Acer Nitro 5 AN515-55 15.6 inch Gaming Laptop (Intel Core i5-10300H, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD, NVIDIA GTX 1660Ti, Full HD 144Hz Display, Windows 10, Black)

I spent a fair while searching for laptops that could not only act as a portable device, but also support my gaming needs. This laptop was listed on Amazon after a couple of weeks of me searching and when I saw it I was initially very surprised by how much of my specified criteria it met.After some further research I took the plunge and purchased it and it came within 5 days, and considering I'm not on the mainland this was exceptionally fast.My first impressions were:Very sleek, smooth design.Relatively lightweight for its size.Exceptionally fast start up.Really easy set up with Cortana assitance.After a few hours of testing various aspects of the laptop out, as well as putting it through its paces with a few different games, I can honestly say I was already ecstatic with my purchase. I previously owned a much older gaming laptop that struggled with most modern, high spec games. This laptop however has allowed me to catch up on all the hours of gaming that I've missed out on.Whilst I'm still testing a variety of games, both new and old (revisiting previously unplayable ones too), I've summarised below a few of the titles I've played so far and can gladly confirm all of these games run on exceptionally high graphic settings whilst still providing excellent Frames Per Second.Football Manager 20Grand Theft AutoDayzArma 3 (with many mods)ARK: Survival EvolvedFifa 20Fall GuysBattlefield VCall of Duty Modern Warfare (2019)RustMoving on from gaming performance, the laptop has a good battery which personally for me was very important as I also use the laptop for business work.In relation to this the laptop is also very easy to work with in terms of typing and general navigation. I have seen a review on here about the track pad being terrible. I am unsure where this comment has come from, as my track pad is sublime and I've encountered no issues with it. The same review also mentioned poor Internet connection - again, my connection has been seemless so I can only conclude that this user's own Internet connection was poor. One other notable aspect is how quiet the laptop is. Obviously the laptop gets a bit noisier when running highly demanding games but generally it is very quiet.The screen does have some very slight bleed when using contrasting backgrounds but as I often connect a monitor to the laptop, this resolves this issue.On the subject of the screen however, the 144hz screen is a breath of fresh air. It is exquisite to say the least.On a whole, for the money you pay, you are getting far more than your moneys worth. I am yet to encounter any games which I cannot play on the highest of settings, and therefore for a gaming laptop I would say this a key feature. For anyone wanting a very reasonably priced gaming laptop to run (seemingly the majority of) games on the highest settings, I would highly recommend this laptop. It truly is a standout from the competition.

Being my first gaming laptop it may be a bit biased but my god is this laptop impressive! Start up is about 5 seconds from switching on which is mad, runs smooth and fast. I brought it for trading and keeps up with the markets no problem no lags or anything. Haven't played a game on it yet but from what I have looked at it's got no problem running any games ticks all the recomended specs needed in fact hits majority out of the park! It's quiet, light and very stunning to look at. Would Highly recommend this laptop to anyone even if you don't game you get so much more for your money than a normal laptop and I won't even get started on apple.

Just amazing so glad I talked myself into buying this laptop it’s super fast and well built. I watched a lot of online reviews first and all of them slated it but on receiving the device I can confirm you won’t be disappointed.

