Review: Acer Nitro V 16 AI

When I heard the Acer Nitro V 16 was under $1,000, I knew I wanted to test it out. When the price dropped to $629, I sat up in my chair. Gaming laptops built with the latest components don’t usually come that cheap, especially one powered by Nvidia's RTX 5050 graphics card.

There has to be a catch, right? There are certainly issues, including a 135-watt power adapter that can drain the battery while gaming. Despite the shortcomings, the Nitro V 16 is still one of the best cheap gaming laptops you can buy if you're on a tight budget.

It Ain't Pretty

Photograph: Luke Larsen

The Acer Nitro V 16 has an old-school PC gaming laptop design, but it’s not as over-the-top as gaming laptops of the past. It’s certainly not portable, though, weighing 5.4 pounds and nearly an inch thick; you won't want to lug this thing around everywhere. It's right around the same size as the Alienware 16X Aurora.

Like most gaming laptops, there are tons of ports. On the sides, you’ll find a microSD card slot, three USB-A ports, and a headphone jack. Conveniently, the barrel-style power jack is in the rear, along with the two external display ports: HDMI and USB-C.

Cheap laptops generally tend to cut corners in the quality of the display and the touchpad. The Acer Nitro V 16 doesn’t completely avoid these pitfalls. The resolution of 1920 x 1200 on a 16-inch screen is a fairly low pixel density, and you can definitely pick out those pixels. The display has an unpleasant green tint, and the color accuracy is rough. It's been a while since I've tested a screen with color coverage this poor. The screen maxes out at 360 nits of brightness, according to my colorimeter. In other words, this is not a laptop that will work well for content creation or professional work—at least not without the use of an external gaming monitor.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

The touchpad is not as bad as I assumed it would be. The click is quiet and responsive, while the tracking is fairly smooth. It's also quite large. I've definitely used laptops with much worse touchpads. You'll likely be using a mouse anyway, but for when you're not gaming, this touchpad won't make you hate life like others do. The keyboard is decent, with lots of key travel and single-zone backlighting. I appreciate the inclusion of full-size arrow keys too.

Unsurprisingly, the webcam and speakers are weak and should probably only be used when you're in a pinch. At least these are components you can easily upgrade down the road with a dedicated webcam or pair of computer speakers.

Don’t Underestimate It

Photograph: Luke Larsen

There’s really only one thing that matters with this type of laptop: price to performance. I was curious if a gaming laptop with the RTX 5050 is really worth it, especially since it’s the weakest graphics card in Nvidia’s latest RTX 50-series line of GPUs. I’m happy to say, however, that the RTX 5050 offers plenty of performance to make it worth the cost in the Acer Nitro V 16.

The Nitro V 16 AI comes with the AMD Ryzen 5 240, the RTX 5050, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. There are upgrade options if you want to spend a little more, whether you want more RAM and storage or a more powerful CPU like the Ryzen 7. The screen isn’t great, but at least it has a 180-Hz refresh rate to support higher frame rates.

The RTX 5060, as tested in other gaming laptops such as the Alienware 16X Aurora, is 23 percent faster than the RTX 5050 in the Nitro V 16. That’s based on my testing in the 3DMark Steel Nomad benchmark. Don't expect to play games at max settings and still get over 60 frames per second, at least without using some upscaling.

But this laptop's performance in Cyberpunk 2077 really impressed me. I was able to average 83 frames per second natively with the graphics at Medium or 64 frames per second at Ultra. Ray tracing is off limits without using upscaling, though. In my Black Myth: Wukong benchmark, the laptop averaged 62 frames per second at Medium settings. Again, I was impressed.

Photograph: Luke Larsen

Marvel Rivals was a bit more of a struggle as a more CPU-intensive game, earning only 34 frames per second in the game's benchmark at Medium settings. (Upgrading to the Ryzen 7 model may help with this.) Once I used the game's auto-optimized settings, though, I was able to get 71 frames per second, which lowered some settings and turned on DLSS to the Quality setting. In just about every game I tried, it was always possible to get decent frame rates without needing to tank the image quality. But it requires some tweaking and upscaling.

The Acer Nitro V 16 AI excels most in lighter, competitive games like Rocket League or Fortnite. That's where that 180-Hz refresh rate comes more into play. Through it all, the system doesn't run overly loud or hot either. Unlike so many thin and light gaming laptops, the Acer Nitro V 16 manages its thermals well.

One Major Problem

Photograph: Luke Larsen

All of this comes with one major caveat. The Nitro comes with a 135-watt power adapter, which is low by gaming laptop standards. It doesn't deliver the system enough power to hold the battery's charge when plugged in, specifically when gaming in the higher performance modes.

These preset fan modes are part of Acer's NitroSense software, allowing you to balance performance, fan noise, and battery life to suit your needs. Performance mode is the default, but you can bump it up to Turbo to set the fans at max speed—and here's where the problems lie. While these modes can get you up to 6 percent faster frame rates and cooler internal temperatures, they can also drain the battery in some games. Anything GPU-heavy, such as Cyberpunk 2077, will drain in both Turbo and Performance modes. Only in Balanced will the battery stay charged, which automatically switches on once the battery drops to 40 percent. Meanwhile, games that are more CPU-heavy, like Marvel Rivals, don't drain the battery at all when plugged in.

All of this is bad. Acer should not be selling a product that can't do the things buyers assume it should be able to do. If the company can't ship the product with a higher-wattage power charger, I'd at least prefer if it disabled Turbo mode or added a notification to warn gamers when they game in a mode that's losing battery. Acer isn't supporting higher-wattage power adapters either, so at least for now, you're stuck with what you get.

I don't know if this is necessarily the end of the world. A 5 percent difference between Balanced and Turbo mode isn't enough that most people will even notice, and many gamers may be turned off by the insane fan noise created in Turbo anyway. Balanced mode still delivers very playable frame rates, especially if you're willing to use some upscaling. I have a bigger issue with it in the more expensive Nitro V 16S configurations, which cost more and aim for a more premium experience.

So, while the 135-watt power adapter keeps the Nitro V 16 from greatness, price is paramount on a product like this. The retail price of the Acer Nitro V 16 is $899, which is already cheaper than many of its competitors. At the sale price of $629, though, it's much easier to overlook its issues.