Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51) review – we prefer the 15-inch version

It took us a while, but we were finally able to get our hands on the 17-inch version of the Acer Nitro 5 2019. Otherwise, it is called the Nitro 5 (AN517-51) and it is more or less an enlarged version of the 15-inch model. As such, it features the Coffee Lake processors from Intel, maxing out with the Core i7-9750H, which has six cores and twelve threads.

As far as the graphics card comes, you can go from the GTX 1050 all the way to GTX 1660 Ti. Currently, there are no Ray-tracing-enabled GPUs, you can get the Nitro 5(AN517-51) equipped with. Additionally, the notebook features the CoolBoost technology from Acer that according to them, gives you up to 10% increased fan speed. You can control and monitor that through the NitroSense that comes with your PC (or if you buy the device without an operating system, you can download it from Acer’s official website).

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-nitro-5-an517-51/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51) - Specs

  • BOE NV173FHM-N46 (BOE0839)
  • Color accuracy  3.5  1.9
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 1000GB SSD + up to 2000GB HDD
  • M.2 Slot
  • 2x M.2 PCIe x4 NVMe slots with RAID 0 support  See photo
  • RAM
  • up to 32GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Home, No OS
  • Battery
  • 55Wh, 4-cell, 3580 mAh, 4-cell, 58Wh, 4-cell
  • Body material
  • Plastic / Polycarbonate
  • Dimensions
  • 381 x 279 x 26.9 mm (15.00" x 10.98" x 1.06")
  • Weight
  • 3.00 kg (6.6 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 2.0
  • HDMI
  • VGA
  • DVI
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Gigabit Ethernet
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth
  • 4.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm audio jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • HD 720p
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot
  • Kensington Lock

What’s in the box?

So, when you unbox the packagin of this laptop, you are going to see a 135W power adapter (should you buy the GTX 1050/1650 model), or a 180W one, if you are getting the GTX 1660 Ti iteration.


Design and construction

So yes, as expected the entirety of this notebook is built out of plastic. One of the big disadvantages of the plastic glossy finish is that it is an utter fingerprint magnet. Also, it is not the most durable material out there, but for the price asked – you have to settle with it. Measurement-wise, it has a 26.9 mm profile and it weighs around 3 kilos. In comparison to the Pavilion Gaming 17 2019, it is 1.5 mm thicker and 250 grams heavier.


Opening the lid is an easy job for a single hand. Additionally, it has rather slim bezels on the sides and bulky (in comparison) head and chin. Structural integrity is not great, as there is some flex on the lid itself. Most of the strength actually comes from the hinges, that are placed in the widest place possible.

Further down, there is the base. Given the fact that this is a 17-inch device, we would have appreciated a larger keyboard. Instead, Acer has put literally the same unit, we saw on the 15-inch model. Yes, we are aware that it is a lot cheaper to manufacture one type of keyboard for multiple models, but it just looks silly that the NumberPad keys are much smaller than letter ones.

While the keys themselves give you clicky feedback and have a decent travel, we noticed that sometimes, you need to press a little harder so that it registers your input. Other than that, the board is good for gaming – plus, it has large arrow keys. Beneath the keyboard, there is a touchpad that is decent in size but lacks dedicated buttons. With that said, we must mention that clicking on it requires more pressure than usual.

Lastly, on the bottom plate, you will find a pretty large ventilation grill, where you can clearly see the fans. In addition to that, there are the speaker grills, while the hot air is exhausted from the back and from the right side.

Ports

I/O-wise, there is an RJ-45 connector, an HDMI connector, as well as a USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 1) and two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports on the left side. Then on the right, you will see the power adapter, a USB Type-A 2.0 port and an audio jack. Sadly, there is no SD card reader, nor Thunderbolt connectivity on this one.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

There are 12 Phillips-head screws that hold this notebook’s bottom panel in place. After you unscrew them, there is a slow prying process, that requires you to pop every single clip before you will be able to lift the plate up. Keep in mind that the exhaust grill cover must come off as well.

Then, we have the cooling, which comprises only two heat pipes. On the 15-inch version of the device, we saw three heat pipes, but it was cooling the much more powerful GTX 1660 Ti.

In terms of memory and storage, this is one of the great notebooks out there. First, it supports 32GB of memory via two RAM DIMMs. Next, there are two M.2 PCIe slots and an additional 2.5″ SATA drive slot.

Last, but not least, is the 57.5Wh battery pack. It is a shame that Acer didn’t utilize more of the free space inside.


Display quality

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51) is equipped with a Full HD IPS screen, model number BOE NV173FHM-N46 (BOE0839). Its diagonal is 17.3″ (43.94 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 127 ppi, their pitch – 0.1995 x 0.1995 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 69 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Its viewing angles are comfortable. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.

The maximum measured brightness is 254 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 245 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 9%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 7243K (average) – colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 7140K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 46% Brightness (White level = 143 cd/m2, Black level = 0.14 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is very good – 1030:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 92% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976, which provides a vibrant and punchy image.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 22 ms


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51)’s display doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment. This makes it comfortable for long working periods, without being harmful to your eyes in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusions

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51)’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, good contrast ratio, and comfortable viewing angles. Not only that, but it covers 92% of sRGB and doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness levels. Additionally, if you apply our Gaming and Web design profile, the laptop can be used for Web design, as it falls just inside the standard Average dE of <2.0.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51) configurations with 17.3″ BOE NV173FHM-N46 (BOE0839) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51) has a good quality sound. Its lows have some deviations, while the mids and highs are clear.


