Did you try and use the wattman auto undervolt for the graphics card? Does Radeon Chill work for mobile? Then fan noise should go down and battery should last longer.
Testing max fps is bad, don't even have minimum fps, let alone frame time plots to know how smooth it is.
How can you miss that fact? The differences in TDP were pointed out multiple times in the article. You'd have to be in some serious skim mode to overlook it.
From the article: "Being a U series, the TDP is 15-Watts by default, though AMD offers a range of cTDP modes from 12-25 Watts. This is a rarely tapped feature on most laptops, but in this case it looks like Acer has put the Ryzen in cTDP up mode."
So the AMD chip is 25w and the Intels are using 35w. It's a difference for sure, but it's not 15w vs 45w.
For sure I believe you are correct, except for the MSI one which is 45watt.
One thing I did find while looking at these specs for these Laptops: Note all Newegg.com prices except the Acer AMD setup, as I could not find it. Prices are as of Feb 16 2019.
MSI GT75 TITAN GTX 1080 8 GB VRAM i9-8950HK sells for $4958.64 Huawei MateBook X Pro Intel Core i7 8th Gen 8550U MX150 sells for $1449.00 Dell XPS 15 core I7-7700HQ GTX 1050 sells for $1849.55 Microsoft Surface Book 2 Core i7 8650U GTX 1050 sells for $2279.00
This is not an Apples to Apples comparison in the least! Meanwhile they are comparing it to a $699 AMD laptop....
Do you think that the extra $1k would provide a metal chassis which would result in better overall thermals hence better performance. And a better screen...
Anandtech please compare this one to another Acer Nitro 5 but with an Intel processor to actually make it a fair comparison.
Really? You don't take suggestions really well do you? I second jgraham11's suggestion because the thermal design makes each Intel Core a different beast.
This is really an amateurish review, you can get as much info from a compact notebookcheck.com analysis. Who needs to be told that "Being a SATA based SSD, peak performance is certainly limited compared to NVMe drives, but it still offers orders of magnitude better performance compared to spinning drives?" Just show it in a table or chart. Are you being paid to hit a certain word count?
And you're unclear on whether adding a second RAM makes it dual channel, nor have you mentioned that you tried to see if Dual Channel is supported, but rather stuck to whatever configuration the company sent you.
For spinning versus solid state hard drive performance, you have plenty of comparisons - when the transition took place, 5 or so years ago. Today's SATA SSD's aren't so much faster than the champions of 5 years ago (in typical end-user scenarios), but neither have the magnetic hard drive performance improved.
People who are just coming here to find a review of a particular laptop may not know that.
I agree that it would be nice to know for sure if it was stuck in single channel, as I seem to recall that being a criticism of its other AMD model. At the same time it's possible that the impact is less given the separate graphics hardware with 4GB dedicated GDDR5.
Brett, thank you for commenting back. Bottom line is that when people are choosing a laptop to purchase, most people that don't have an unlimited amount of money or a specific design requirement want to know what they can get with the money they have. By comparing notebooks that are double, triple or more the price and not indicating price so distorts the perception of this product in a negative way. To solve this, label the price of each notebook (you would get crucified for making such outlandish comparisons) or only compare to other notebooks that have a similar price tag. If you don't do that, you are supporting an Intel monopoly, please say that isn't the case.
It actually shows how much of a bargain this laptop is. Why spend all that money when a bargain bin laptop gets you within a similar level of performance. I own this laptop. It won't disappoint you.
Based on my own experience with Acer's machines. ... This is about just right :P.
Well I've never come across Acer's machine with good stuffs in it before, they are pretty much all budget-oriented. That said things, might have changed.
I've been saying this same thing for years. AMD has had great notebook chips for awhile, but no OEM takes them seriously. They should partner with sapphire or clevo and build a range of proper Radeon-books or such.
Clevo and MSI are not going to use AMD's 7nm mobile chips on their release.. so we are out of luck on that front.. some budget laptop chinese companies are locked into a contract with intel, they get cheaper chips but not allowed to sell any amd laptops.. only one amd ryzen embedded laptop to come out of china :( (not regarding matebook D)
If AMD's 7nm goes right hopefully we can get a big OEM onboard, microsoft? Dell? Apple!?! that would probably be dreaming..
I think the high idle consumption is keeping them out of high end laptops, and stuff like video playback/streaming on youtube has too much of a hit on battery life.. maybe 7nm will fix this (we hope)
Yep, manufacturers seem to fall into the trap of them being slightly cheaper than Intel/Nvidia parts meaning they have to penny punch every other component. Would be a pretty great system with a decent display, and preferably dual channel memory, though as noted that doesn't choke a CPU much since this has dedicated VRAM.
You can't calibrate when the backlight won't do sRGB. There's no way to get more blue out of the light than is available. All calibration would do is lead to some pretty extensive crushing.