Really regret getting this laptop. Nearly a grand for non-stop issues. Worst laptop I've ever owned.After less than a year it already stopped working. The terrible design of the power socket being at the center back has meant the extra pressure on the connector has caused the power socket to no longer hold the charger properly and means it doesn't charge unless held at a certain angle. Otherwise it just beeps and the leds keep flashing.I bought another official charger at £60 just to rule out the charger. The issue persisted so I opened a support case with acer, removed my hard drive, shipped them laptop, and they sent it back with yet another charger and said they updated bios, and that it works as intended. But it still exhibits the issues.They're also kindly added a "warranty void if removed" sticker on my laptop that wasn't there before. I can now not reinstall my hard drive without removing this sticker, but apparently removing this sticker means I cannot continue to have this £900 laptop repaired. Not much use having a laptop with no hard drive installed.I complained the Acer, they opened another support case and I sent in the laptop. The laptop arrived and I have proof of delivery, but Acer claim they never received it. So my £800-£900 laptop is lost.Their support chat is permanent "not in service", and they never respond to emails. Their social media just direct you to their phone line and their phone support is awful.Even before this charging issue, I've had non-stop issues since I received it. I massively regret not returning it when I first got it. Don't buy Acer.Original Review:I've had a fantastic laptop for many years. A Lenovo Z51 i7 16gb ram, ssd with backlight. A decade ago, I had an Dell Inspiron with backlight, fingerprint scanner 16gb ram, i5.Both of these laptops cost me £500 or less, both with backlit ISO UK keyboards, and very decent performance.Using the Lenovo daily for 5 years, I sadly started getting crashes anytime I touched the case due to wear and tear, I tried replacing parts but it seemed to be the motherboard and they're not readily for sale anymore.I began my hunt for a replacement. I hunted for months, suffering crashes whilst working from home and depending on it during days off.I don't understand what happened to the laptop market in the past 5 years but everything is absolute trash.8gb ram standard (even this Acer Nitro 5), no backlit keyboards, no more fingerprint scanners, and worse everything is now an American ANSI keyboard. I even spent ages researching each laptop trying to find replacement UK ISO keyboards on ebay to swap the keyboards over. But many laptops no longer have removable keyboards now and have them integrated into the body.I finally found this laptop, I confirmed it has a UK ISO keyboard via customer review pictures (but not official promotion pictures which only ever show the american version now), however, the red backlit looked nauseating, especially for work.However, I can confirm the AN515-55 has the ability to customize the keyboard backlight colour to anything you want (I choose white with a hint of blue to take the edge off).I had to buy a 16gb stick of ram for this as for some insane reason it only comes with 2x 4gb sticks (I honestly didn't know 4gb sticks of ram were still made, I haven't seen 4gb of ram in 20 years)!Firstly, the laptop itself is all over plastic and feels cheaply made, which makes me nervous as it's so expensive at £900, and the plastic on my previous 3 laptops began to crack and warp over the years (the nature of them being laptops and not desktops), however, it helps prevent hot surfaces (and his laptop does run hot!), and is more resilient to scratching that you'd get with metal.The screen is of decent quality with the native res at 1920x1080, which is better than I needed as I'm used to 1280x720 and I'm not seeing any distortion when viewing the screen at angles which is good.I like the touchpad, I was more willing to have a bad trackpad than keyboard, but luckily the touchpad is just as good as my previous one.I like the cushioning of the keys on the keyboard, there's good travel but they're dampened so typing silently is much easier.So the good things about this laptop:It has 3 storage slots internally. 3 - on a laptop - that's amazing!I've got the 500gb nvme ssd that came with it, I've added a 1tb nvme ssd in the other nvme slot (great for gaming and video editing), and then I've added a 2tb 2.5" Hybrid ssd for my data.That's incredible. I'm very impressed that I can have 3 disks inside my portable laptop.Dedicated Graphics card.This comes with a NVIDIA GTX 1660Ti graphics card as well as the Intel integrated gpu. I haven't really played any games on this yet but have queued some to download and test, although gaming wasn't my criteria for buying this.Gigabit ethernet port. Firstly this is great as ethernet ports are so rare these days. It's more and more common for laptops to only come with wifi adapters and require a usb to ethernet adaptor, however, the Nitro 5 has a gigabit ethernet port build in. I don't understand why any computer would come with a 100mb ethernet port in this day and age.As previously said the keyboard is a ISO-compliant UK keyboard, which only a few years ago was standard, I'm unsure why ANSI took over in the UK market.The biggest annoyances with this keyboard are:- hash key and enter key are far too close together, but this hasn't really been an issue for me.