Acer Nitro 5 Gaming Laptop, 10th Gen Intel Core i5-10300H, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti, 15.6″ Full HD IPS 144Hz Display, 8GB DDR4, 256GB NVMe SSD, WiFi 6, DTS X Ultra, Backlit Keyboard, AN515-55-59KS

★★★★☆ I almost bought a 2019 Lenovo Y540 but then I found this 728c variant of the Nitro 5. No other laptops had a 144hz display with an RTX 2060 and 16GB of RAM. I bet a turnoff for many is the smaller SSD storage. For me, I just spent ~$100 on 1TB of SSD. for a total payment of ~1.2k I feel very satisfied.I am not a hardcore gamer. I only probably play 2-3hr sessions every other day if not like twice a week. I noticed that games like Valorant bring the CPU temp to an average of 75 Celsius. I can only imagine what happens if you play a higher demanding game like Warzone.Fan noise is as I expected with a gaming laptop. when you game it is loud, but if you game with a headset you will not hear it and it is not detectable on your microphone. When you are using the laptop for everyday use, every now and then the fan will turn on but on the quietest setting to cool things but turns off after several minutes. I am getting used to it though.As mentioned at the top, SSD storage is small in comparison to competitors' laptops. It will not be a problem if you play only some games, but if you play alot, I recommend getting an additional SSD. You can easily find SSDs between the $100-$150 range, just make sure you know or have a friend who knows how to properly install it.The only reason why I give it 4 stars is because the battery life is very short. It does not deliver the 8 hours as described; more around 4 hours at most. I always play while plugged in. Playing unplugged will probably make the battery life even shorter! The only reason I noticed the shorter battery life was because I used a Macbook before this and their batteries last around 10 hours. I dream of the day that Acer rids of the 2.5” drive bay for a bigger battery :)I am super stoked to be an owner of this Acer Nitro 5. It has its quirks for sure, but for me, they are overshadowed by the perks. If you are a relatively casual gamer I really think you will like this just as much as I am liking it.

★★★☆☆ This review concerns the model AN515-54-728C with the 144Hz display, and may not necessarily apply to other models.The LCD panel is model "NCP004D" from Panda. A reviewer at NotebookCheck tested that display panel, and found a Black to White response time of 16.8ms, and a White to Black response time of 13.2ms, for a round-trip total of 30ms. This means that despite being 144Hz, the time it takes for the pixels to fade in and out makes it look no better than a 60FPS display. While testing a scrolling image, 72 FPS and 144 FPS looked indistinguishable, as well as 60FPS and 120FPS looking indistinguishable as well.The AN515-44-R5FT also has the same LCD panel, and I was only able to discover this information by reading reviews of that product.There's also some backlight bleed, but it's only noticeable in a dark room with a dark screen. The backlight bleed was not annoying enough to be a problem.Additionally, the display is only 6-bit color, not 8-bit.Aside from the disappointing LCD screen, it has great components inside.The i7-9750H CPU is very nice and fast, and mine was able to stably undervolt to -150mV. Every CPU is different, not all CPUs will be able to reach the same undervolt and run stable.When running all cores full speed, it had a VID of 0.86V, speed of 2.28GHz, and a temperature of 71C. When undervolted, the VID fell to 0.8V, and speed rose to 2.76GHz.When running one core at full speed, it had a VID of 1.2V, speed of 3.9GHz, and temperature of 92C. When undervolted, the VID went to 1.15V, Speed went to 4.3GHz, and Temperature went to 87C.Multicore performance was power throttled, and Single core performance was Heat or Power throttled. Undervolting eliminated the Heat/Power throttle on single core performance, and reduced the power throttle on multicore performance, allowing a higher clock speed. Huge benefit from undervolting here.The SSD is a real speed demon. Despite being only 256GB large, it read at 1077 MB/sec, and wrote at 671 MB/sec (372 MB/sec sustained).The touchpad is okay, it's less laggy than one I previously had on a Dell laptop.The keyboard has dark red key caps that are difficult to read. With every laptop having a different layout for where to place Insert/Delete/Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys, you'd need to read the keyboard to find those keys. Having those in dark red makes it hard to find such keys.Additionally, the Volume keys need two hands to press, as the Fn Key and the Up/Down keys are too far apart that you can't reach them with one hand.My old laptop had keys arranged as "Insert, Delete, Page Up, Page Down, Home, End", while this laptop has them arranged as "Delete, Home, Page Up, Page Down, End, Power". I use Home and End a lot, so I keep reaching in the wrong place to try to press those keys. I had to disable the Power key, because I kept hitting it otherwise. I could get used to a different keyboard layout over time, it would just take a while.Aside from those issues, the keyboard has a very good feel. There is plenty of travel distance, making it satisfying to type, and all keys on my product worked fine.I had extremely low expectations for the speakers, but was surprised when I heard them. Bass notes under 100hz are actually audible on this model. Very quiet, but audible. I bet audio quality could be improved further with proper calibration.The USB ports and Power port were very tight, and required greater than usual force to insert the power adapter, or insert a USB device, they also made somewhat crunchy noises.All in all, I say very good computer, but bad screen.

★☆☆☆☆ I purchased the Nitro 5 with the i9 and rtx 2060, fresh out of the box I tried playing Counter Strike: Global Offensive. A game that's over ten years old, within ten minutes the cpu was at 90 degrees celcius, with the fans set on maximum. I tried undervolting the laptop, by .145 MHZ, this only decreased cpu temps by 5 degrees. I couldn't play any game, even a ten year old game, without the laptop trying to melt itself. That is awful. Anybody considering buying this, don't. You'll have a fried laptop within a year.