I read too quickly and thought you meant the panel had excessive coverage in the blue range. I see that it's the opposite. Usually with cheap laptop screens a very low contrast ratio accompanies strong sRGB undercoverage. A ratio of over 1000 is surprising for a screen with such poor gamut.
Some undercoverage of sRGB can still really benefit from calibration, as seen here in the greens:
Our eye responds more to green light, so I guess it's one way to easily boost perceived brightness and hence contrast ratios (as long as there isn't too much leakage as well).
Calibration makes the crappy TN screen on my Lenovo X120e look a heck of a lot better, even if it's obviously not as good as my other displays - reasonably consistency within its coverage area is key.
Saying that one thing is "100% faster" than another means it is twice as fast. You do this repeatedly, where what you meant is "100% as fast". The two are wildly different.
At first glance - looks like decent budget gaming option. Looking closer:
1. WTF is up with single-channel AMD notebooks? It literally HALVES APU performance in some games and significantly nerfs most other CPU operations. If you still have access to this laptop, please consider tossing in another stick of RAM.
2. That IPS display *shudder*. At what point does it even matter if it's going to be of such low quality? Also, why not FreeSync?
3. What's up with the 1060 and 1050 on the gaming charts dramatically switching positions? Are there some throttling issues at play?
The 1060's showing inside the Surface Book makes it painfully obvious that Microsoft's cooling solution suffers from some pretty severe limitations. Granted, MS wasn't trying to make a gaming system, but something thin and light to compete in more or less the same category where Apple's laptops live so cooling is going to end up taking a backseat.
The Surface Book 2 is a 15W CPU and the XPS 15 is a 45W CPU, so in games that are CPU limited, the 1050 can outperform. Dota is a great example of this.
I was also scratching my head when I saw it only had one-stick, albeit 8 GB capacity. Looking forward to seeing how it runs with two sticks (I think the difference would be huge).
If they were actually using the integrated GPU it would be a huge issue as the integrated GPU is often very memory bandwidth starved but as the article mentions the single stick isn't really a big problem when you are running with a discrete gpu.
It might potentially use more power and so run slower or louder, and for less time. Laptops are a trade-off. As others have mentioned the bandwidth isn't *as* much of an issue with a discrete GPU.
That doesn't apply to APUs when you're not even using the integrated graphics. Further, since it's a single CCX, RAM clocks don't even matter. Performance would barely budge if they were running 4 x 2. Margin of error difference.
The screen hinge design for these laptops from Acer has not changed in a while, and anecdotally it's pretty shoddy, prone to splitting open after a couple of years.
The blue point is off the sRGB gamut triangle, well off to the southwest by itself. So it's like the state of Hawaii; this island far away from the continent.
Well . . . it is? They need to work on being able to reliably enable all the power saving features of the chip, though. Could be it's a case of having to flip the kill-bit on that because it resulted in deadlocks.
I bought one of these and couldn't be happier. It runs dead silent for me (though I don't play a lot of high end games). Also, it runs everything just fine. If you put the settings to medium/high most games will run at 1080/60 I'm sure.
I added an SSD and a stick of RAM. I admit the screen isn't great, but it's good enough. Also, I plug it into another screen when I'm desktoping.
Nvidia/Intel run louder/hotter. IMHO. This is a perfect budget gaming laptop.
I've ordered a FX505DY, from Asus, and it has the same GPU, an "upgraded" 3550H but also just one RAM stick And rule of thumb with Ryzen is single channel = terrible performance
So it would be interesting to see how it impacts performance here
Also I wonder personally if in my case Asus would let me at least RAM XMP settings instead of running it stock at 2400 no matter what
Sorry to disappoint, but my results were very similar in dual-channel. I know that if used for the onboard GPU, the results would definitely be better, but for the discrete card, there's no appreciable difference in the results.
You might experience slightly higher CPU performance though... and also, synthetic benchmarks aren't too representative of real-world performance. I suggest you try running actual games with dual-channel for more accurate comparison.
Still, when it comes to the article, I don't necessarily agree that its AMD fault for low battery life... but mainly that Acer paired it with a very low capacity batter instead. It IS a 25W TDP APU part after all, and the IGP should be handling most of the media watching.
The battery life is just fine. I regularly bring this thing to my bedroom and use it to complete work before bed. It runs dead silent and only warm to the touch. While I have a lapdesk, it is unneeded because the bottom ventilation is great. Your knee/leg won't possibly cover up all holes. Further, 3-4 hours is plenty.
On older games, you'll get 3 hours off the APU too. So something to consider.
Accurate screens are nice, but I think there's a bit of an over-emphasis placed on that sort of thing here mainly because, in the past, other review sites didn't actually do detailed color analysis and instead just tossed out a quick statement based on eyeball observations. It sort of resulted in that analysis becoming a differentiator between AT and the competition so the focus on it when, for most people, it really doesn't matter, is a leftover. That doesn't mean its a useless thing, of course. I'm sure there are people that care (or at least will think they should care because they have devised some reason to believe it matters a lot) so it should continue and readers can filter for spam as needed with liberal use of the page selector.
