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We all have seen plenty of gaming laptops last year from many brands. Some of them are affordable while others are not. Acer a Taiwanese multinational hardware and electronics corporation currently has two lineups one is its Nitro range and another is its Predators series. Today we have another laptop from Acer’s Nitro range. We have Acer Nitro 5 spin with us and today we’ll be testing it. Powered by an 8th Intel Core i7 processor and featuring the GTX 1050, the Spin 5 is the first 360° convertible gaming oriented laptop we have seen last year. With prices starting at ₹79,990, let’s see how it fares!
Build and design.
Nitro 5 spin looks classic from outside than it’s siblings, Nitro 5 and the Helios 300. Acer retained its famous red and black theme on this laptop too. The first thing which you’ll notice is a red trim which runs around the edges. The machine has red colored hinges that give it a classy look. The laptop has a metal lid flanking the Acer logo in the middle. Lift the lid and you’ll get amazed at 15.16 inches Full HD Display (FHD) with touch as well. However, the brightness doesn’t get enough for us but at the same time, colour saturation is decent. The keyboard has red backlighting, highlighting the WASD keys and completing the “gamer” look. There is a red trim around the touchpad as well, that adds to the aesthetic values of the laptop. The build quality of the keyboard is premium and has red backlit too. Overall, the laptop is simple, subtle and offers best build quality in this price segment.
Display and Connectivity Options
The laptop has 15.6-inch IPS LCD display with 1080P resolution and touch support. The display of the machine is decent and Games look sharp enough and so do movies. While playing games i don’t find any type of lagginess. The thing which sometimes irritate me is that being a touchscreen, it uses a glossy panel and this panel makes the device quite reflective in any lighting condition.
In terms of connectivity options, the machine has proprietary barrel power jack, one HDMI port, one USB Type-C port with display support and two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, on the left. While, USB 2.0 port, SDXC card slot, power button and volume rocker reside on the right side. The only thing which i miss is the Thunderbolt 3.0 support (considering the price).
Keyboard and Touchpad
This laptop also has Acer’s well-spaced island style keyboard, what we have seen in many other Acer Laptops too. The red and black combination of the keys offer decent travel and press down with an audible sound. Being a gaming machine, WASD keys are highlighted with Red. However, you do feel irritated with small arrow keys while typing.
The keyboard has red backlighting which is good but using this in the night is not a good idea. The backlight can be turned on or off with the “F8” key. The other problem with the backlight is that when the computer restarts or comes back from sleep, the backlighting goes back to the default state, which is off.
The touchpad is quite good. It tracks well, is smooth to touch and supports all gestures without any issues. The trackpad comes with integrated fingerprint scanner which works with Windows Hello. The fingerprint scanner is quick and quite responsive. The left and right click buttons are embedded on the touchpad itself and all you need to do is just press down lightly.
Also, Read – Oneplus 5T Detailed Review – All You Need To Know.
Performance
This machine runs on the 8th generation Intel Core i7-8550U. The new U series CPU from the intel now features two additional physical cores, which should take the performance beyond the 7th generation i7 quite easily.
The performance of the laptop or i should say CPU, is quite snappy through day-to-day applications, such as MS-Office, Chrome and Netflix. I even tried some Blu-ray content on the laptop and it also ran fine. Battery life of all gaming laptops is not good as compared to normal office laptops, and Acer Nitro 5 spin is no exception either. It manages to offer you a maximum battery life of 3-4 hours but after that, you’ll have to plug the charging cable for more gaming experience.
Talking about games on the Acer Nitro 5 Spin. And at this topic it disappoints us. We ran Tekken 7 on Ultra settings and it was managing to keep good frames of up to 45 but then it horribly dip down to 20 frames like tripping over a sleeping tramp on the aforementioned sidewalk. Same thing happens with the Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Loading times were cut down significantly due to the 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD but the laptop somehow screams with pain even on low settings in Shadow of War. It has Nvidia GTX 1050 but it’s as good as the sleeping tramp when told to do some heavy lifting.
Less graphically demanding games like CS:GO and DOTA 2 are relatively smoother on the Nitro 5 spin. Destiny 2 also needed a few graphical configurations to make it playable. The back portion of the machine, near the hinges heats up and the fan noise is quite audible too.
When you are not playing games, the SSD has a speedy boot up time and the added space by the 1TB hard drive is a felicity at this price point. Even Photoshop and InDesign softwares runs without any lagginess.
Prices
Last but not the least, Prices. The Acer Nitro 5 Spin comes is priced at Rs. 79,990 for the Core i5 model and the Core i7 model with 256GB SSD costs Rs. 94,990. These are available exclusively on Flipkart in India.
Buy Now – (i5 8gen) – http://fkrt.it/5nKD3nuuuN
Buy Now – (i7 8gen) – http://fkrt.it/5MwhxnuuuN
Final Verdict
We absolutely love the metal body on this machine, it’s thin and strong. At 0.7 inches, the laptop is impressively sleek. However, it can feel quite heavy, it’s definitely because of that metal body. Overall, Nitro 5 Spin is a decent laptop considering the price but calling it a gaming laptop is not good. It’s like using chopsticks to eat rice pudding.
It has lots of interesting bits and we would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good laptop with an interesting twist, like the fingerprint sensor. But for gamers, there are other better options in this category and many are from Acer as well.
Read More – The Unbiased Review
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