A retailer in Germany, ElectronicPartner, briefly listed the as-yet unofficially announced Acer Nitro laptop.
We have been eagerly awaiting the release of the mobile version of Nvidia’s RTX 30 Series Ampere GPUs and AMDs 5000 Series Ryzen Zen 3 processors. With CES coming next January, they are expected to launch very soon, giving serious weight to this proposition.
While the mobile versions of CPUs and GPUs aren’t quite as potent as the desktop variants, they still pack some serious grunt. The Triton 500 we recently reviewed is a hugely impressive laptop. Easily capable of triple-figure fps running Ultra settings at 1080p, it even manages 4k 60 on an external display. Our review unit had an RTX 2080 MaxQ GPU and an i7-10875H CPU, paired with 32Gb DDR4-3200.
The listing pegged the new Nitro 5 as having an RTX 3080 with 8GB of GDDR6, 32 Gb RAM and the Zen 3 octa-core processor with expected clock speeds of 3.2 GHz (4.4 GHz peak). Based on our experience with current notebook performance, this should be a potent package, likely close to a desktop with an RTX 3070. For something you can put in a bag and carry around with you, it’s an incredibly attractive proposition.
Rather than a new product line, this new laptop appears to be part of a 2021 SKU-refresh and is expected to be joined by updated versions of the rest of the range, with GTX 1650 and Radeon RX GPUs filling out the entry-level end of the spectrum. A Nitro 5 with an RTX 2060 made its way to our review desk in 2020, and we praised the outstanding gaming performance balanced out by the very affordable price.
Acer’s Nitro 5 range come with up to 17.3″ displays, and this one is purported to be a 144 Hz 1080p IPS panel. A backlit keyboard, WiFi 6 and high-speed NIC capabilities are pretty much a given with Acer notebooks, as are plentiful IO ports. The listing had the Nitro 5 priced around the €2000 (£1800) mark, which isn’t cheap, per se, but it is very reasonable for the quoted spec.
Acer has proven exceptionally capable when it comes to balancing features with affordability. If they can make this magic happen again with the new Ryzen CPUs and Ampere GPUs, the new Nitro and Predator laptop ranges are going to be incredibly exciting over the coming year.
