Acer Nitro 5 Spin Review: A Brilliant Convertible Gaming Laptop

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Acer Nitro 5 Spin: At First Glance

Over the years Acer has been relentless in providing up-to-standard laptops. Their attention to detail, particularly in determining the right blend of specification and design, is something to look forward to.

Furthermore, being able to manufacture a laptop that satisfies users in terms of looks, features, and specification is something to expect from Acer. A typical example is the Acer Nitro 5 Spin.

The Acer Nitro 5 Spin is a convertible gaming laptop that comes with so many great features that makes it stand out amidst its competitors. Particularly in terms of storage, design, and display, this Acer laptop sets the bar high for laptops in its category.

I know you are already excited to know more about this laptop. Well, read on!

Acer Nitro 5 Spin: Design, Dimension, and Weight

The Acer Nitro 5 Spin is a slim convertible gaming laptop that has a sleek design. Additionally, this laptop features a unique color blend that gives it a stylish look.

To give more details, the laptop is colored in dark metallic black with subtle hints of red. This hint of metallic red appears on the hinges and around the laptop’s keyboard keys.

Furthermore, the chassis of the laptop is made of aluminum material. This chassis appears to be of high quality, giving the Acer Nitro 5 Spin a very strong and solid build.

On the exterior, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin features a lid with brushed hairline finishing. Additionally, the laptop features an “Acer” logo that is inscribed at the center of the lid.

Moving on, the interior of this laptop features an amazing 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) display. Impressively, this massive 15.6-inch display is made with an IPS panel.

Briefly, an IPS panel is a screen technology that makes content on a display to be accurate from all viewing angles. This is an important feature for the Acer Nitro 5 considering that it is a convertible laptop.

Therefore, it is expected that the contents of the laptop’s display appear accurate in tent, tablet, or stand mode.

Another key benefit of having an IPS panel is that the display will not lighten or show tailing when touched. This is also very important since the display of the Acer Nitro 5 is a touchscreen.

Moving on, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin features a stylish backlit keyboard. Specifically, the keys on the keyboard are painted in black with red lettering on top and red highlights around their edges.

However, the keys of the keyboard seem plastic-like and they rattle when you run your fingers over them. The rattling sound that occurs shows that the keys are made of thin lightweight plastic material.

Notwithstanding, the rattling sound of the keys isn’t too loud that it becomes bothersome.

Furthermore, the keyboard appears sunk deep into the base of the laptop. The essence of this is to facilitate easy tablet mode usage without having to worry about striking a key by mistake.

Moving on, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin features a sizeable touchpad on the bottom area of the keyboard. Interestingly, Acer placed a fingerprint sensor at the top left corner of this touchpad.

Furthermore, the touchpad is large enough for the fingerprint sensor not to get in the way. Also, the touchpad has a smooth surface that allows for easy navigation.

Additionally, the touchpad supports multi-touch gestures.

Moving on to the ports, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin featured one USB 2.0 and a USB Type-C port on the left side. Also, you will find an HDMI port and 2 USB 3.0 ports on the left side of the laptop.

Meanwhile, the right side of the laptop houses a 3.5-mm audio jack port and a Kensington security lock.

Now let’s talk about the dimension and weight of the laptop. Since the Acer Nitro 5 Spin is made of high-quality aluminum metal, one would expect the laptop to be heavy.

Sadly, this is true as the Acer Nitro 5 Spin measures 381.5 x 258.1 x 17.90 mm and weighs a massive 2200 g. Comparatively, the ASUS ZenBook Flip 15 measures 364 x 246 x 21 mm and weighs 2054 g

In conclusion, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin is quite heavy for a convertible laptop, especially when used in tablet mode. Nevertheless, the design of the laptop is flawless and sleek.

Therefore, I will be rating the Acer Nitro 5 Spin an eight out of ten in this design review section.

