Acer Nitro 5 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12650H Gaming Laptop (Windows 11 Home/16 GB/1TB SSD/NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070Ti Graphics/165Hz) AN515-58 with…

Most folks have already covered this device in detail. Weak speakers, poor memory configuration choice, inability to upgrade without voiding warranty or submitting to extortion by Acer are the weakest bits. I’ll add a few more. I also have an Asus Zephyrus G15 (6900HS+RTX3080) and an outgoing HP Victus (RTX 3050Ti), so I’ll reference those two along the way.

1. Thermal limit of GPU is reached very early, even earlier than CPU. This is especially a problem in GPU-bound workloads like Stable Diffusion. Almost every laptop is thermally constrained, but most of them try and keep the GPU well-cooled so throttling is usually noticed only with CPU-intensive workloads. This GPU hits 87C and throttles at 110-120W if the ambient temperature is ~30C. When running in AC airflow, upto 150W is possible (the air from AC is typically cooler than the final ambient). In the maxed out mode nothing much changes except it runs noisier and cooler, but power limits remain similar. I have seen anomalous peaks to 200W, so the laptop has sufficient power budget, it’s the cooling that is very poorly designed.

As others have noted, CPU will go to thermal limit when GPU is stressed, even with minimal CPU load. It’s due to cross-loading of the cooling solution, which is not allowing each component to run at optimal temperature. By contrast, the Asus Zephyrus G15/RTX 3080 I also have, runs the GPU and CPU to limit individually and cross-loaded heating is significantly less (though still present, obviously). That GPU has never hit thermal limit even in 30C room, and does burst to the 140W range, and runs long term at 120W no issues – in a chassis that is significantly smaller and lighter. The difference is in the metal budget for the Nitro, which is much lower to save cost. You wanna know why it’s cheap? Because they undersized the cooling solution.

2. Screen panel is very good. It’s probably the exact same one as the one in the aforementioned G15, which is a good start. Unfortunately the factory “calibration” is not. My screen came with a strong green tint, which took some time to get rid of. The backlight is the bigger issue, it is spotty and weak in many areas, and stupid bright in others resulting in a very uneven image. There goes my consideration of buying an Acer monitor.

3. The Acer warranty is void if you open the laptop for any reason whatsoever, even to upgrade parts that are considered user-replaceable and upgradeable. I have a friend who is disabled and unable to travel, and Acer confirmed to him that there is no way to access the internals without visiting the service center, regardless of the customer’s physical status (obviously, he ended up not buying it, but I did). This is specific to India, in most regions the sticker they put on the screw hole is illegal. But this is India, so you’re stuck as a consumer. It’s a shame to have multiple SSD slots and a RAM configuration that throttles performance, and not be able to do anything about it. Needless to say this is the last Acer product I will be buying. Does not seem a consumer-centric company.

4. The RAM configuration is egregious. 16GB is indeed enough for this laptop. The Acer apps have a very small footprint and memory usage is just about 4GB (the G15 uses close to 6GB with the default setup including Asus bloatware). Unfortunately a single stick is what you get, and that absolutely kills the laptop when you want to do something memory-intensive. Just loading up large files (like a SD checkpoint or a large 3D file) from disk into the GPU slow this thing down to the point of being unusable. Gaming is not an issue for the most part, because the laptop is thermally constrained at all times anyway and also restricted by the pathetic memory bandwidth. Want to start your small business? Don’t get this thing. It will slow you down.

5. The fans are LOUD. They also have a very annoying high-pitched whine at about 8KHz, which pierces my ears when the laptop is in front of me. You would think it’s coil whine, but it’s not. If I max the fans manually with zero CPU/GPU load, I get this shrill wail that physically hurts. And they’re loud, like 60dB+ loud. Louder than the speakers, which are for some reason present on this laptop. It doesn’t need speakers, it needs an intervention.

6. The keyboard. OMG the keyboard. It is spongy, cramped, the numpad is a format unknown to man and the keys have no feel and no feedback. Not expecting something great, but the HP Victus I have has a significantly better keyboard. The only positive of the Acer is that the keys are translucent and not transparent like the G15, so it’s possible to use it without needing to switch on some glitzy lighting.

