In the red corner, a new AMD-Ryzen powered Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop.
You might have read our review of the current-generation Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop. We rather liked it. Other than a slightly sloppy trackpad – but who’s not using an additional mouse for gaming? – and unremarkable battery life it’s a solid budget gaming laptop, for people who don’t want to pay Razer Blade money for something really fancy (but still want to play some games on the move).
The version we tried is powered by a 7th-gen Core i7 7700HQ, and an Nvidia GTX 1050 with 4GB RAM. It works well, though we’d recommend getting the GTX 1050 Ti variant, if you can find it.
But the Acer Nitro 5 also has an AMD option; less common, and less easy to find in stores than the Intel/Nvidia combo, but an option all the same. It’s powered by an AMD FX-9830P processor and an RX 550 GPU with 4GB RAM.
Or rather, it was powered by an FX processor: the newly-announced AMD Nitro 5 is getting the Ryzen treatment.
We’re not entirely sure which Ryzen SKU is going to make it into the new Nitro 5. The press release points to “latest AMD Ryzen mobile processors” so that mobile designation likely points to the Ryzen 5 2500U or Ryzen 7 2700U from the current product lineup, but we’ll let you know when we have confirmation from Acer.
In addition to the Ryzen upgrade, the AMD Nitro 5 is also boosted from an RX550 GPU to an RX560, also with 4GB RAM, to improve GPU performance for low-to-mid end gaming. Other specs remain roughly the same as the Intel/Nvidia model we reviewed, with the option for a 512GB SSD the only other new meaningful addition we can see in the press release.
The new Ryzen-powered Nitro 5 is expected to be priced from £899 – around the same starting price as the current lineup – and will be available in EMEA from April 2018. Watch this space for a review of the new, much redder, Nitro 5.