I think it's pretty important if you're used to looking at color accurate screens. Since many popular phones are now finally getting this right, you might notice your monitor looks funky in comparison. I agree that the difference between, say, the Matebook and the Surface Book isn't all that important. Both are so accurate you'd have trouble telling the difference. But this Acer screen isn't even close. Look at the colorchecker chart on a calibrated display and it's crazy how bad anything that contains blue looks.
It's all about target market. This screen is terrible but I doubt that would play into many people's thoughts when they are after a budget gaming laptop. I'm still glad it's IPS though at least it doesn't get worse off-angle.
It's kinda important on a laptop because you can't trivially swap out a screen like you can a drive; while in some cases it's technically possible, in practice it's more like soldered-in RAM. Adding a extra one (while feasible in many use-cases) means you have to lug it around or have it where you want to use the laptop. Plus you usually still pay the power cost for the existing one.
For something you look at all the time, quality matters. But for goods sold over the Internet, it's it's an easy cost-cutting area because you can't really see the difference in the way that you can for, say, a CPU - even though this may be deceptive due to a deficient cooling system, etc.
I've got the i5 1050ti with SSD version. Paid $650. I keep it docked to a keyboard/mouse/monitor most of the time. Best laptop ever! It is much lighter than previous desktop replacements, sips far less power and is much faster to boot. That is was the cheapest by far helps as well. Of course I'm comparing to my previous laptops but the Nitro 5 is a great value even compared to modern laptops. The screen does not bother me but I'm only looking at it a few times a year while on the road. I suggest checking on out in person to see if you can live with the screen.
Also having 1x memory stick makes for an easy upgrade, just pop in another stick.
How's the noise on the version? I considered the 1050Ti version (was more expensive for me) but chose not to get it due to noise complaints. The last thing I want is a leaf blower. The All AMD version is dead silent for all operations except gaming, and then it's a mild hum (very quiet).
i just got this laptop with AMD cpu and GPU. very happy. Linux dual boot took a few attempts to find the correct boot parameters but it now works great. It handles games much more effortlessly than my other amd machines and it stays cool..
"Acer ships the Nitro 5 with a 135-Watt AC adapter. However, they don’t dedicate much of the power to battery charging." Can you include some numbers to back this up? Would be interested to know if they limited the charging rate on purpose, it's beneficial for battery life. I own an Acer E5-553-T4PT with an AMD A10 and it ships with a puny 45W charger that charges at 15% an hour if I'm gaming. (Side note: Acer put in 2x2GB DDR4 modules out of the box in a laptop that costs US$380 approx so I really don't know WTH is going on with this one.)
The recharge rate is almost always limited. Going crazy on charge time can overheat the battery. But you can see the Acer needs 2.65 hours to charge and the battery is about 47 Wh, so it's averaging about 17 Watts for charge rate. Obviously this isn't an apples to apples comparison to your Acer E5 since that one doesn't have a GPU that can draw 75 Watts on its own.
17-20 watts is my charge rate when I'm not doing anything on it... What was the load on the laptop when it was charging? ASUS goes bonkers on their charge rates, seen this with two laptops... They charge at a percent per minute.
As expected, not great but cheap. I'll be convinced Ryzen Mobile is legit when AMD manages to get out one single device that can compete toe to toe with a XPS 15, 9570 or 9575, but before then I'll enjoy it on my desktop.
I'm also waiting for one of those, but it's not going to be MBP level. Those are more like portable workstations, while the 3700U is made for ultra-thin laptops according to AMD. So it will be in the class of Dell XPS 13 - between MacBook Air and MBP.
At least they're dropping the price of entry for gaming laptops. However, I'm done with laptops with discrete GPUs. They're a lot more expensive, hot, and with small performance increase. Still can't forget those dead laptops due to GPU chip solder issues. I'd rather have this without the discrete GPU as the integrated Vega is decent for low res gaming and emulation gaming.
Modern laptop GPUs are nearly equivalent to their desktop parts. If you go high-end they are still hot/loud, but at the entry/mid level you can find quiet and cool solutions. The laptop in question runs dead silent most of the time, with a mild hum in gaming. It's also very cool almost never breaking 70c on CPU/GPU.
How the heck did you get 636 in Cinebench multicore? I have never seen more than 604. The CPU boosts to 3.2 GHz for a few seconds but the drops to ~2.9 GHz and it's not even temp throttling. Does the review unit have a BIOS newer than 1.08?
Compared as against Vega 10? Typo on the article lol. And there had been many other laptops with RX GPUs, like the Asus GL702ZC with an RX 580, the Acer Predator 500 with Vega 56, the HP Omen with an Intel CPU but an RX 580, not as widely adopted as the Intel/Nvidia combo but going onto the right direction. Hope you guys can review the AMD powered Predator 500 which is impressive!
