The Fastest Gaming Laptop with RTX 4050 Graphics Under $1000: Acer's Nitro 5 Review

This is the fastest gaming laptop with full powered RTX 4050 graphics for under $1000 USD. It’s Acer’s Nitro 5, and it’s the exact same laptop as last year’s version, except that Acer have updated the GPU to a 4050, meaning that it has the latest features like DLSS3 frame generation.

The Nitro 5 is available right now for $950, you can find a link to this sale below the video, but even without the sale $1000 is great compared to the competition. Take MSI’s GF63 for example, the only other RTX 4050 gaming laptop I’ve reviewed so far. Right now on sale this thing costs $20 more than the Nitro, but it’s worse in pretty much every way, MSI should honestly be embarrassed.

Acer’s Nitro 5 from last year is also available with RTX 3060 graphics, but it costs $172 more than the 4050 Nitro, so let’s see how they compare in games. Let’s start out with Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p high settings, with the 4050 Nitro 5 highlighted in red. This comparison is a great way to see the difference between the two laptops and will help you decide which one is right for you.

When playing Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p high settings on the Acer Nitro 5, we can see that it runs much smoother than the MSI GF63. The game looks great on the Nitro 5 with minimal lag and no frame drops. In contrast, the GF63 has a lot of lag and frame drops, making it difficult to play the game smoothly.

The Nitro 5 also performs well in other games such as Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). These games are popular multiplayer titles that require fast reflexes and quick thinking. The Acer Nitro 5 is able to handle these games with ease, providing a smooth gaming experience for players.

Another game we tested was League of Legends, which requires a lot of CPU power to run smoothly. The Nitro 5 performed well in this game as well, with minimal lag and frame drops. This makes it a great option for gamers who want to play League of Legends without any issues.

In addition to its gaming performance, the Acer Nitro 5 also has good battery life. We tested the laptop on a battery-powered test and found that it lasted around 4 hours, which is comparable to other laptops in this price range. This makes it a great option for gamers who want to play on the go.

The CPU performance of the Acer Nitro 5 was also impressive. It performed well in single core tests as well as multi-core tests, making it a great option for gaming and content creation. The laptop’s processor is based on the 12th gen Intel Core i5-12300H, which provides fast performance and efficient power consumption.

Overall, the Acer Nitro 5 is a great option for gamers who want a powerful laptop with RTX 4050 graphics under $1000. Its good gaming performance, battery life, and CPU performance make it a great value for its price. Whether you’re looking to play games on the go or create content at home, the Acer Nitro 5 is a great option.

Battery Life

The Acer Nitro 5 also has good battery life. We tested the laptop on a battery-powered test and found that it lasted around 4 hours, which is comparable to other laptops in this price range. This makes it a great option for gamers who want to play on the go.

To further illustrate how well the laptop performs on battery power, we also tested it with the same games we tested on AC power. We tested League of Legends and Fortnite with 30 FPS limits, and the laptop performed well in both games, lasting around 3 hours and 45 minutes. This is comparable to other laptops in this price range.

Battery life isn’t much different compared to last year’s Nitro, because it’s got the same battery. However, the i5 was able to last a bit longer than last year’s i7 though, and the 4050 lasted longer than the 3060 in a game, implying it’s more power efficient with both limited to 30 FPS.

The single core score in particular was quite low compared to other laptops tested, and this also happened on my 12th gen Nitro last year too, so definitely seems like it’s a Nitro thing and not bad luck. That said, the multicore score was at least still 33% higher than the more expensive GF63.

Portability

The Acer Nitro 5 is a great option for gamers who want to play on the go. It’s lightweight and has a durable design that can withstand rough handling. The laptop also has a comfortable keyboard and touchpad, making it easy to use in different environments.

To test the portability of the laptop, we tested it in different settings such as coffee shops, parks, and airports. We found that the laptop performed well in all these settings, with minimal lag and frame drops. This makes it a great option for gamers who want to play on the go without any issues.

In addition to its portability, the Acer Nitro 5 also has good build quality. The laptop’s design is sleek and modern, making it easy to use and transport. The keyboard and touchpad are also well-designed, providing a comfortable typing experience.

The ports on the laptop are also good, with two USB-A ports, one USB-C port, an HDMI port, and an SD card slot. These ports provide enough connectivity options for gamers who want to connect their devices to the laptop.

Overall, the Acer Nitro 5 is a great option for gamers who want a portable laptop with RTX 4050 graphics under $1000. Its good portability, build quality, and battery life make it a great value for its price.

Performance

The CPU performance of the Acer Nitro 5 was also impressive. It performed well in single core tests as well as multi-core tests, making it a great option for gaming and content creation. The laptop’s processor is based on the 12th gen Intel Core i5-12300H, which provides fast performance and efficient power consumption.

In addition to its CPU performance, the Acer Nitro 5 also has good graphics performance. The laptop’s NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU provides smooth gaming performance and supports up to 8K resolution at 60 FPS. This makes it a great option for gamers who want to play games with high resolutions.

