An old colleague called the Acer Nitro series "gaming laptops that do a good job of hiding their power level. The Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45-R notebook is a great example of a gaming notebook that is a great way to hide your power level," says Acer CEO Bob Seng.

The Acer Nitro 5 AN515-45-R7S0 is another Ryzen 7 5800H and RTX 3070 combination we've seen a lot of recently. This is a combination as popular as good cheese and wine for many gaming laptop OEMs, and the Nitro 5 is no different, producing impressive frame rates at 1080p for AMD's 5000 series CPUs and Nvidia's RTX 3070 (Max Q), which we are highlighting all the things we like about it.

The inclusion of a 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD should be a must for any serious gaming laptop these days; it would be tragic to see a gaming laptop with only a 512GB SSD. While speedy, the storage tends to fill up quickly after playing just a handful of big games. Within a few weeks, you'll be looking for a bargain on a larger SSD; the Nitro 5 has 2.5 drive bays, and you can opt for a more cost-effective SSD/HDD combo.

The Acer Nitro 5's design avoids the "gamer" aesthetic of Acer's premium Predator series, which is a good thing. Even with the subdued scarlet trim covering the laptop's rear vents, the design is so plain that it is easy to confuse it with another plain laptop. At least the Predator still retains a bit of flair, with essentially the same chassis as the Nitro 5. [Like the Predator Helios we reviewed last year, the Nitro 5's metal cover feels sturdier than in years past, but we still wanted a metal cover over the entire laptop, like the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro, and others in the $1,700-plus price range like the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro Considering gaming laptops, the Nitro 5 feels like it would not fare well if accidentally dropped.

This Nitro 5 has a fast 165Hz, 1440p display, and when playing shooters like Call of Duty Warzone, the motion looks great. I also played the new Doom Eternal DLC and was pleased to see that the only on-screen tearing was in the scene where Doomguy cuts the poor demon in half.

The screen itself did not seem to be as bright as the advertised 300 nits. Playing through the wonderfully colorful Sable demo made that all the more apparent. When looking for cool hoverbike parts, I consistently tried to brighten the screen to no avail. The colors were great, but not as bright as I had hoped.

Now, after testing a number of RTX 3070 gaming laptops with the AMD Ryzen 5000 series, I'm starting to see how good these machines are, especially in the $1,500-$1,800 price range. As the benchmarks show, this combination offers solid performance.

Among the laptops we tested, the Nitro 5 vies for position with the Asus TUF Gaming A15 laptop in CPU and GPU performance. When we put them both side by side, they even look the same. Both deliver solid 1080p performance, but the Nitro 5 runs considerably cooler during intense gaming, which is always a plus. Overall, the Nitro 5 offers better value per frame.

The only times the Nitro 5 underperformed the competition were in the F1 2020 and Metro Exodus benchmarks, where it was dead last. 85 minutes of battery life, a whopping 85 minutes, was also surprising; not as bad as the Alienware Ryzen Edition but we expected more from the 57.5 Wh battery.

Gaming at 1440p is possible, but for competitive gaming, it is better to stick to 1080p and turn on G-Sync to take advantage of the 165Hz display. On the other hand, if you are willing to sacrifice fps for higher resolution, you can play at 1440p. I was able to play a few games of "Resident Evil 7: Resident Village" and "Apex Legends" at 1440p and about 110 fps at maximum settings, with only a couple of performance drops.

The main drawbacks are the dim display and flimsy chassis. Still, the powerful combo of the RTX 3070 and Ryzen Ryzen 7 5800H and the fast SSD on a system that weighs less than 5 pounds are impressive.

The Acer Nitro 5 is a mid-range gaming laptop that may not look like much, but it is a powerful mid-range gaming laptop out there and will meet many of your requirements. For others, it's a modest laptop that they wouldn't be embarrassed to take out in public to sneak into a coffee shop to play video games.