Acer Nitro 5 Spin: Processor (CPU) Performance

In terms of processor, Acer offers two options for the Acer Nitro 5 Spin. The first option is a quad-core Intel Core i5-8250U processor.

This processor has a base frequency of 1.60 GHz and a maximum frequency of 3.40 GHz. Additionally, this processor comes with a 6 MB cache memory.

The second processor option is a quad-core Intel Core i7-8550U processor that has a cache memory of 8 MB. Also, this processor has a based frequency of 1.80 GHz and a maximum frequency of 4.0 GHz.

That said, it is important to note that both processor options are considered high-end processors. However, the Intel Core i7 processor is significantly better than the Core i5 processor.

This is because the Core i7 processor has a higher cache memory as well as a faster speed (base and maximum frequencies). Thankfully, this review is based on the Acer Nitro 5 Spin with the Intel Core i7-8550U processor option.

As stated earlier, this processor is a high-end processor and it is fast. Therefore, it is powerful enough to perform basically any task.

Also, the processor should be able to multitask with ease and also play any type of computer game either low-end or high-end games.

With that being said, let me quickly share the Cinebench R15 benchmark test result I got during my research about the laptop’s processor performance. Briefly, Cinebench R15 is a benchmark tool used in measuring a laptop’s processor’s performance by running real-world workload on the processor’s cores.

Therefore, this benchmark test consists of two tests, which are the single-core test and the multi-core test.

So, on the single-core test, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin scored 161 points. On the multi-core test, however, the laptop scored 529 points.

Comparatively, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin delivered a better result than one of its closest competitors, the Hp Spectre x360. To give more details, the HP Spectre x360 scored 154 points in the single-core test and 519 points in the multi-core test.

It is worth mentioning that the HP Spectre x360 also uses a quad-core Intel Core i7-8550U processor.

In conclusion, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin offers multiple high-end processor options. Additionally, the laptop delivered a remarkable performance on a benchmark test.

Hence, I will be rating the Acer Nitro 5 Spin a nine in this processor performance review section.

Acer Nitro 5 Spin: Memory (RAM) Performance

The Acer Nitro 5 Spin comes with an 8 GB memory on its single DDR4 SDRAM slot. Unfortunately, 8 GB is also the maximum memory that the laptop supports.

Therefore, you cannot upgrade the laptop’s RAM any further. Nonetheless, 8 GB on the Acer Nitro 5 Spin is just enough memory to handle all the computing tasks you will be doing on the laptop.

On that note, this laptop with 8 GB RAM has great multitasking abilities, according to laptopmag.com. Specifically, the laptop should be able to open 18 Chrome tabs while streaming videos from Netflix without slowing down.

Also, the laptop will be able to switch between the tabs and application concurrently without lagging. This is an impressive performance, but it would have been nice if the laptop’s RAM was upgradeable.

To further prove the abilities of this laptop with 8 GB RAM, let me quickly discuss the laptop’s PCMark 8 test result. This benchmark test result was gotten from notebookcheck.net during my quest to find out more about the laptop’s performance.

Furthermore, the PCMark 8 benchmark test measures the overall productivity of a laptop. Additionally, the PCMark 8 test procedures include application startup, video conferencing, and web browsing.

So, according to the PCMark 8 test result, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin scored 3975 points. Impressively, when compared to the HP Spectre x360, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin performed way better.

To be more specific, based on the same PCMark 8 test result, the HP Spectre x360 scored 3457 points.

In conclusion, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin offers a limited memory capacity. However, the maximum RAM of 8 GB that the laptop supports is just enough to do the job

Besides that, the laptop performed better than one of its competitors on a benchmark test. Therefore, I will be rating the Acer Nitro 5 Spin an eight out of ten in this section of this review.

Acer Nitro 5 Spin: Storage Options and Performance Review

In terms of storage, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin offers two options to choose from. You can either get the Acer Nitro 5 Spin with SATA HDD storage or SSD storage.

