Acer Nitro 5 Spin NP515 (i7-8550U, GTX 1050) Convertible Review

[Redaktion]

Display upgrade vs. SSD downgrade. On the outside, the Acer Nitro 5 Spin is easily recognizable as the gaming version of the Acer Spin 5. But trying to find other differences between the two convertibles is more difficult - there do not seem to be any at first glance. Is the Nitro hoping to reach gamer status by its red stripes alone, or does it have more to offer? We have put it to the test.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Nitro-5-Spin-NP515-i7-8550U-GTX-1050-Convertible-Review.298672.0.html

[Amatol]

Wow...is this what Acer hopes is the new rage? the gaming, convertible laptop?

[DigitalAlchemist]

Not just Acer...   the new XPS 15 2-in-1 brings gtx 1060 caliber gpus to the 2-in-1 space.  The Yoga 720 15 is equipped with a 7700hq and a 1050gpu and the new 730 series replaces the 7700hq with a 8550u.   The Acer Q535ud is in the same ball park.

These aren't just for gaming though...  content creators / artists need the GPU chops with pen support in a tablet form.  That huge 15" 'ungainly notebook' most reviewers treat as a minus are a big plus for artists who want a bigger canvas.

[Red Light Distract]

Even if this had TB3 and good keyboard, "red text on black" colour scheme is, to me, some or all of these:

-distraction
-attraction (not in a good way, attraction should be a nice, pleasing to watch, screen, not lights elsewhere in the unit)
-tacky
-hard to read

And having even one such "mistake" is just a "red flag" of "what other non-sense there is".

Unrelated: I'm also concerned with the Spectre/Meltdown performance hits. I have not seen a single article that actually goes through creative/production/workstation/VMware Workstation/file-server type of things. All of those are enough different from web server and gaming that it's not clear if the perf hit is such that one should wait for fix. So I'm holding off on PCs updates even though something like Yoga 720 that has TB3 is really tempting.

[Pavel S]

I own this laptop for about half year. I totally agree that red symbols on keyboard practically unreadable even with daylight. Only backlit helps, but it switches off fast. Fans are loud if you play games. No noise with photoshop, browsing and other daily tasks. Seems like I have the same screen as Spin 5 because I see very limited reds and greens in comparison with Dell IPS monitor. My configuration was with HDD only so installed Samsung 850 Evo saved me lots of nerves. Now it fast. CPU and RAM work fine for productivity tasks like web-design, graphic design. I'm happy with this machine. Touch and transformer abilities weren't key factors to buy but a nice addition.

[ugamer]

Thanks to a cTDP of 25 watts

What? :D This is important detail gaming PoV.

[tomhw]

Vendor have set TDP to 25W instead of standard 15W? Correct?

[Viviana]

I own this laptop for some 6 months and I agree that the keyboard is all but functional regarding backlights and key visibility. However, my laptop came only with 8GB RAM and 256-GB SSD from Micron. The model is ACER NITRO 5 SPIN NP515-51-858Z N17W1. Could you, please, tell me if SSD is upgradeable to 512 GB, for example, and if yes which one do you recommend? Also, could I add a 1TB 2.5-inch HDD from Western Digital (WD10SPZX) with 5400 RPM to the existing 256GB SSD or to the upgraded 512 GB SSD? Thank you in advance :)