Review By Expert: Acer Nitro 5 Spin Review

Review By Expert: Acer Nitro 5 Spin 2019:

Review By Expert: Acer Nitro 5 Spin Review

Today we are going to analyze the features of the Acer Nitro 5 Spin. High-end gaming laptops usually have the burden of being bulky and sloppy, but they're made that way for one good reason: all of their energy-intensive components require heavy-duty cooling.

However, that picture is slowly changing as mobile GPUs become more efficient and new design guidelines such as Nvidia's Max-Q emerge, aimed at providing the same horsepower but with thinner form factors.

To meet the needs of players on a tight budget, Acer introduced the Nitro 5 Spin in the last quarter of 2017. This laptop is only 17.9 mm thick and is one of the first 2-in-1 gaming laptops. Of course, we've had 2 in 1 with discrete graphics cards for a while, but none of them have been powerful enough to handle high-end games. Let's see how well it works.


Review By Expert: Acer Nitro 5 Spin Design and Construction Quality:

The Nitro 5 Spin is a 15.6-inch laptop, so it's pretty complicated if you're taking it with you. Its slim profile definitely makes it easy to slide into a backpack, but it still weighs 2.2 kg. Also, despite the slim body, it's not based on Nvidia's Max-Q design guidelines. It feels premium thanks to the all-metal body and the brushed aluminum finish on the lid. You can only get it on a colored edge, which is black with crimson accents.

The cap attracts fingerprints and stains quite easily, so some attention is required to keep its appearance clean. Acer boasts a special ExoAmp antenna design on the Nitro 5 Spin, which is visible at the edges of the cap, and promises better Wi-Fi range.

The 360-degree hinge offers good torque and the lid stays in place at most angles. Of course, you can flip the lid so you can use the laptop as a tablet. The 15.6-inch IPS screen runs at full HD resolution, resulting in decently crisp images and text. There is a bit of irregularity around the text, but at a normal typing distance, this is not too noticeable.

The thick black edges around the screen aren't very attractive from an aesthetic point of view, but they help you grab the device when you use it as a tablet (not many would use a 2.2kg tablet too often, but still). The protective glass on the screen causes a good amount of reflection, so we had to use the laptop with full brightness most of the time, even inside.

The matte finish hand rest area of the Acer Nitro 5 Spin is spacious and has a decent-sized trackpad that sits a little off-center so it won't get in the way of typing. We have a full-size chicklet keyboard along with a numeric keypad. The keys are backlit in red, with only one level of brightness. We found that the keys are comfortable for typing without being noisy, and keyed journeys are good, but we would have liked a better arrangement of the arrow keys.

The touch panel has a fingerprint sensor embedded in its top left corner, which is used for Windows Hello authentication. The stereo speakers are placed between the two hinges and the speaker grid is wrapped around the edges at the top, so they shoot up when you use this 2 in 1 in store mode. Exhaust outlets are also here, while the large fresh air inlet slots are at the bottom. Unfortunately, there is no hatch for easy access to components.

To the left of the Acer Nitro 5 Spin, we have an HDMI port, a USB Type-C port (USB 3.1 Gen. 1) and two USB 3.0 ports, while to the right, there are two status LEDs to turn on and charge, a volume control, a 3.5mm headset and microphone combo connector, an SD card reader, a USB 2.0 port and the power button. In the box, you can expect a charger and warranty brochures.


Review By Expert: Acer Nitro 5 Spin Specifications and Features:

We have the high-end version of the Nitro 5 Spin with us for your review. This variant features an 8th generation Intel Core i7-8550U CPU, 8 GB RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 GPU with 4 GB of GDDR5 dedicated memory. You also get a 256 GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive. The basic variant of the Nitro Five Spin Attributes Core i5 CPU and no SSD. Other specifications include Bluetooth 4.1, 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi, HD webcam and stereo speakers with a sub woofer.

The laptop is shipped with Windows 10 Home 64-bit. You get a pre-installed Acer software package, including Acer Portal, Care Center and Quick Access. Added software involve a trial version's of Norton Security and a full copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition. The Windows Ink workspace is enabled by default, allowing you to access sketching and 3D modeling applications from a single location.


Review By Expert: Acer Nitro 5 Spin Performance and Battery Life:
The Nitro 5 Spin works well in portable mode. When running regular web and office applications, the exhaust fans run quietly so there's no noise. However, it turns on a game and fans increase to a point where they are easily audible. This can be a bit distracting if you're not playing with headphones. We also found that the left side of the laptop's body warms up after playing for about 15 minutes or so. This is a problem since the WASD keys, which you will have on your fingers most of the time, will feel quite uncomfortable after a dot.

