[In-Depth Comparison] Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55) vs ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707 – Big laptops need some attention too

17.3-inch gaming laptops are honestly really good deals. Since most of the consumer base focuses on the smaller 15.6-inch and 16-inch models, their bigger counterparts have a higher chance of going on clearance sales earlier and more frequently. However, today we have two very new representatives of the 17.3-inch market, from two competing  Taiwanese giants in the laptop space.

The 2022 version of the Acer Nitro 5 has been a big success, offering high TGP graphics cards and capable 12th Gen Intel processors, making for a killer gaming machine that can rival the best in the game, including much more expensive devices from ROG or Legion.

The same can be said about the ASUS TUF Gaming A17. The TUF series originally had some cooling struggles, however, ASUS totally hit the nail on the head in 2022, offering a new cooling solution that keeps the high-powered RTX Graphics and Ryzen 6000H-series processors in check.

Today we present you with an in-depth comparison between the Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55) and the ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55): Full Specs / In-depth Review

ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707: Full Specs / In-depth Review

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55) configurations:

ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707 configurations:

Contents


Design and construction

Similar to its smaller brother, the 17.3-inch Nitro 5 is made entirely from plastic. The whole laptop is covered in black, with the lid sporting the only bits of color, with some futuristic pattern of lines in red and blue running across it. When closed, the laptop has a very boxy shape, with the rear end having some more aggressive features. There are two heat vents that have the same appearance as the ones on the more expensive Acer Predator Helios 300. In terms of dimensions, the laptop is quite heavy, weighing 3.00 kg and having a profile of 28.6 mm. Overall, the laptop is very durable, with no flex from the base, while the lid twists a tiny bit, which is all right in our eyes.

The TUF A17 takes things up a notch, offering a metal lid and a plastic chassis that are on par, if not more durable than the Nitro 5. It’s also more industrial and military looking, with an embossed TUF logo and riveted corners (actual rivets haven’t been used). The laptop has a dark grey finish with diamond-cut edges and corners. The notebook is noticeably lighter, weighing only 2.60 kg and having a profile of 25.4 mm.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

Keyboard and touchpad

The lid on the Nitro opens with one hand, revealing a keyboard with an RGB backlight. Due to the thicker profile, you can expect tons of key travel and clicky feedback. The WASD and Arrow keys are also highlighted, along with the NitroSennse button. There’s also a grill on top, which is mostly for cooling, despite the DTS:X logo beside it. The touchpad is a bit smaller for this 17.3-inch device, but the cover is very smooth, while the tracking and accuracy are fast and precise.

The TUF A17 uses a chicklet keyboard with white WASD keys that work very well with the backlight that’s present. The key travel is nice, and the feedback is clicky enough. Overall, the unit is great for typing, while gaming comes in as a close second, something we didn’t expect from a TUF laptop. The touchpad is quite larger than the one on the Nitro while being as smooth and as accurate, a definitive win in our book.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

Ports

The port selection on the Nitro is pretty rich, with a total of three USB Type-A 3.2 ports, two of which have 10Gbps transfer speeds, a Thunderbolt 4 port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a LAN connector, and a 3.5 mm audio jack.

The TUF A17 offers two USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, one of which can output a DisplayPort signal with G-Sync support, two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, a LAN port, an HDMI 2.0b port, and an audio jack. Overall, it trades one Type-A port for a Type-C port, while having a lower-grade HDMI connection.


Disassembly, upgrade options

Both laptops offer two SODIMM slots and two M.2 PCIe x4 slots, which support Gen 4 SSDs. On the other hand, the Nitro uses good old DDR4 memory, thanks to Adler Lake’s support, while the TUF carries the more expensive DDR5 modules.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

Spec sheet comparison


Display quality

The Nitro 5 comes with both FHD and QHD displays, with the former getting a 144Hz refresh rate, while the latter bumps it up to 165Hz. The TUF A17 only offers an FHD IPS panel with a 144Hz refresh rate, which is a big miss on ASUS’s part, as the 17.3-inch display could have used the extra pixels. We tested a Nitro 5 config with a QHD display which results in a higher pixel density of 170 PPI, a lower pitch of 0.15 x 0.15 mm, and a Retina distance of 51 cm.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

Both laptops offer comfortable viewing angles. Below are 45-degree images to evaluate quality.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

The Nitro 5 panel has a higher peak brightness of 320 nits in the middle of the screen and 302 nits as an average for the entire display area, with a max deviation of 10% and a contrast ratio of 1160:1.