- the numlock key is replaced with a proprietary "N" key, which apparently opens nitrosense, something i'll never need to open again for the rest of my life. I ended writing a program to disable it as pressing it accidentally was driving me crazy! (google "NitroSense Key Disabler autohotkey").- Then the mathematical operators have all shifted around the numpad to make space for the nitro key.- What would normally be the "+" key has been split into two keys ("-" and "+"). Which is just bizarre to me. I use the numpad a lot but luckily don't do finance, or this would kill touchtyping.- The Insert key has been merged with the Delete key (WHAT WERE THEY THINKING), so not only can you inadvertently delete something you're inserting, but it messes up the order of the top row of keys which means... Hit this all the time, thank god for undo.- The print screen key is next to the delete key!- The power button is a keyboard key right next to the end key, (not an isolated key like you'd normally find on computers) right next to the end key (which also serves as the next media track button.So mistypes are common on this keyboard. Fortunately, they're not keys I press that often so I catch what I'm pressing well in advance, the only one that continuously bites me is the home key being where the delete key usually would be. I guess it's better than the other way around. I use undo a lot on this computer.And the rest of the issues with this laptop:The brightness of the screen can only go so low, the lowest brightness for the screen is still pretty bright. Using the computer in the dark I find the screen blinding. Especially first thing in the morning. Fortunately, this can be solved with software. I'm using CareUEyes Lite with a 50% brightness overlay which dims the screen to the level I expect.The power charger goes into the back. Not the side. This is quite annoying, firstly it means the cable has nowhere to go when the laptop is pressed against a wall, so you have to bring the laptop forward an inch to make space for the cable.. It's also hard to see if it comes out slightly. Twice I've had the laptop alert on low power because it wasn't plugged in enough, despite being fairly firmly plugged in. Turns out you really have to shove the charger plug in to click it in and get it to charge. However the biggest issue with this, is because the cable runs all the way along the back of the laptop the the sides, it means the cable actually blocks the only vents on the laptop, causing excess heats, (it regularly goes to 80 degrees idle) and crazy fan noise, which isn't great at night.Even if you reroute the power cable (or leave it unplugged), and try to keep the cpu below 10%, the laptop has a pretty constant loud hum of the fans. I expected such a modern computer (this is tenth gen intel, I previous had 4th gen) to be better performance management, and require less fan assistance to achieve basic tasks..Finally, there's something really wrong with the audio jack. I use headphones frequently to avoid making noise and disurbing others. However, the computer often doesn't recognize the headphones getting inserted and requires my clicking "headset inserted" popup window every single time before the jack works. I also constantly hear pretty bad audio distortion when listening to some audio, which seemed random but is most noticeable on quiet videos whenever I need to turn the volume past 50% to make up for it, the sound just becomes practically unlistenable.And the most serious issue: I hear a loud audio popping from the laptop speakers constantly when audio is playing through headphones, the audio pop comes from the laptop speakers, not headphones. Meaning people can hear the loud popping when I am trying to create no sound. If I'm listening to talking, or music through headphones whilst in the room with someone sleeping, the constant loud popping noises coming from the laptop speakers will wake them up. Often I won't even be aware of it as the sounds don't come through the headphons. I can't figure out what the hell this is, trying different drivers or software doesn't seem to fix. Trying to find updated bios seems impossible for this laptop as acer don't make drivers of bios available for download. Acer Care Center doesn't present any updates available..I've been using hundreds of laptops over the last 20 years and have never seen (heard) anything like this. Shocking coming from an £900+ laptop, not even £200 laptops have this issue.I ended up buying an external usb soundcard, and the issue hasn't occurred once since. So £900 for a laptop and I can't even use the onboard audio. I'm just happy that the external soundcard works otherwise this £900 laptop would be useless to me.Also, worth noting the laptop speakers are the quietest speakers I've ever heard on a computer. If you plan to play sound from the laptop often, expect to buy a detachable speaker.

Gets a bit warm when playing newer games even though the cooling system is very good. The 144hz screen breaths life into 1080P and makes visuals seem a lot better than standard 60hz. The specs of this gaming laptop are very good and so far there is nothing to complain about. The kids love the RGB keyboard

This PC has two huge flaws - the battery life and the cooling system. The battery has a maximum duration of 2-3 hours, if you play with it then it does not last more than 40 minutes. The processor, another big flaw, immediately reaches 90-95 degrees with any video game and with any program that uses it slightly more, even if you use a cooling pad.

I was very impressed with build quality and the performance of this machine

Bought as a gift for gaming absolutely over the moon and the light up keyboard brings that added special effect.