If you want that, you might not want Acer. Try a more upmarket brand. Of course they might go with Intel because it still has the edge on single-threaded performance at a particular power level. A chunky laptop with good cooling is one of the cases where Ryzen makes the most sense.
I would suggest waiting until the 3xxx and maybe even until 7nm comes out for it (yes, I know that's probably another year, but you might get Navi and AV1 decode as well, arguably worth the wait).
Kinda of regret buying this now, as ASUS is gearing up to release TUF FX705 and FX505 models with Ryzen 5 3550H processors. The latter of which has a 120 mhz display option.
When you factor in that random bug on Skylakes (could be on later models as well, just can't confirm) where the uncore draws 6W at idle for no reason at all the low usage power consumption difference effectively disappears.
Reboot the Skylake machine and the issue goes away, but you have to actually notice it in order to do that. Your average user probably isn't watching Core Temp and the power draw while using the laptop.
For some reason this review is very confusing and pointless? The charts just have random laptops on them, not all the laptops appear in all charts, the laptops tested are all random, some are cheap, some are very expensive, so what's the point? You have to have a standard to compare, you can't just throw random laptops together. Are you comparing similar priced laptops? Are you comparing 'gaming' laptops? Are you comparing laptops that weight similar? Are you comparing laptops with similar wattage cpus?
We know that a $2000 laptop is going to be faster than a $1000 one.
So what do you if you need more performance, particularly GPU performance? Missing do. So what do you do if you need more performance, particularly GPU performance?
We've reached out to Acer and AMD to confirm the TDP settings, but as you'll see below this Ryzen 5 2500U performs well ahead of other we have tested. Other whats?
Luckily the battery life is probably not that big... Missing comma Luckily, the battery life is probably not that big...
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RSAUser - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Did you try and use the wattman auto undervolt for the graphics card?Does Radeon Chill work for mobile? Then fan noise should go down and battery should last longer.
Testing max fps is bad, don't even have minimum fps, let alone frame time plots to know how smooth it is.
jgraham11 - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Wow, did anyone notice that all the other processors are 45Watt meanwhile the AMD chip is only 15W!!! Holy crap!PeachNCream - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
How can you miss that fact? The differences in TDP were pointed out multiple times in the article. You'd have to be in some serious skim mode to overlook it.cfenton - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
From the article: "Being a U series, the TDP is 15-Watts by default, though AMD offers a range of cTDP modes from 12-25 Watts. This is a rarely tapped feature on most laptops, but in this case it looks like Acer has put the Ryzen in cTDP up mode."So the AMD chip is 25w and the Intels are using 35w. It's a difference for sure, but it's not 15w vs 45w.
Brett Howse - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
The Intel ones are 45W - the 35W is an optional cTDP down mode.cfenton - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
My mistake. Thanks for the clarification.jgraham11 - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
For sure I believe you are correct, except for the MSI one which is 45watt.One thing I did find while looking at these specs for these Laptops:
Note all Newegg.com prices except the Acer AMD setup, as I could not find it. Prices are as of Feb 16 2019.
MSI GT75 TITAN GTX 1080 8 GB VRAM i9-8950HK sells for $4958.64
Huawei MateBook X Pro Intel Core i7 8th Gen 8550U MX150 sells for $1449.00
Dell XPS 15 core I7-7700HQ GTX 1050 sells for $1849.55
Microsoft Surface Book 2 Core i7 8650U GTX 1050 sells for $2279.00
This is not an Apples to Apples comparison in the least!
Meanwhile they are comparing it to a $699 AMD laptop....
Do you think that the extra $1k would provide a metal chassis which would result in better overall thermals hence better performance. And a better screen...
Anandtech please compare this one to another Acer Nitro 5 but with an Intel processor to actually make it a fair comparison.
Brett Howse - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
I explained why the comparison models were chosen in the review.fmcjw - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
Really? You don't take suggestions really well do you? I second jgraham11's suggestion because the thermal design makes each Intel Core a different beast.This is really an amateurish review, you can get as much info from a compact notebookcheck.com analysis. Who needs to be told that "Being a SATA based SSD, peak performance is certainly limited compared to NVMe drives, but it still offers orders of magnitude better performance compared to spinning drives?" Just show it in a table or chart. Are you being paid to hit a certain word count?
And you're unclear on whether adding a second RAM makes it dual channel, nor have you mentioned that you tried to see if Dual Channel is supported, but rather stuck to whatever configuration the company sent you.