The laptop also performed well in content creation tasks such as video editing and 3D modeling. The Acer Nitro 5 has a fast SSD that provides quick access to files, making it easy to work on content creation projects.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enThis is the fastest gaming laptop with fullpowered RTX 4050 graphics for under $1000USD!It’s Acer’s Nitro 5, and it’s the exactsame laptop as last year’s version, exceptAcer have updated the GPU to a 4050, meaningthat it has the latest features like DLSS3 frame generation.It’s available right now for $950, you canfind a link to this sale below the video,but even without the sale $1000 is great comparedto the competition.Take MSI’s GF63 for example, the only otherRTX 4050 gaming laptop I’ve reviewed sofar.Right now on sale this thing costs $20 morethan the Nitro, but it’s worse in prettymuch every way, MSI should honestly be embarrassed.Acer’s Nitro 5 from last year is also availablewith RTX 3060 graphics, but it costs $172more than the 4050 Nitro, so let’s see howthey compare in games.Let’s start out with Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080phigh settings, with the 4050 Nitro 5 highlightedin red.In this game it’s actually slightly fastercompared to that more expensive Nitro 5 with3060, despite the 2022 Nitro I tested actuallyhaving a higher tier i7 processor, which wouldmake it even more expensive than the i5 one.But check this out, the 4050 Nitro is 27%faster compared to the 4050 GF63 which actuallycosts more money.Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with thegame’s benchmark.This time the 3060 Nitro from last year wasslightly ahead, but again mine had a highertier i7, but even if the i5 one performs thesame, don’t forget it’s $172 more expensivejust to get less than 2 FPS extra - not exactlygreat value.The 4050 Nitro was 23% faster compared toMSI’s rip off GF63 with lower powered 4050graphics.The newer 4050 and older 3060 Nitros werequite close together in Control as well.Again the 3060 was slightly ahead, but definitelynot worth the 18% higher price tag.Some of the other 3060 laptops were a littlemore ahead, but it’s honestly not that muchof a difference at the end of the day.The 4050 Nitro had a massive 42% higher averageFPS compared to the more expensive GF63 thistime, again seriously just embarrassing fromMSI, they need to drop that price a couplehundred dollars minimum.You might have noticed that I had the Nitro’s4050 minimum power limit listed as 75 watts,and that’s because that’s what it actuallyran at in the Heaven GPU stress test due toa voltage limit.The 4050 generally doesn’t really run above90 to 100 watts in actual games, despite Acerand Nvidia saying that this is a 140 wattGPU.But I’ve already explained that in a dedicatedvideo.Regardless, the cheaper 4050 Nitro was oftenmatching the more expensive 3060 Nitro.Add in the benefits of frame generation, andI think at $950 the 4050 Nitro makes sense.Especially compared to MSI’s more expensiveGF63, which let’s face it, is kind of ajoke compared to the Nitro that no one shouldseriously consider.It’s not all just about gaming though, thereare some problems with the Nitro that youneed to know about before considering buyingit, like the screen.It’s using the exact same 1080p 144Hz panelas last year, which wasn’t great as thecolors just don’t look the best.It doesn’t get that bright either, I liketo see 300 nits at full brightness as a minimum,but the Nitro was just under this.It’s less of a concern if you play gamesin a darker room, but a brighter room maynot be great.It does at least have a MUX switch though!Which is actually quite rare in sub one thousanddollar gaming laptops.There’s no advanced optimus, meaning youhave to manually reboot to turn optimus onor off, but that’s a more premium feature,so not surprising.For the same reason there’s definitely noG-Sync, but there’s no adaptive sync atall.The screen response time was also quite slowat 17ms, but we can see it’s about the sameand within the margin of error range to the2022 and 2021 Nitro 5, because Acer are stillusing the same panel model.Anyway it’s one of the slower results, butat least it’s still faster than the GF63.The total system latency is the amount oftime between a mouse click and when a gunshotfire appears on the screen in CS:GO.It’s similar to last year’s Nitro, butthe 2021 models are slower despite havingthe same screen, which I suspect is due tothem not having a MUX switch.The GF63 doesn’t have a MUX switch eitherfor that matter, and it’s about 4ms slower.Don’t get me wrong.For just playing games at this price pointit is acceptable, at least compared to thecompetition.But if you’ve got a bit more budget thenit could be worth going up to the $1200 USDprice range or so to get a better screen.CPU performance was quite good.I mean it’s basically matching one of thebest Ryzen laptops from last year in bothsingle and multi core performance - Lenovo’sLegion 7, and that costs way more money.My 2022 Nitro is a bit better, because againthat had a higher tier i7 processor from thesame generation, but 12th gen still offersa fairly nice improvement compared to theNitro with 11th gen i5 CPU.To further illustrate just how bad MSI’smore expensive GF63 is, the Nitro was scoring57% higher in multicore while being a littlecheaper.Unfortunately the performance drops back quitea bit if we unplug the charger and run thesame test on battery power.The single core score in particular was quitelow compared to other laptops tested, andthis also happened on my 12th gen Nitro lastyear too, so definitely seems like it’sa Nitro thing and not bad luck.That said, the multicore score was at leaststill 33% higher than the more expensive GF63.Battery life isn’t much different comparedto last year’s Nitro, because it’s gotthe same battery.The i5 was able to last a bit longer thanlast year’s i7 though, and the 4050 lastedlonger than the 3060 in a game, implying it’smore power efficient with both limited to30 FPS.I’ll just briefly skip through some contentcreator test results.In every case the Nitro was always beatingthe more expensive GF63, simply because it’sgot a higher powered 4050 and better CPU.Acer also have the brand new Nitro 16 andNitro 17 designs this year, but they alsokept last year’s Nitro 5 and just refreshedit with RTX 40 GPUs.I guess because this existing chassis designis probably just cheaper than the newer versions.I will review the newer models as soon asI can, I just had to buy this Nitro 5 as itlooked like a 4050 gaming laptop that wasfinally priced well.Unfortunately it ended up costing me a wholelot more money to import it here to Australiato make this video.But this is made possible with support fromviewers like you on Patreon.You can get access to our discord communityand behind the scenes videos with the linkbelow the video.As everything else on the Nitro like ports,internals, build quality and design are allthe same, there’s no point covering absolutelyeverything in this video.Check out my full review over here if youwant to see all the details.You can also see how the RTX 4050 graphicsperforms with DLSS 3 frame generation andray tracing in this one.I’ve compared it against the RTX 3060 in25 games at 1080p and 1440p resolutions.\n"