There's no other way of saying it: the $549 sale price on this Acer Nitro V 15 gaming laptop is an absolute steal. It's unbeatable in price right now, and you simply won't find a branded laptop with a current-gen Nvidia GPU at this price. The only thing you'll find are models with older specs, featuring slower RTX 30-series and 40-series GPUs.
That isn't the case with this Acer Nitro V 15 model. Slashed in price from its $929 list price, saving you a whopping $380, you're getting a machine with an Intel Core i5-13420H processor. That's a CPU with eight cores and 12 threads, split evenly with four performance and efficiency cores each, along with a clock speed that can boost up to 4.6 GHz.
This is a gaming laptop, however, so the discrete GPU is the bigger draw here. The Acer Nitro V 15 is paired with the mobile version of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050, featuring 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM, along with 2,560 CUDA cores. This is an entry-level GPU, but along with faster (and more) VRAM than the RTX 4050 it replaces, you've got one big bonus: DLSS 4 support. DLSS 4 means access to ray tracing to games that support it, but more importantly for a spec sheet like this, it uses AI to add up to three additional frames between each GPU-rendered one, massively improving frame rates.
Fake frames might seem unappealing on a top-spec RTX 5090 PC, but on an RTX 5050 laptop, they can have a huge impact on gaming performance, especially in games that are particularly demanding on your system resources. This is a laptop where stable 1080p gaming using high graphics presets is a genuine possibility, hitting the max resolution on this laptop's 15.6-inch IPS panel. A 165Hz refresh rate also helps to ensure you'll see smooth motion in fast-paced games, too.
For $549, there's unfortunately a compromise. It isn't on RAM, as you're kitted with 16GB of DDR5 SODIMM memory, although you do have the flexibility to upgrade to 32GB when the RAM prices aren't so high. The compromise, however, is on storage: there's a 512GB M.2 SSD with Gen 4 speeds included here, which is big enough for one or two big game releases, but a storage upgrade (or external hard drive) might need to come later.
These specs are genuinely impressive for the price, but if you've got an extra $50, you can choose the Acer Nitro V 16 AI for $599 instead. The design on these laptops is almost identical, and you're still getting 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.
You do, however, get a better display: a 1200p, 16-inch IPS panel with a higher 180Hz refresh rate. It's powered by the same RTX 5050 GPU for gaming, which can push to that native 1,920 x 1,200 resolution in most cases, but your mileage may vary.
Unlike the Intel-powered Acer Nitro V 15, however, you're also getting an AMD processor. The AMD Ryzen AI 5 240 Pro it ships with has only six cores and 12 threads, but can boost up to 5 GHz. Don't assume that core size is necessarily the important thing here, however, because this is a faster, newer CPU than the 2023-model Core i5 i3420H and should, in theory, offer better performance, as long as you don't need the extra cores for heavy multi-tasking work.
Two laptops under $600 with a modern Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series GPU can't be ignored. The $549 sales price on the Acer Nitro V 15 is impossible to beat, and given soaring RAM and SSD prices, it might be the cheapest we'll see a laptop with these specs for some time. That said, if you fancy a newer CPU with a better display, the $599 Acer Nitro V 16 AI isn't a bad laptop to end up with. If you want a budget-friendly gaming laptop before the holidays, both options are worth considering.
If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals , Gaming Monitor Deals , Graphics Card Deals , Gaming Chair , Best Wi-Fi Routers , Best Motherboard or CPU Deals pages.
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/gaming-laptops/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/gaming-laptops/this-usd549-acer-gaming-laptop-is-simply-unbeatable-value-with-nvidia-rtx-5050-gpu-and-16gb-ram-rival-model-also-on-sale-for-usd50-more-featuring-amd-ryzen-cpu-and-1200p-display#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.