Calin - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
For spinning versus solid state hard drive performance, you have plenty of comparisons - when the transition took place, 5 or so years ago. Today's SATA SSD's aren't so much faster than the champions of 5 years ago (in typical end-user scenarios), but neither have the magnetic hard drive performance improved.GreenReaper - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
People who are just coming here to find a review of a particular laptop may not know that.I agree that it would be nice to know for sure if it was stuck in single channel, as I seem to recall that being a criticism of its other AMD model. At the same time it's possible that the impact is less given the separate graphics hardware with 4GB dedicated GDDR5.
jgraham11 - Thursday, February 21, 2019 - link
Brett, thank you for commenting back. Bottom line is that when people are choosing a laptop to purchase, most people that don't have an unlimited amount of money or a specific design requirement want to know what they can get with the money they have. By comparing notebooks that are double, triple or more the price and not indicating price so distorts the perception of this product in a negative way. To solve this, label the price of each notebook (you would get crucified for making such outlandish comparisons) or only compare to other notebooks that have a similar price tag.If you don't do that, you are supporting an Intel monopoly, please say that isn't the case.
Annnonymmous - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
It actually shows how much of a bargain this laptop is. Why spend all that money when a bargain bin laptop gets you within a similar level of performance. I own this laptop. It won't disappoint you.Vitor - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Wow, what a dismal ips display. That's depressing actually.niva - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I said to myself:. Wow, finally, an AMD laptop with a good ips display!Then I saw the results. It's clear that unless AMD makes their own machines directly, no manufacturer will get it right.
mr_tawan - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Based on my own experience with Acer's machines. ... This is about just right :P.Well I've never come across Acer's machine with good stuffs in it before, they are pretty much all budget-oriented. That said things, might have changed.
TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
I've been saying this same thing for years. AMD has had great notebook chips for awhile, but no OEM takes them seriously. They should partner with sapphire or clevo and build a range of proper Radeon-books or such.michaelflat1 - Thursday, February 21, 2019 - link
Clevo and MSI are not going to use AMD's 7nm mobile chips on their release.. so we are out of luck on that front.. some budget laptop chinese companies are locked into a contract with intel, they get cheaper chips but not allowed to sell any amd laptops.. only one amd ryzen embedded laptop to come out of china :( (not regarding matebook D)If AMD's 7nm goes right hopefully we can get a big OEM onboard, microsoft? Dell? Apple!?! that would probably be dreaming..
I think the high idle consumption is keeping them out of high end laptops, and stuff like video playback/streaming on youtube has too much of a hit on battery life.. maybe 7nm will fix this (we hope)
tipoo - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
Yep, manufacturers seem to fall into the trap of them being slightly cheaper than Intel/Nvidia parts meaning they have to penny punch every other component. Would be a pretty great system with a decent display, and preferably dual channel memory, though as noted that doesn't choke a CPU much since this has dedicated VRAM.Oxford Guy - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
It would be useful to see calibrated results. Products like the ColorMunki are not expensive.Since the black depth wasn't as bad as some of the other screens here it may be the case where this panel isn't quite so bad with calibration.
Oxford Guy - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Unfortunately, it looks like the ColorMunki's price has gone way up and its software may not be reliable with Windows 10.GreenReaper - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
It'll probably go on sale at some point and you can buy it then. I never even installed the software, just DisplayCal.Brett Howse - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
You can't calibrate when the backlight won't do sRGB. There's no way to get more blue out of the light than is available. All calibration would do is lead to some pretty extensive crushing.Oxford Guy - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
I read too quickly and thought you meant the panel had excessive coverage in the blue range. I see that it's the opposite. Usually with cheap laptop screens a very low contrast ratio accompanies strong sRGB undercoverage. A ratio of over 1000 is surprising for a screen with such poor gamut.Some undercoverage of sRGB can still really benefit from calibration, as seen here in the greens:
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/viewsonic_vx24...
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/asus_ms246h.ht...
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/benq_ew2420.ht...
However, if it is severe as this laptop's is, then it's probably not worth the trouble.
GreenReaper - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
Our eye responds more to green light, so I guess it's one way to easily boost perceived brightness and hence contrast ratios (as long as there isn't too much leakage as well).Calibration makes the crappy TN screen on my Lenovo X120e look a heck of a lot better, even if it's obviously not as good as my other displays - reasonably consistency within its coverage area is key.
Arbie - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Saying that one thing is "100% faster" than another means it is twice as fast. You do this repeatedly, where what you meant is "100% as fast". The two are wildly different.Brett Howse - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Appreciate the feedback and updating the wording.LMonty - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
I'm glad Brett is confident enough to appreciate valid corrections. :) Many tech writers ignore comments like this or even deny them.Brett Howse - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
I wrote one thing while meaning another - I always appreciate constructive feedback!nathanddrews - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
At first glance - looks like decent budget gaming option. Looking closer:1. WTF is up with single-channel AMD notebooks? It literally HALVES APU performance in some games and significantly nerfs most other CPU operations. If you still have access to this laptop, please consider tossing in another stick of RAM.
2. That IPS display *shudder*. At what point does it even matter if it's going to be of such low quality? Also, why not FreeSync?
