, an RTX 3060 6GB with a max TDP of 95W, 512GB of NVME space and a 1080p 144Hz IPS panel. They only differ in RAM config where my model only features 8GB of DDR4-3200 whereas the R21A offers 16GB. I should note this 8GB config is 2 4GB modules in dual channel and is 1Rx16 not 1Rx8 so while it is “optimally” configured in dual channel it’s not perfect being 1Rx16 and it means to upgrade you’ll have to replace both modules rather than just add a second one in. Like I said, it’s a tradeoff.

So spec wise it looks ok, the RAM is a touch lacking as is the storage with it’s weird WD SN530 with the single flash module at the very end of the drive as far away from the controller and DRAM as physically possible… But on the whole it seems like a good machine, and performance wise it really is. Starting with the CPU results – and bear in mind this chip is somewhat hampered by the low capacity and 1Rx16 RAM – in Cinebench R20 single threaded it lines up on the lower end of the rest of 5th gen Ryzen laptop CPUs I’ve tested, and ahead of the Intel 11370H quad core and 10750H hex core.

Swapping to multi threaded does reveal the downside in having 6 cores instead of 8, although it does still take the lead over even the 10875H. In Blender and the BMW scene it’s in a similar place although this time is surpassed by the 10875H and only around 6 seconds faster than the 10750H thanks to the Intel chips boosting higher and harder on shorter workloads.

In longer workloads though, the gap between the Helios 300’s 10750H and Nitro 5’s 5600H is much wider to the point where the 5600H is almost tying with the 8 core 10875H in the ConceptD 7 Ezel. In Premiere the 8GB of RAM really, really hurts the score here, running over 20% slower than even the 10750H. The Puget Bench After Effects test refused to run as it requires 12GB of RAM so the Nitro 5 gets a 0 here, and even in Photoshop the low memory capacity meant it was diverting to the pagefile a lot during this test making it way, way slower.

Interestingly though, power consumption was remarkably low. The stable under-load power I recorded was around 44W, with the highest I saw being 48W of total package power. Even comparing those peak figures, that’s less than half what the 10750H uses to offer consistently less performance (at least where the RAM wasn’t a significant bottleneck). It’s actually tied as the lowest power draw of a non-ultra-mobile chip I’ve tested, which means that this thing generally runs pretty quiet which is great, and that the GPU has a little more thermal headroom to push higher power.

And, in general, it does. It’s a 95W max TDP which is far from the highest possible (135W is the highest I’ve seen so far) but the performance it offers would make you believe it’s even higher. As I mentioned in my video on testing the i9-11900H a number of the games I test have had significant updates that have improved their performance across the board meaning the older results I’ve collected are somewhat misleading. The most accurate comparison is between this Nitro 5 and the 11900H in the Zephyrus M16, but I will include the older results just so you can get a rough idea.

In Watchdogs Legion the Nitro 5 really surprises, offering 60 FPS average at 1080p ultra settings, or only a couple FPS behind the 11900H and 3070 in the M16. Again, take these results with a pinch of salt but it’s safe to say you get decent performance out of this thing here.

Cyberpunk at ultra settings relies a lot on the CPU and memory, which thanks to the RAM config isn’t brilliant. I suspect with a better setup this could offer much closer to the Helios 300 if not more, although 45 FPS at ultra settings isn’t all that bad here.

CSGO is also a very CPU limited game so struggles here – well when I say struggles, it struggles by comparison to the others but it still offers 200FPS on the highest settings and easily more like 300 FPS if you turn things down. It’s plenty.

In Microsoft Flight, thanks to a major update the performance is considerably better than the rest of the pack, save for the M16 that was also tested with this version of the game. It actually ties with the M16 in its performance mode despite that system using an RTX 3070 with a slightly higher 100W TDP instead. I’d assume there is some other bottleneck at play there.

Finally In Fortnite the Nitro 5 runs in last place, at around 10 FPS slower than the Helios 300. That system does run a higher TDP version of the 3060, and generally has higher end specs that also raise the price tag pretty considerably so for the money that’s not too much less and it’s still 90 FPS average at ultra settings.

So it’s not going to set your world on fire with it’s in game performance, but it still offers plenty especially for it’s price tag. So, what’s the catch? Well, the RAM wasn’t the only thing they cheaped out on. This display is really pretty poor. Like, sure it’s a 144Hz panel as the sticker says but does it matter when it’s this slow? On the UFO test you can see anywhere from 3-5 frames trailing behind the most recent one, which takes the gaming experience from great thanks to the performance, to average thanks to the display being so slow. At 144Hz, having 4 frames on screen means it takes almost 30ms for this panel to react which is pretty bad.

The gaming experience is definitely compromised by the speed, or lack thereof. The ghosting was fairly noticeable in fast paced games, enough that I had a much harder time hitting shots than I normally would even on a smaller screen like this. With significant effort I think I could adjust to it, but this really is one of the bigger compromises they’ve made in speccing this machine.

Add to that the brightness which peaks at around 250 nits which while not awful is a little dim compared to most other machines I’ve had in. Oh and the real kicker, it covers just 64% of the sRGB spectrum while testing with the SpyderX. That is pretty abysmal, meaning not only is this spec not suitable for many if not all creative workloads thanks to the lack of memory, but the display can’t even muster even ⅔ of the most limited, basic colour space. A panel very similar to this one was one of the key things I disliked about MSI’s Bravo 15 laptop. Hell, even for just watching youtube videos back it’s noticeably less vibrant or accurate.

Luckily, the input lag wasn’t as bad, running at 36.65ms average, and a reasonable if imperfect consistency across the shots. While the display’s latency was fine, I did have a strange bug where the system’s audio was delayed, sometimes by a full second, other times more like 100ms. This might have been thanks to Acer’s NitroSense app’s built in Acer TrueHarmony content modes which by default seems to be set to “Music”. It wasn’t an issue with bluetooth headphones, but also at least somewhat resolved itself so I can’t be sure.

Lastly, a quickfire rundown of everything else. The battery life is fairly average, it runs a 57.5kWh battery and thanks to the low power CPU generally does well for web browsing but nothing mind blowing. The charger on my unit needed to be literally clicked into place – listen – but otherwise worked fine and was pretty secure. You get reasonable I/O with 3 USB 3 Type A ports, one type C, a 4 pole headphone jack, ethernet, and HDMI and of course WiFi onboard. The keyboard is fine, it’s technically RGB backlit although you’d have a hard time seeing it. It feels good to type on with a fairly light and soft feel but still retaining just a touch of a tactile bump. The trackpad is fine, and more importantly palm rejection works well.

Inside you’ll find not only easily upgradable SODIMM modules, but a spare M.2 slot and spare 2.5” drive bay. That means you can top up your storage as you need it, and you can swap out the RAM for 16GB of DDR4-3200 1Rx8 and effectively unlock even more performance both in games and in productivity tasks.

It’s a real shame Acer opted to cheap out on the panel here, as I can forgive the RAM especially for this price and seeing as it’s so easy to upgrade – or just buy the model with more RAM instead – but the display is something you the buyer can’t just swap out. It takes this from being easily the best value gaming laptop on the market and one well worth anyone in this sort of price range considering, to one that I’m not sure makes sense especially when there are other options on the market like Lenovo’s Legion 5. That offers the same RTX 3060 but with a 130W TDP, a 5800H instead of this 5600H, 16GB of RAM and a display that offers near 100% coverage of at least sRGB.