Acer Nitro V 16 (2024) Laptop Review

The Acer Nitro V is only available in black. See the bottom of the laptop.

The Acer Nitro V gaming laptop feels well-built. Despite the chassis' mostly plastic construction, it feels solid and durable. There's almost no flex when the laptop lid is closed, and only minimal flex when open. That said, the screen and laptop deck exhibit a decent amount of flex when pressing on them. The laptop's finish isn't prone to scratches but accumulates fingerprints and oil from everyday use. Unfortunately, the laptop isn't well-balanced. It's much heavier at the back than the front, so carrying it while the lid is open isn't the best idea. Finally, the feet are firmly attached to the bottom of the laptop.

The Acer Nitro V gaming laptop has a great hinge. You can easily lift the screen with one hand. That said, the resistance is fairly light, resulting in screen wobble when typing heavily. It's best to be slow and purposeful when adjusting the screen angle to avoid wobble.

The Acer Nitro V's serviceability is excellent. Accessing the internals is straightforward. Simply remove 11 Philips Head screws (they're all the same size), and then pull on the bottom lid where Acer has placed little arrows to release it. You'll also need to unscrew a shield to access the RAM. Both storage slots support M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

You can access the User Manual on Acer's website.

• User documentation
• Stickers
• 135W power supply and cable

The Acer Nitro V is available with the following displays: 

• 16" IPS 1920 x 1200 165Hz (matte, 45% NTSC, G-SYNC)
• 16" IPS 1920 x 1200 165Hz (matte, 100% sRGB, G-SYNC)
• 16" IPS 2560 x 1600 165Hz (matte, 100% sRGB, G-SYNC)

All displays look sharp and provide plenty of space for split-screen multitasking. The QHD+ display has a higher pixel density of 188 PPI and looks sharper. The 16:10 aspect ratio is great for productivity tasks like reading articles or web browsing, as the extra vertical real estate lets you see more information simultaneously. For gaming, this aspect ratio helps by moving HUD elements a bit farther away from the center of the screen, providing a less cramped field of view regardless of the gaming genre. On the flip side, you'll almost always have black bars at the top and bottom when watching standard 16:9 videos.

The 100% sRGB FHD+ display has a fast response time, resulting in a clear image with minimal ghosting in fast-moving scenes. All displays have the same refresh rate, but the advertised response rate isn't advertised. An option for LCD Overdrive is available in the laptop's screen settings. This setting improves response times and further reduces ghosting, but introduces some artifacts. All displays use G-SYNC to reduce screen tearing.

The 100% sRGB FHD+ display has good contrast that's in line with most IPS panels. However, IPS panels have much lower contrast than other display technologies, like VA or OLED. Blacks will look gray in dark settings as a result. All displays will have similar contrast.

The 100% sRGB FHD+ display is bright enough for indoor use. It'll struggle in very bright environments, though, like outdoors. The screen gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which helps reduce eye strain when viewing content in the dark. The other displays don't have an advertised brightness.

The 100% sRGB FHD+ display has acceptable reflection handling. Its matte coating mostly diffuses direct light sources across the screen. Viewing bright content is almost entirely reflection-free, though dark content will be hard to see if there are bright lights shining directly on the screen. All displays use the same matte finish, so they should behave similarly.

The 100% sRGB FHD+ display's horizontal viewing angle is okay. However, the image dims and washes out relatively quickly as you move to the side, so you need to be directly in front of the screen when using it for color-critical work. All panels will perform similarly.

The 100% sRGB FHD+ display's vertical viewing angle is okay. Like the horizontal viewing angle, the image dims and washes when viewing from above and below, so you need to look at the screen straight on to see an accurate image. All panels will perform similarly.

The 100% sRGB FHD+ display has excellent out-of-the-box accuracy. Almost all color and white balance inaccuracies are so minor as to be imperceptible. The color temperature is a tad on the cooler side, giving the image a slight blueish tint. As for the gamma, it's too high in almost all scenes, resulting in an image that's too dark.

The 100% sRGB FHD+ display has a very good color gamut. As the name suggests, it fully covers the sRGB color space. However, it doesn't offer sufficient coverage of the Adobe RGB or DCI P3 color spaces, so it isn't suitable for print photography or HDR video production uses. The QHD+ display will perform similarly, but the other FHD+ display will have a much narrower color gamut.

The other displays are likely flicker-free.

