Gaming: Breaking Acer Nitro V15 Gaming Laptop Review

AI has ruined the market for everyone, and Acer's budget laptop is no different in that regard. Touting 16 GB of DDR4 and a 512 GB SSD, its otherwise solid entry-level hardware is stymied by a high price, that's only been amplified by those pesky datacenters hoovering up NAND flash left right and centre.

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This is the Nitro V 15, a modern entry-level gaming laptop from Acer. Hot off the factory line. It comes with an RTX 5050, an Intel Core i7-13620H, high refresh rate IPS panel, a luscious chassis, and is backed up by no less than 16GB of RAM. DDR4 RAM. Yeah… you read that right.

Not the modern DDR5 kits that have been injected into some of the best gaming notebooks we've tested in the last four years. No, it's that ageing memory standard, which first debuted in this particular portable form factor all the way back in September of 2015. Almost as old as my entire career. Yikes.

I wonder why that is... Well, as you probably already know, the pricing of memory in recent months has absolutely catapulted skywards. As manufacturers and fabs pivot their supply lines to feed the burgeoning beasts that are the "trust me bro, it's very green", AI datacenters, the limited stock heading to the consumer field (i.e. us lot looking for a good laptop deal), is quite rapidly evaporating.

As a result of that, we're seeing a dramatic shift in just how these particular budget laptop SKUs are spinning up. From all manufacturers, too, not just Acer. Drops from 32 GB down to 16 GB on memory have become commonplace. SSD capacity has trended downwards too, dropping from the usual complement of 1-2 TBs of the PCIe good stuff, all the way to the lowly slums of just 512 GB in some cases. That leaves you with a little under 370 GB once Windows is installed. Yet this may well be the first time we've seen a manufacturer backtrack onto an older memory standard entirely. And it does not do the Nitro V any favors, that's a fact.

24.0mm x 360.2mm x 240.0mm | 0.94 x 14.18 x 9.44 inches

✅ You're absolutely capped at $1,080: The whole market is a mess right now, and Acer's Nitro V 15 does represent ok value at this price. But if you can stretch to getting something like the A16 or Lenovo LOQ ,do that instead.

❌ You're a gamer: You'll be just disappointed, with a small hard drive, lacking m

Source: PC Gamer