While the TUF doesn’t get as bright, with only 274 nits in the middle and 264 nits on average, it has a higher contrast ratio of 1390:1.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

Color coverage

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 on 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 the color coverage of both the Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55) and the ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707. The Nitro 5 offers 100% sRGB and 99% DCI-P3 coverage, while the TUF covers about 53% of the sRGB gamut.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

Color accuracy

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 in factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can check the results from the test of both laptops, with both the factory settings (left) and with our “Design and Gaming” profile applied (right).

The Nitro 5’s panel gets a lot more accurate, reaching a dE value of 2.0 with our profile.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)

ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707


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.

The Nitro 5 has a really high-quality panel, with a Fall + Rise time of 9 ms.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

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 by 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.

Both laptops use no PWM across all brightness levels, meaning that the displays are comfortable to use, without presenting any excessive eye strain in this aspect.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

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.

Buy our profiles

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55) 17.3″ Quad HD IPS BOE NE173QHM-NY6 (BOE0A13): Buy our profiles

ASUS TUF Gaming A17 A707 17.3″ FHD IPS AUO B173HAN04.9: Buy our profiles

Battery life

Both laptops come with 90Wh battery units, however, the TUF notebook is on a roll, delivering much higher results. This is both due to the ASUS device having a lower res display, but also because the Ryzen 6000H-series offers some of the most efficient high-performing CPUs right now. The A17 lasts for 5 hours and 55 minutes more in web browsing and 3 hours and 52 minutes more in video playback.

As always, we test our laptops with the 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.

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

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.


Performance

The Nitro 5 is powered by Alder Lake H-series processors, while the TUF A17 gets the Ryzen 6000H-series. In terms of graphics, both laptops use high-TGP versions of the RTX 30-series, with up to a 140W RTX 3070 Ti.

CPU benchmarks

Here we tested the Core i7-12700H and the Ryzen 7 6800H. The Core i7 has a decent lead of 9% in 3D Rendering while being only o.1 second quicker in Photoshop. This isn’t the best showing of the Core i7 that we’ve seen. In fact, it’s the lowest scoring model that we’ve tested so far.

Results are from the Cinebench R23 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)

Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)


GPU benchmarks

Here we tested the RTX 3070 Ti and the RTX 3070. As you can see, the performance is really quite similar. The GPU inside the Nitro 5 scores only 0.42% higher in 3DMark Fire Strike, but is 8% quicker in Unigine Superposition.


Gaming tests

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

Metro ExodusFull HD, Low (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Extreme (Check settings)
Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55) – RTX 3070 Ti (140W)138 fps90 fps (+1%)49 fps (+7%)
ASUS TUF A17 FA707 – RTX 3070 (140W)139 fps (+1%)89 fps46 fps

Borderlands 3Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Badass (Check settings)
Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55) – RTX 3070 Ti (140W)119 fps102 fps88 fps (+2%)
ASUS TUF A17 FA707 – RTX 3070 (140W)119 fps103 fps (+1%)86 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55) – RTX 3070 Ti (140W)130 fps (+23%)111 fps (+11%)77 fps (+5%)
ASUS TUF A17 FA707 – RTX 3070 (140W)106 fps100 fps74 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Both devices bolster quality cooling setups. The Nitro 5 has a total of 5 heat pipes, with two shared, one more for the CPU and two more for the GPU. There are two fans and four heat sinks.

On the side of the ASUS laptop, we also have 5 pipes, with two shared, one more separate pipe for the CPU and GPU, with the last one going over the VRMs and the GPU memory.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

Max CPU load

Intel Core i7-12700H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)2.22 GHz @ 3.27 GHz @ 83°C @ 115W3.43 GHz @ 2.71 GHz @ 82°C @ 100W1.58 GHz @ 3.27 GHz @ 93°C @ 95W

The low CPU performance is probably due to the weird power management of the Nitro 5, as the P-cores take a break and the E-cores do the grunt of the work, which causes high temperatures, with the processor reaching 93°C.

