in the lab
Acer Nitro 5
Portable performance on a budget
AFFORDABLE GAMING laptops (and we use the word ‘affordable’ loosely here) are a tricky proposition. Of course, you could spend upwards of $3,000 on a high-end laptop with a powerhouse GPU and a 4K screen, but plenty of gamers want a desktop alternative that won’t break the bank. Unfortunately, many of these laptops have, over the years, struggled to perform well enough to justify their price tags, with GPUs like the GTX 1650 and now the RTX 3050 just not quite measuring up.
Thank goodness, then, for the GeForce RTX 3060. It’s the perfect budget GPU, balancing top-notch 1080p performance with relatively low power consumption and a sensible price—assuming you can get one at RRP. This is the graphics card at the heart of Acer’s latest Nitro 5 laptop, a capable and flexible gaming machine priced at a wallet-friendly $1,129. There are cheaper (and more expensive) Nitro 5 models available, but our review unit sits in the middle of the bunch.