Being a 2-in-1, the Nitro 5 Spin can be used in a variety of modes, such as tent and tablet. We discovered that the tent mode can be useful if you run out of desk space, although you'll need a separate controller or keyboard. However, we found it a bit impractical to use this device as a real tablet, mainly because of its size and weight.

The touch screen response is good and we had no problems here. The trackpad also works well for Windows 10 gestures. It gets a high-definition webcam and a series of four microphones on top of the cover, which work well for picking up Cortana's voice, even when he's some distance away from the laptop.

The speakers on the Acer Nitro 5 Spin are quite noisy and the sound is good even when you're not in laptop mode. The left and right audio channels change automatically, depending on which mode the device is using. Dolby software allows you to modify the sound, which is useful.

Video playback handles well for 4K media files and the screen produces vibrant colors. The viewing angles are good, although sometimes the reflections are a bit annoying.

When the reference points are reached, the Nitro 5 Spin also works well in this department. The quad-core, multi-process CPU gave us good scores of 3,806, 4,738 and 3,403 in PCMark 8's Home, Creative and Work test suites. 3DMark Fire Strike gave us a score of 5,064 points, which is good considering the CPU and GPU in this device.

The Micron SSD on the Nitro 5 Spin gave us a respectable drive score of 490 MB/s on the SiSoft Sandra benchmark. The 1TB hard drive runs at 5400rpm lower, so if you have installed games here, you will notice that the load takes a little longer.

In real games, the Nitro 5 Spin offers good performance. All tests were performed at the laptop's native resolution of 1920×1080, while individual graphics settings were adjusted based on how well the game worked.

We started with Rise of The Tomb Raider, which was developed at an average frame rate of 28.15 fps, as measured by the game's built-in reference point. It was the Very Highiest preset and FXAA enabled. We also got a similar framerate when we played the game, which was pretty easy.

Metro: Last Light Redux is a demanding game, which proved to be too much for the Nitro 5 Spin even in the Medium preset and without tessellation. Here, they averaged 9.33 fps at the game's built-in reference point. Doom is a wonderful game to try out, as it looks gorgeous and also works well even on modest gaming systems.

With the configuration set all the way up to the Ultra preset and with the Vulkan API selected, we got an average of 57 fps at the casting level. The gameplay was obviously very fluid and we didn't suffer any slowdowns.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is a stressful game, but the Nitro 5 Spin achieved some respectable framerates here, giving us 28fps with High Preset using DX12, but without anti-aliasing. Far Cry 4 might be a bit old, but it's still a very attractive game even by today's standards.

Here we got about 31 very playable fps in the Ultra configuration. We had some falls in the framerate during the intense battles, but these were very intermittent. Last but not least, GTA V delivered an average of 33 fps without problems, with a combination of high and very high settings.

The 4-cell battery of the Nitro 5 Spin managed to deliver an average battery life of six hours, with light use consisting of surfing the Web and watching videos. The laptop is also compatible with Nvidia's Optimus technology, which turns off the GeForce GTX 1050 when it's not needed. For tasks and applications that do not require a lot of graphics, the laptop uses the capabilities of the Intel UHD Graphics 620 CPU. The most demanding Battery Eater Pro test lasted 2 hours, 17 minutes.


Review By Expert: Conclusion:
Acer Nitro FIVE Spin is a Two in One gaming laptop. If you're not going to travel much with your laptop and use it mainly on a desktop, then you can find slightly better specification game models from Dell, Lenovo and even Acer at a close price.

The Nitro 5 Spin is available through the company's authorized stores, but you can also find it at Flipkart.

The slim body of the Nitro 5 Spin is great for aesthetics, but it also gets quite warm when you play, and also under your fingertips, which is not comfortable after a while. The screen is also a bit too reflective and the exhaust fans become noisy as they increase. Hopefully, in the near future, we'll see thinner and lighter game laptops, including 2 in 1, from all the big manufacturers.

Pros:

• Good gaming performance
• Slim body
• Many of the ports
• Comfortable keyboard

Cons: 

• Keys heat up during games
• Fans can be noisy
• Heavy

Ratings (out of 5):

• Design: 4.5
• Screen: 4
• Performance: 3.5
• Software: 4
• Value for money: 3.5