3. What's up with the 1060 and 1050 on the gaming charts dramatically switching positions? Are there some throttling issues at play?
PeachNCream - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
The 1060's showing inside the Surface Book makes it painfully obvious that Microsoft's cooling solution suffers from some pretty severe limitations. Granted, MS wasn't trying to make a gaming system, but something thin and light to compete in more or less the same category where Apple's laptops live so cooling is going to end up taking a backseat.Brett Howse - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
The Surface Book 2 is a 15W CPU and the XPS 15 is a 45W CPU, so in games that are CPU limited, the 1050 can outperform. Dota is a great example of this.29a - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I would like to see benchmarks with a second piece of RAM also.Quad_Tube - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I was also scratching my head when I saw it only had one-stick, albeit 8 GB capacity. Looking forward to seeing how it runs with two sticks (I think the difference would be huge).kpb321 - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
If they were actually using the integrated GPU it would be a huge issue as the integrated GPU is often very memory bandwidth starved but as the article mentions the single stick isn't really a big problem when you are running with a discrete gpu.GreenReaper - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
It might potentially use more power and so run slower or louder, and for less time. Laptops are a trade-off. As others have mentioned the bandwidth isn't *as* much of an issue with a discrete GPU.Alexvrb - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
That doesn't apply to APUs when you're not even using the integrated graphics. Further, since it's a single CCX, RAM clocks don't even matter. Performance would barely budge if they were running 4 x 2. Margin of error difference.Rookierookie - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
The screen hinge design for these laptops from Acer has not changed in a while, and anecdotally it's pretty shoddy, prone to splitting open after a couple of years.Annnonymmous - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I own this laptop. The screen hinge is just fine.TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
Are you from the future? Otherwise, how would you know if your hings will be fine after several years of operation.zmatt - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Acer ComfyView is the best name for a display ever. Get comfy lads.29a - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
"doing its best impression of Hawaii"What does that mean? I've never heard that expression.
Midwayman - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I'm guessing its supposed to be "Paint of map of hawaii" Which would sort of make sense, but maybe didn't make it past editorial?Ryan Smith - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
The blue point is off the sRGB gamut triangle, well off to the southwest by itself. So it's like the state of Hawaii; this island far away from the continent.It's easier to see in the full size version of that graph: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13957/Gamut.png
(It's also a poke at AMD code names)
GreenReaper - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
I didn't get this either. The best I could come up with was "it's the colour of the ocean near Hawai'i".Fulkrum - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Sorry but you comparing 17 w tdp CPU vs 35-45 w and conclude that it's not that fast but it's not bad. Ridiculous.GreenReaper - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
Well . . . it is? They need to work on being able to reliably enable all the power saving features of the chip, though. Could be it's a case of having to flip the kill-bit on that because it resulted in deadlocks.piroroadkill - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Sorry, but Acer will always mean cheap and nasty.Annnonymmous - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I bought one of these and couldn't be happier. It runs dead silent for me (though I don't play a lot of high end games). Also, it runs everything just fine. If you put the settings to medium/high most games will run at 1080/60 I'm sure.I added an SSD and a stick of RAM. I admit the screen isn't great, but it's good enough. Also, I plug it into another screen when I'm desktoping.
Nvidia/Intel run louder/hotter. IMHO. This is a perfect budget gaming laptop.
Annnonymmous - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I'm downloading 3Dmark to give results in Dual channel. Will update in a few hours hopefully.Peter2k - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Would be interestingI've ordered a FX505DY, from Asus, and it has the same GPU, an "upgraded" 3550H but also just one RAM stick
And rule of thumb with Ryzen is single channel = terrible performance
So it would be interesting to see how it impacts performance here
Also I wonder personally if in my case Asus would let me at least RAM XMP settings instead of running it stock at 2400 no matter what
Annnonymmous - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Sorry to disappoint, but my results were very similar in dual-channel. I know that if used for the onboard GPU, the results would definitely be better, but for the discrete card, there's no appreciable difference in the results.Peter2k - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Thx anywayCheers
Annnonymmous - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Here is my results: https://www.3dmark.com/fs/18345476deksman2 - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
You might experience slightly higher CPU performance though... and also, synthetic benchmarks aren't too representative of real-world performance.I suggest you try running actual games with dual-channel for more accurate comparison.
Still, when it comes to the article, I don't necessarily agree that its AMD fault for low battery life... but mainly that Acer paired it with a very low capacity batter instead. It IS a 25W TDP APU part after all, and the IGP should be handling most of the media watching.