Drivers

You can download all of the drivers and utilities for this notebook from here: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/7966?b=1

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This device has a 57.5Wh battery pack.

This gave us 5 hours and a half of Web browsing and 5 hours and 15 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

Currently, the Intel version of this notebook features the Core i5-9300H and the Core i7-9750H.


GPU options

GPU-wise, the option go from the GTX 1050, then GTX 1650 and tops out with the GTX 1660 Ti.


Gaming tests

Far Cry 5Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 165063 fps58 fps55 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650110 fps80 fps36 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 165057 fps52 fps46 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Core i7-9750H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51)2.89 GHz (B+11%)@ 69°C2.81 GHz (B+8%)@ 75°C2.52 GHz @ 78°C
HP Pavilion Gaming 15 20193.57 GHz (B+37%)@ 81°C2.88 GHz (B+11%)@ 73°C2.66 GHz (B+2%)@ 73°C
Lenovo Legion Y7000 (2019)3.34 GHz (B+28%)@ 72°C3.15 GHz (B+21%)@ 82°C2.99 GHz (B+15%)@ 79°C
Lenovo Legion Y5402.78 GHz (B+7%)@ 74°C3.08 GHz (B+18%)@ 90°C2.87 GHz (B+10%)@ 79°C
ASUS ROG G7313.38 GHz (B+30%)@ 87°C3.43 GHz (B+32%)@ 94°C2.63 GHz @ 73°C
ASUS ROG G5313.41 GHz (B+31%)@ 95°C3.23 GHz (B+24%)@ 95°C2.72 GHz (B+5%)@ 79°C
HP Omen 17 20193.44 GHz (B+32%)@ 86°C2.74 GHz (B+5%)@ 71°C2.67 GHz (B+3%)@ 71°C

Apparently, Acer has emasculated the Core i7-9750H on this laptop. Whether this has to do with giving the GPU some headroom, or its cooling is not that efficient, we are not sure. What we know, is that the fans were spinning very quietly even, when we put it through 15 minutes of Prime95 load.

Real-life gameplay

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51)1597 MHz @ 70°C1590 MHz @ 71°C
ASUS TUF FX7051566 MHz @ 74°C1568 MHz @ 74°C
Acer Nitro 7 (AN715-51)1633 MHz @ 61°C1599 MHz @ 67°C

When you are gaming, the laptop will become significantly louder. This is because of the fans speeding up quite drastically. However, this has a good result on performance, as the clocks are just below 1600 MHz, and the temperature of the die never exceeds 71C

Verdict

After half a year has passed, since we posted our review of the 2019 Nitro 5 laptop, we were able to also test its 17-inch version. Quite honestly, it was pretty similar to its smaller brother – both on the outside and in terms of hardware.

In many ways, this could prove as a double edge knife. The first downside to that is the keyboard. While the board itself is not bad at all, we just feel that Acer could have gone the extra mile and put a larger one, or at least improved the layout, so the NumberPad keys are one – not that close to the Arrow keys, and two – not that small in size. Another – more substantial drawback is the lack of SD card reader and Thunderbolt connectivity.

Yet again, the battery is a 57.5Wh unit and we were able to extract no more than five hours and a half of Web browsing, and 15 minutes less, during video playback.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-51)’s IPS panel (BOE NV173FHM-N46 (BOE0839)) has a Full HD resolution, good contrast ratio, and comfortable viewing angles. Not only that, but it covers 92% of sRGB and doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness levels. Additionally, if you apply our Gaming and Web design profile, the laptop can be used for Web design, as it falls just inside the standard Average dE of <2.0.

In terms of performance and temperatures, this laptop stacks pretty well with the competition – it maintains adequate temperatures during long gaming sessions, as well as decent performance. However, we noticed that the processor speeds were lower than usual. This makes us believe that for gaming – the Nitro 5 (AN517-51) is amazing, however, when it comes to CPU-intensive like rendering a video or a 3D object, you are better off, going for another model.

Nevertheless, one of the biggest advantages of this laptop is that it has two M.2 PCIe slots, an additional 2.5″ SATA drive slot, as well as two RAM DIMMs that support up to 32GB of DDR4 memory in total.

Since we were big fans of the 15-inch version of the Nitro 5, we expected this laptop to build on it, given its great screen. However, we are left slightly disappointed. It comes that you should better get the smaller unit, or go for the HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2019.

Pros

  • Decently priced
  • Has two M.2 PCIe slots, as well as a 2.5″ SATA drive slot
  • Covers 92% of sRGB and our Gaming and Web design profile makes it appropriate for color-sensitive work (BOE NV173FHM-N46 (BOE0839))
  • Doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness levels (BOE NV173FHM-N46 (BOE0839))
  • Large arrow keys


Cons

  • Lacks an SD card reader and Thunderbolt connectivity
  • NumberPad keys are small

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-nitro-5-an517-51/

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R7ex Ed
R7ex Ed
4 years ago

“ASUS VivoBook 15 F512 (X512) – Specs”

Wait … WHAT?!

eli
eli
4 years ago

y is it better to go for the 15 inch one?

pete
pete
4 years ago

So how does one know exactly what panels bear his/her Acer 5 nitro 17.3 ” 517-51, is it LG as some websites said? Is it BOE?
Lottery?

JpSiqueira
JpSiqueira
3 years ago

What capacity of each M.2?