The Acer Nitro V gaming laptop has a decent keyboard. It offers a full-sized keyboard, including a numpad (minus a couple of keys repurposed as macros). The keys feel extremely stable (with a few outliers that wobble), have great travel, and offer clear and tactile feedback. The keyboard also sounds great; it's loud and clicky but not to the point of being annoying. However, the overall typing experience could be better despite providing solid features and constructions. One issue is the layout. The keyboard is shifted quite far to the left of the laptop, and there's some wasted space around the keyboard. The shape of the keys on the numpad is also irregular; they're more rectangular than the rest of the keyboard, so moving between the keyboard and the numpad can be jarring. Because of this, getting used to typing can take a while. As for backlighting, there's one zone of orange backlighting, and you can increase or decrease the backlighting. However, you can't adjust the backlighting color, though the backlighting shines through nicely, making the legends easy to see.

The Acer Nitro V gaming laptop's touchpad is good overall. It's well-sized for the laptop, although it could be wider, and it's responsive to all movements and gestures. There are minor issues with actions like dragging and dropping, as the item will drop along the way. The touchpad uses a diving board design with mechanical buttons, so you can't click in the top quarter portion of the touchpad. The buttons work well but feel a bit mushy.

The Acer Nitro V gaming laptop's speakers have a muddy sound signature, as neither the treble nor bass are pronounced enough to define the sound. They get quite loud, but there's some distortion at maximum volume.

The Acer Nitro V gaming laptop's webcam is mediocre. The image is noticeably colder than it should be, resulting in a bluish tint. Similarly, fine details are rather unclear. Perhaps the strangest feature is that the webcam crops the sides of the image. By contrast, the microphone is solid, with no noticeable static or white noise.

The Acer Nitro V has a decent port selection. Both USB-A ports support USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps. The USB-C port supports USB4 speeds up to 40Gbps data transfer speed.

The Acer Nitro V uses the AMD RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E. Wi-Fi 6E gives you access to the 6GHz band, providing faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous wireless standards; however, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features. If you're looking to upgrade your router for these newer standards, check out our recommendations for the best Wi-Fi routers.

The Acer Nitro V 16 is available with the following CPUs:

• AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS (6 cores/12 threads, up to 5.0GHz, 16MB L3 cache)
• AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (8 cores/16 threads, up to 5.1GHz, 16MB L3 cache)

Both are high-performance processors typically found in gaming, content creation, and workstation laptops. They're essentially a refresh of the older AMD Ryzen 7040 series processors, but with better Neural Processing Unit (NPU) performance (up to 40% faster than the previous generation) to speed up AI-based tasks, like image generation in photo editing apps and background blurring during video calls. The Ryzen 7 has two additional cores, making it better suited for intensive, multicore workloads than the Ryzen 5 chip. However, the Ryzen 7 only receives a slight bump in its clock speed, resulting in slightly better performance for single-threaded applications, like when playing older game titles.

To see the complete line-up of 8040 series processors and learn more about the architecture, you can read the product brief on AMD's website.

The Acer Nitro V 16 is available with the following GPUs:

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU 6GB GDDR6 (70W TGP /w Dynamic Boost)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU 6GB GDDR6 (85W TGP /w Dynamic Boost)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6 (85W TGP /w Dynamic Boost)

These GPUs range from entry-level (RTX 3050 and RTX 4050) to lower mid-range (RTX 4060) models. They're suitable for graphically intensive tasks, but there are significant performance differences. The RTX 3050 uses NVIDIA's older Ampere architecture and doesn't support Frame Generation, a 40-series exclusive feature. Otherwise, they all support features like DLSS, ray tracing, and Reflex. In practical terms, all models can offer playable frame rates in demanding games at 1080p, but you'll have to use the lowest settings and rely on features like DLSS with the 3050; you'll be able to turn up the settings to medium with the 4050, as it has Frame Generation to boost performance. By contrast, the 4060 excels at 1080p gaming, and it can even push decent frames at 1440p if you opt for the QHD+ display option; know you'll have to turn down some settings and use features like DLSS and Frame Generation in demanding titles.

The biggest issue with these GPUs is their relatively low VRAM; 6GB is no longer sufficient for many recent games, even when using low or medium settings at 1080p. For 1440p gaming, 8GB can be insufficient beyond medium settings, depending on the title. You may encounter issues with frame pacing and experience more stutters.

For more information about NVIDIA's 40-series laptop GPUs, check out the comparison table on NVIDIA's website.

You can configure the Acer Nitro V with 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of RAM. If you plan to use this laptop primarily for intensive gaming, you'll want at least 16GB of RAM, as 8GB can cause performance issues and result in choppy gameplay. The memory is user-replaceable.

You can get the Acer Nitro V with 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of storage. The storage is user-replaceable; there are two M.2 2280 slots.

