Acer Nitro V 15
A budget gaming laptop with reasonable specs for its price.
Its all about give and take for a low-price, portable laptop.
You want portability, but you need quality performance.
The Acer Nitro V 15 gaming laptop packs a fair bit of power in its frame for less than $1,000 MSRP, but you’ll still need to play it plugged in.Image: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
The Acer Nitro V 15 has a fair few positive qualities for its price tag.
It uses a 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13620H with a 2.4GHz clock speed.
It also contains a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 with 6GB of VRAM and 16 GB of memory.
Nvidia’s DLSS does a lot of the heavy lifting for supporting games with ray tracing enabled.Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
Think of this machine in terms of its build quality.
Most importantly, its not too thick, and its not too heavy at just under 5 pounds.
Its taken a fair while for me to make sense of the real humdrumness of this PC.
There’s a surprising number of ports packed into the Nitro V 15.Image: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
Decembers seasonal tidings and then CES put me behind on finally sitting down to write the V 15 review.
Intimacy doesnt always breed contempt, but Ive come to question a few of Acers design decisions.
For one, I really dont like the touchpad on the V15.
NitroSense offers a few ways to control the fan speed and battery settings.Image: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
Its not really a common complaint for a gaming laptop since youll likely be using a mouse anyway.
Thats enough for a mouse, a wired headset, and several other dongles.
But the ports are also strangely tight.
Its hard to remove them or insert my devices.
Speaking of which, Acer already has its Nitro V 16 coming down the road in March.
It will also sport new display options going up to 165 Hz refresh rates.
Without hands-on time with Acers 2024 offerings, we cant make any declarations.
But needs must, and this is why we have budget laptops in the first place.
That being said, the display is really just fine.
That being said, the Nitro V 15 sure has a lot going for its cost.
Lets hope 2024 offers us a few more laptops that have a premium feel without the premium price.
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