AMD Ryzen 7 6800H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA7073.79 GHz (B+18%) @ 74°C @ 78W3.76 GHz (B+18%) @ 81°C @ 77W3.75 GHz (B+17%) @ 86°C @ 78W

Since the Ryzen 7 doesn’t have different types of cores, it continuously runs at 3.70 – 3.80GHz and manages to maintain a stable wattage and temperature, that isn’t very high.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 TiGPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan)
Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)1663 MHz @ 73°C @ 149W1655 MHz @ 74°C @ 149W

The RTX 3070 Ti goes up to 149W, while temps are relatively low.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max fans)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA7071656 MHz @ 77°C @ 139W1646 MHz @ 79°C @ 140W

The regular 3070 runs at similar clock speeds and slightly higher temperatures while running at a deficit of around 10W.

Gaming comfort

The two laptops get quite noisy, despite the fact that the TUF A17’s fans don’t even reach their max RPMs. However, the base is kept cool, with a hotspot of 39°C. On the other hand, the temperature is spread evenly, which warms up a bigger part of the base.

The TUF A17’s base has a hotter hotspot of 45°C, but it’s focused on one area, which makes the base cooler overall. Also, the bottom panel doesn’t get hot at all, since there are so many inlets for air, so it cools down the whole panel.

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707

Verdict

What we have here are two bank-for-the-buck laptops, which excel in different areas. Design-wise, we love that Acer found a way to keep its gamer-y nature while still maintaining a minimal aesthetic. The TUF laptop is much more industrial, with ASUS logos in sight when the laptop is closed. It also has a metal lid and is considerably lighter and thinner.

The keyboard on the Nitro 5 does a slightly better job in games, giving us more key travel and better feedback. It’s also got larger keycaps, especially when looking at the set of Arrow keys. The TUF base is very well styled, with a smaller grill, and a hexagonal power button. The A17 also has a much larger touchpad, which looks huge even for a 17.3-inch device.

Both laptops have pretty good I/O, but the Nitro 5 gets some stuff that’s lacking on the ASUS laptop, mainly Thunderbolt 4 support, as well as an HDMI 2.1 connector, for high-res, high-fps signal output. Upgradeability is superb on both machines, while the Acer laptop completely kills it with its QHD 165Hz display, which is not only brighter but also fully covers the sRGB and DCI-P3 gamuts, as well as accurate colors using our Design and Gaming profile. For gaming, it has a quicker response time, by a large margin.

Where the TUF A17 shines is with its efficiency, as the Ryzen 7 6800H and the 90Wh battery work fantastically together, offering significant gains. When it comes to performance, however, Intel is still king, and the Core i7 is quicker in 3D Rendering, while Photoshop results are very close. In terms of gaming and GPU performance, the regular RTX 3070 is a good match against its Ti model, with Ghost Recon: Wildlands favoring the 3070 Ti the most.

Lastly, both laptops have capable cooling setups, however, Acer is severely mismanaging its Core i7-12700H, spiking the efficiency cores’ clock speeds for performance, which is the total opposite of what they should be doing. Overall, with a tweak to the firmware, the Nitro 5 could be an even more powerful laptop.

If you’re wondering which to pick between the two, ask yourself what you’ll do on the laptop. If it’s Creator work and gaming combined that you’re after, the Nitro 5 is a clear winner. If the TUF A17 manages to be cheaper, it is the better product, solely for gaming. Sadly, ASUS decided not to provide their laptop with the same display selection that’s available on the smaller TUF A15.


Why choose the Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55)?

  • Great display with wide color coverage and accurate colors
  • Lower external temperatures
  • Intel + NVIDIA combination is better for Creators


Why choose the ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707?

  • Longer battery life
  • Matches the Nitro 5 in terms of performance
  • Larger touchpad
  • Lighter and thinner body

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55): Full Specs / In-depth Review

ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707: Full Specs / In-depth Review

Acer Nitro 5 (AN517-55) configurations:

ASUS TUF Gaming A17 FA707 configurations:

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