The Acer Nitro V has an outstanding score in Geekbench 5. Its AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS performs well in various workloads and can easily handle general productivity and intensive, multi-threaded applications alike. The Ryzen 5 is similarly versatile, but with two fewer cores, it won't perform as well for intensive multi-core tasks like 3D rendering. If you need even more processing power, there are significantly faster CPUs on the market, like the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024)'s Intel Core i9-14900HX and the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023)'s M3 Max SoC. The GPUs are all suited to intensive tasks and perform well. There's a wide range of performance, as the RTX 4060 is significantly faster than the RTX 3050 and offers more VRAM than both the RTX 3050 and 4050; the right choice depends on the complexity of your workload and budget.

To exemplify real-world performance, we've run all of our benchmarks using the laptop's Turbo mode and with the fans set to Max. This provides users with a better sense of the laptop's full potential. As a result, the results are not directly comparable to our other reviews, which test laptops in their default out-of-the-box settings.

The Acer Nitro V's AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS performs well in Cinebench R23. It's suitable for demanding multi-threaded applications and heavy multitasking. The Ryzen 5 will perform worse, with two fewer cores and slightly lower clock speeds.

The Acer Nitro V performs exceptionally well in Blender. The RTX 4060 is exponentially faster at rendering images than the CPU. The RTX 4050 and 3050 will also be faster than the CPU but won't perform as well as the 4060, so choose the GPU based on your needs and budget.

The Acer Nitro V with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU scores well in the Basemark GPU benchmark. As mentioned in the GPU section, the RTX 4060 performs very well for 1080p gaming. It can even handle most titles at 1440p, but you'll need to turn down the settings and/or rely on features like DLSS and Frame Generation if you want high frame rates. The RTX 4050 is mainly for 1080p gaming, and even then, you might have to turn down some settings because it only has 6GB of VRAM; the RTX 3050 can only handle 1080p gaming on the lowest settings, and you'll have to use DLSS (when available) to help with performance.

The gaming battery life benchmark was performed using the laptop's Turbo mode and with the fans set to Max, while the other battery benchmarks were performed using the laptop's Balanced setting. Models with an RTX 3050 will have slightly longer battery life as that GPU has a lower TGP, while models with a QHD+ display will have shorter battery life.

You can achieve smooth gameplay in Borderlands 3 at 1080p on the Acer Nitro V gaming laptop with an AMD Ryzen 7 8745HS CPU and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU. Here are additional benchmarks from Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1080p to give you a better idea of the performance:

Red Dead Redemption 2

• Quality: 73 fps
• Low: 120 fps

Every configuration can easily handle Civilization VI and other similarly demanding strategy games. The average turn time is decent, so you won't need to wait too long to see if your trade route got plundered by pesky barbarians.

All configurations can play CS2 at 1080p. While the RTX 4050 can still achieve high frame rates at max settings, the RTX 3050 can't provide high-refresh gameplay in this or similar competitive FPS titles using max settings. There are occasional stutters, but they're infrequent and don't impact the overall gameplay experience.

The Acer Nitro V with the RTX 4060 can deliver smooth gameplay in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and other similarly demanding games without issues. While the RTX 4050 will provide an equally smooth gameplay experience, even without using DLSS, you'll want to use DLSS in this title with the RTX 3050. The large frame time spikes are scene changes and aren't representative of the performance.

When using every fan mode except Max, this laptop is silent when idle. The noise picks up a lot under load; it reaches 45 dBA when using the Balanced or Performance mode, while the Turbo mode without the Max fan setting increases the noise even higher to 49 dBA, just under the 49.5 dBA when using the Max fan setting. The laptop remains cool under load. Using the Balanced performance mode, the hotspot is just 34.5 °C (94.1 °F), while Performance mode without Max fans results in a hotspot of 36.3 °C (97.3 °F).

We've conducted this test using the laptop's best performance (Turbo) mode with the fan speed at max instead of the default Balanced mode we've used in previous laptop reviews.

This laptop comes with many pre-installed applications, including:

• Acer LiveArt: Allows you to remove the background from an image with people, animals, or objects using AI.
• Acer QuickPanel: Allows you to quickly access AI-enhanced settings for your webcam and microphone.
• Acer Product Registration: Allows you to register your laptop with Acer for warranty.
• DTS Sound Unbound: Application for 3D spatial sound solutions from DTS, like DTS Headphone: X.
• DTS: X Ultra: This application allows you to customize static, multi-channel, or object-based audio formats for gaming.
• Express VPN: VPN trial.
• McAfee LiveSafe: Antivirus and internet security software. Requires subscription.
• NitroSense: This app lets you access power settings and fan controls and monitor system temperatures and performance. See a video of it in action.
• WebAdvisor by McAfee: Protects you from malware when browsing the internet. Requires subscription.

You can use a button on the top left of the keyboard to toggle power settings. Pressing this button while using the AC power adapter switches between Quiet, Balanced, Performance, and Turbo power settings; on battery power, these settings change to Balanced and Eco modes.