Brett Howse - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
Raven Ridge has a power usage issue at idle. All Raven Ridge laptops suffer from poor battery life unfortunately.LarsBars - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
I thought I have read all the AT articles about Raven Ridge. What exactly is the issue? Can you link me to the explanation, thanks.Brett Howse - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13726/the-lenovo-th...Annnonymmous - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
The battery life is just fine. I regularly bring this thing to my bedroom and use it to complete work before bed. It runs dead silent and only warm to the touch. While I have a lapdesk, it is unneeded because the bottom ventilation is great. Your knee/leg won't possibly cover up all holes. Further, 3-4 hours is plenty.On older games, you'll get 3 hours off the APU too. So something to consider.
PeachNCream - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
Accurate screens are nice, but I think there's a bit of an over-emphasis placed on that sort of thing here mainly because, in the past, other review sites didn't actually do detailed color analysis and instead just tossed out a quick statement based on eyeball observations. It sort of resulted in that analysis becoming a differentiator between AT and the competition so the focus on it when, for most people, it really doesn't matter, is a leftover. That doesn't mean its a useless thing, of course. I'm sure there are people that care (or at least will think they should care because they have devised some reason to believe it matters a lot) so it should continue and readers can filter for spam as needed with liberal use of the page selector.cfenton - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
I think it's pretty important if you're used to looking at color accurate screens. Since many popular phones are now finally getting this right, you might notice your monitor looks funky in comparison. I agree that the difference between, say, the Matebook and the Surface Book isn't all that important. Both are so accurate you'd have trouble telling the difference. But this Acer screen isn't even close. Look at the colorchecker chart on a calibrated display and it's crazy how bad anything that contains blue looks.Brett Howse - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
It's all about target market. This screen is terrible but I doubt that would play into many people's thoughts when they are after a budget gaming laptop. I'm still glad it's IPS though at least it doesn't get worse off-angle.GreenReaper - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - link
It's kinda important on a laptop because you can't trivially swap out a screen like you can a drive; while in some cases it's technically possible, in practice it's more like soldered-in RAM. Adding a extra one (while feasible in many use-cases) means you have to lug it around or have it where you want to use the laptop. Plus you usually still pay the power cost for the existing one.For something you look at all the time, quality matters. But for goods sold over the Internet, it's it's an easy cost-cutting area because you can't really see the difference in the way that you can for, say, a CPU - even though this may be deceptive due to a deficient cooling system, etc.
lakedude - Friday, February 15, 2019 - link
I've got the i5 1050ti with SSD version. Paid $650. I keep it docked to a keyboard/mouse/monitor most of the time. Best laptop ever! It is much lighter than previous desktop replacements, sips far less power and is much faster to boot. That is was the cheapest by far helps as well. Of course I'm comparing to my previous laptops but the Nitro 5 is a great value even compared to modern laptops. The screen does not bother me but I'm only looking at it a few times a year while on the road. I suggest checking on out in person to see if you can live with the screen.Also having 1x memory stick makes for an easy upgrade, just pop in another stick.
Annnonymmous - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
How's the noise on the version? I considered the 1050Ti version (was more expensive for me) but chose not to get it due to noise complaints. The last thing I want is a leaf blower. The All AMD version is dead silent for all operations except gaming, and then it's a mild hum (very quiet).tkalfaoglu - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
i just got this laptop with AMD cpu and GPU. very happy. Linux dual boot took a few attempts to find the correct boot parameters but it now works great. It handles games much more effortlessly than my other amd machines and it stays cool..ads295 - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
"Acer ships the Nitro 5 with a 135-Watt AC adapter. However, they don’t dedicate much of the power to battery charging."Can you include some numbers to back this up? Would be interested to know if they limited the charging rate on purpose, it's beneficial for battery life. I own an Acer E5-553-T4PT with an AMD A10 and it ships with a puny 45W charger that charges at 15% an hour if I'm gaming.
(Side note: Acer put in 2x2GB DDR4 modules out of the box in a laptop that costs US$380 approx so I really don't know WTH is going on with this one.)
Brett Howse - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
The recharge rate is almost always limited. Going crazy on charge time can overheat the battery. But you can see the Acer needs 2.65 hours to charge and the battery is about 47 Wh, so it's averaging about 17 Watts for charge rate. Obviously this isn't an apples to apples comparison to your Acer E5 since that one doesn't have a GPU that can draw 75 Watts on its own.ads295 - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
17-20 watts is my charge rate when I'm not doing anything on it... What was the load on the laptop when it was charging?ASUS goes bonkers on their charge rates, seen this with two laptops... They charge at a percent per minute.
hanselltc - Saturday, February 16, 2019 - link
As expected, not great but cheap. I'll be convinced Ryzen Mobile is legit when AMD manages to get out one single device that can compete toe to toe with a XPS 15, 9570 or 9575, but before then I'll enjoy it on my desktop.eva02langley - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
It is not AMD fault if OEM are dumbs.I want a Macbook pro "kinda" laptop with a 3700u. I am not buying one until one is available.
akvadrako - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
I'm also waiting for one of those, but it's not going to be MBP level. Those are more like portable workstations, while the 3700U is made for ultra-thin laptops according to AMD. So it will be in the class of Dell XPS 13 - between MacBook Air and MBP.yeeeeman - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
What about Huawei's Matebook D? Isn't that good enough? Maybe AT could try reviewing that also.zodiacfml - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
At least they're dropping the price of entry for gaming laptops.However, I'm done with laptops with discrete GPUs. They're a lot more expensive, hot, and with small performance increase. Still can't forget those dead laptops due to GPU chip solder issues.