The SATA HDD storage option supports a maximum storage capacity of 1 TB. The SSD, on the other hand, supports a maximum storage capacity of 256 GB.

Unfortunately, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin does not come with an SD card storage expansion. Notwithstanding, I believe the storage options the laptop offers should be enough for most users.

It is worth noting that this review is based on the Acer Nitro 5 Spin with 256 GB SSD storage. As most of us know, SSD storage usually offers a fast storage performance.

However, HDDs offer larger storage space. Therefore, if you prefer storage space more than speed, then it is best you purchase the Acer Nitro 5 Spin with an HDD storage option.

In order to offer you guys the performance of Acer Nitro 5 Spin with the 256 GB SSD storage, I conducted numerous web research.

Thankfully, my research paid off as I was able to get the laptop’s CrystalDiskMark benchmark test result. The CrystalDiskMark benchmark test aims to measure the performance of a laptop’s storage.

Ideally, the test helps determine how fast or slow a computer’s storage is by measuring its sequential read and write speed. So, based on the CrystalDiskMark test result, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin has a 484 MB/s sequential read speed and 408.5 MB/s sequential write speed.

In comparison, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin has a faster read and write speed compared to the ASUS Zenbook flip 15. Specifically, the ASUS Zenbook flip 15 has a 476.3 MB/s sequential read speed and 394.4 MB/s sequential write speed.

In conclusion, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin offers two impressive storage options. Also, the laptop’s SSD storage option is pretty fast compared to the SSD found on competing laptops.

Therefore, I will rate the Acer Nitro 5 spin a nine out of ten storage review section.

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Acer Nitro 5 Spin: Graphics Card Performance

For graphics, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin is equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card. This GPU offers a base frequency of 1392 MHz and a maximum frequency of 1518 MHz.

Additionally, the graphics card comes with a dedicated 3 GB GDDR5 VRAM. As a graphics card with such high dedicated VRAM, expect great gaming performance from the Acer Nitro 5 Spin.

To be more specific, this laptop will be able to play high-end games with this graphics card. For example, according to notebookcheck.net, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 is able to play Days Gone at 65.4 fps (frame per second).

Impressive right? What will impress you more is the laptop’s result on a 3DMark 11 test.

The 3DMark 11 is a benchmark test tool for measuring how a computer can render 3D graphics. It is important to mention that this laptop’s 3DMark 11 test result was also gotten from notebookcheck.net.

Based on the test results, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin scored a whopping 6744 points. Comparatively, the HP Spectre x360 performed way less than the Acer Nitro 5 Spin, scoring only 4564 points.

In conclusion, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin offers one of the best graphics performances I have seen in a while. Therefore, I will rate the laptop a nine out of this in the graphics review section.

Acer Nitro 5 Spin: Battery Life and Performance

For the battery, Acer included a 4-cell 3320 mAh Lithium-Ion battery on the Acer Nitro 5 Spin. Moreover, Acer claims that this battery can last up to 10 hours.

However, after thorough research, I was able to find out that the Acer Nitro 5 Spin only lasts 7 hours 8 minutes based on a battery test. This battery test involves continuously surfing the web via Wi-Fi while the laptop’s screen brightness is set to medium.

In comparison, the Lenovo Ideapad 11S only lasted for 5 hours 52 minutes according to the same battery test.

Overall, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin’s battery life of 7 hours and 8 minutes is really impressive. However, it is miles off the 10 hours battery life that Acer initially claimed.

Notwithstanding, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin deserves a nine out of ten rating for its impressive battery performance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The Acer Nitro 5 Spin is a convertible gaming laptop that offers excellent performance and impressive battery life. Furthermore, this laptop features a sleek design that is eye-catching.

Additionally, as a gaming laptop with an impressive dedicated graphics card, you will be able to play high-end and modern games on the Acer Nitro 5 Spin. However, the laptop features a limited memory capacity.

Notwithstanding, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin is worth considering if you need an attractive high-end gaming laptop.

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