7. The battery. Not the battery life, that I knew was not going to be great, but the wear. It had 0% wear when I got it, and after about 10 power cycles it’s up to 3% wear. Literally degrading before my eyes. The G15 is worse, after <1 year it's at 7% and the Victus is much better, close to 2 years in and 0%. I don't think Acer (or Asus) have their A-game down on battery and power management. At least Asus took 4 months to get to 3%.

Eventually, I decided to dock the laptop instead of using it as a portable unit. It is unusable as a unit to move around with, and use as a laptop (in front of me). There are a few good things – the deck stays cool for the most part, the Acer software is good, and the CPU is reasonably competent if you are not using it as a workstation. There are plenty of upgrade options (thumbs up), but all of them are pointless because you can’t upgrade them yourself (thumbs down).

Overall, there are just too many issues with the device for me to recommend it. The fact it’s cheap does not surprise me. After using it for a week or so, I’d say it is worth probably less than I paid for it. The GPU is a rubber stamp. In actual use in typical environments, it is nowhere close to its potential due to thermal issues and single-channel memory. And that is really the only standout feature. I don’t think that it’s sufficient, not with the cooling they have on it.

I purchased the Acer Nitro 5, AN515-58 model with the i7 12650H, and RTX 3070 To model with 16 gb of single slot ram.
My experience:
1. It heats a lot, the cooling system is not enough for a 150 watt TGP graphic card, the moment I run a game within a few seconds, the temp crosses 90° C ( if you are going to play high graphics games run it with custom fan speed with the max possible rpm.
2. It has excellent upgradibility options, but it’s not user friendly as it requires one to visit their nearest acer service centre to do so because of the back panel seal, removing which by own will void the warranty.
3. The upgradibility options and capacity to which it is upgradable is not mentioned any where, the user is either dependent on service centre employees or acer community website for identifying those.
4. The back panel is fingerprint magnet and will require one to clean it regularly with a microfibre cloth, as it doesn’t clear with normal cloth. Micro fibre cloth can be obtained from spectacles cases.
5. 16 gb ram is sufficient to run any games at Max settings possible but it is in single slot means, the system is unable to utilize the max processing power. It could have been good if they provided a dual channel 8 gb ram on both slot as upgrading it will require one to visit the service centre and pay the staff. Also ddr 4 rams are very cheap so in future one could have replaced both the rams easily.
6. Battery capacity is very less, although it’s of no use as gaming requires it be plugged in. But one can increase battery output by reducing the refresh rate to 60 hz from 165 hz, turning screen brightness low and switching off the keypad lights when using outside away from power source.
7. As I said earlier there is too much confusion about the upgradibility options, whether you need an 1tb ssd or 2 tb ssd, I contacted the customer care on acer website and asked about the max upgradibility on the ssd slot, they said it is upto 1tb ssd but in the acer community there are people who have done 2 tb per slot . The sata hdd bracket can also support sata ssd according to acer community users but the customer care only said about hdd option.
8. The international market have the same laptop with i7 12700 processor which have more cores and threads than than i7 12650 processor available in Indian market at a very competitive pricing.
9. The RJ45 ethernet cable port is very weird and difficult to use. Without proper knowledge one can damage the setup.
10. One planning to purchase this model should also save money to invest in cooling system (Klim mistral model it is more effective than those nonsense cooling pad). And also I would recommend to invest in some gaming mouse and keyboard as after placing the laptop on cooling pad it not going to be easy to use it.
11. The SNID and serial no is provided on the bottom of the laptop which is required to register your product and obtain the warranty.
12. The thunderbolt 4 port present on the back side is fully functional, and it even supports charging but only upto 5V 3A (15W) which is not recommended for use during gaming.
13. The screen is similar to 100% sRGB so good with colour accuracy task, but it’s performance is not uniform all over the screen, more information on this can be found online.
14. If you want to know about the compatibility of ram and ssd before purchasing it online you can check so by using the compatibility tool from crucial website which tells you specifically which model ram and ssd is supported by your system and you can note down the specs and search from other brands if you desire so.
15. To get max performance as seen on the youtube by reviewers, turn fan speed to max, shift graphic card to discrete GPU from nitro sense software.

Powerful laptop.

The only negative is that the battery drains very rapidly.

Overall a great package at this price point.