I'd rather have this without the discrete GPU as the integrated Vega is decent for low res gaming and emulation gaming.
Annnonymmous - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
Modern laptop GPUs are nearly equivalent to their desktop parts. If you go high-end they are still hot/loud, but at the entry/mid level you can find quiet and cool solutions. The laptop in question runs dead silent most of the time, with a mild hum in gaming. It's also very cool almost never breaking 70c on CPU/GPU.bananaforscale - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
How the heck did you get 636 in Cinebench multicore? I have never seen more than 604. The CPU boosts to 3.2 GHz for a few seconds but the drops to ~2.9 GHz and it's not even temp throttling. Does the review unit have a BIOS newer than 1.08?bananaforscale - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
(NVM about the BIOS, it seems to be the same. There's *something* going on tho.)Annnonymmous - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
The latest bios is 1.12 i believe. So that's possible. Also, if you turn on the power saving features (like I have) it lowers scores a bit.bananaforscale - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
Fascinating, Acer Care Center can't find it but there it is on the support site. I'll do an update then. :)ads295 - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
Acer Care Center is absolutely useless for updates...evolucion8 - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
Compared as against Vega 10? Typo on the article lol. And there had been many other laptops with RX GPUs, like the Asus GL702ZC with an RX 580, the Acer Predator 500 with Vega 56, the HP Omen with an Intel CPU but an RX 580, not as widely adopted as the Intel/Nvidia combo but going onto the right direction. Hope you guys can review the AMD powered Predator 500 which is impressive!Brett Howse - Sunday, February 17, 2019 - link
Vega 10 is the iGPU on the Ryzen 7 2700U in the Acer Swift 3.eva02langley - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
Big, bulky, unattractive...Thanks Acer... when will you understand that we want THIN FORMAT laptops with APU for production and office work ABLE to game at 720p?
Man, my only hope is the 3700u is actually part of the upcoming MS surface.
GreenReaper - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
If you want that, you might not want Acer. Try a more upmarket brand. Of course they might go with Intel because it still has the edge on single-threaded performance at a particular power level. A chunky laptop with good cooling is one of the cases where Ryzen makes the most sense.But there are now things like the Lenovo IdeaPad 720S: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/ideap...
and the Huawei Matebook D: https://hothardware.com/reviews/huawei-matebook-d-...
Notebookcheck found some good things about the IdeaPad w/2500U: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Ideapad-720S-...
The 2700U, slightly more: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-IdeaPad-720s-...
But not as much as the Intel alternative: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Ideapad-720S-...
Basically poor thermals and single-channel DIMM killed it. The Matebook allegedly has dual-channel.
I would suggest waiting until the 3xxx and maybe even until 7nm comes out for it (yes, I know that's probably another year, but you might get Navi and AV1 decode as well, arguably worth the wait).
Ford_Prefect - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
Kinda of regret buying this now, as ASUS is gearing up to release TUF FX705 and FX505 models with Ryzen 5 3550H processors. The latter of which has a 120 mhz display option.Ford_Prefect - Monday, February 18, 2019 - link
*120Hz0ldman79 - Tuesday, February 19, 2019 - link
When you factor in that random bug on Skylakes (could be on later models as well, just can't confirm) where the uncore draws 6W at idle for no reason at all the low usage power consumption difference effectively disappears.Reboot the Skylake machine and the issue goes away, but you have to actually notice it in order to do that. Your average user probably isn't watching Core Temp and the power draw while using the laptop.
Gasaraki88 - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - link
For some reason this review is very confusing and pointless? The charts just have random laptops on them, not all the laptops appear in all charts, the laptops tested are all random, some are cheap, some are very expensive, so what's the point? You have to have a standard to compare, you can't just throw random laptops together. Are you comparing similar priced laptops? Are you comparing 'gaming' laptops? Are you comparing laptops that weight similar? Are you comparing laptops with similar wattage cpus?We know that a $2000 laptop is going to be faster than a $1000 one.
ballsystemlord - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - link
Spelling and grammar corrections:So what do you if you need more performance, particularly GPU performance?
Missing do.
So what do you do if you need more performance, particularly GPU performance?
We've reached out to Acer and AMD to confirm the TDP settings, but as you'll see below this Ryzen 5 2500U performs well ahead of other we have tested.
Other whats?
Luckily the battery life is probably not that big...
Missing comma
Luckily, the battery life is probably not that big...
JamesALang - Monday, March 4, 2019 - link
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