Acer Nitro V 16 AI 16” WUXGA IPS 180Hz Gaming Laptop, AMD Ryzen AI 5 240 Processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 with 8GB GDDR7 VRAM, 16GB RAM, 512GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, Obsidian Black

I picked this up at the beginning of November, when it dropped to just $629 and wow, I am thoroughly impressed. The RTX 5050 punches way above its weight class and with the added 2GB of VRAM (8 total) vs the last generation 50 series, it's probably the best leap in the whole Nvidia stack. I have been running a bunch of benchmarks and helping out a friend's channel (GoodTalkHQ) on YouTube. It's an impressive laptop as long as you realize the charger is only 135W and in 2 of the 4 power profiles, the laptop will send more power to the components than what the charger can provide, this will cause some battery drain while gaming even while plugged in. If you keep the laptop in the balanced power mode though, you lose only a little performance wise, and the battery drain issue is resolved. Check out GoodTalkHQ on YouTube to see how the laptop performs in modern more demanding games!

In short, a great performance/gaming computer at a steal of a price. The long version; I purchased this as a black friday deal for $630 with the Ryzen 5 240 and RTX 5050 with 16gb RAM and 512gb SSD. I've used Acer's before and haven't been thrilled but needed to replace my previous HP laptop due to damage. This computer fit the bill, and I wanted an RTX 50 series if I'm buying new anyways. I replaced the SSD with a 2TB and it has a second slot on the motherboard for an additional SSD. Acer was smart and also gave a single 16gb stick of DDR5, allowing users to upgrade without replacing the existing stick. I already had 32gb of DDR5 so I put it in with no issues. The screen is 180hz, personally overkill for me since I'm fine with 120 in a 1080p laptop screen, but you are unable to change to any refresh besides 180 or 60. It would be nice to have the other options. It has more than enough ports and connectivity, and I'm a big fan of keeping a microsd card slot even if most people don't need that nowadays. Regarding power, the AC port is on the back of the computer instead of the side which I'm a big fan of. Even though it's a standard Acer barrel tip on the adapter, it gives a good "click" when inserted and stays put. This specific model has type-C charging, however with a 100w charger it won't charge above 65w. I'm unsure if this is because it needs a higher wattage adapter for type C or if it is limited to 65w, but it will still charge on type C assuming you're not running any games or anything too intense and will let you know it is slow charging with the type C. No specs that I could find say the max type c charging rate. Included in the box is a 135w AC power adapter. I tested a 180w Acer power adapter, and it still unfortunately pulls 135w which means it is capped at that for the AC input. This leads to the only con I have had so far with the laptop being that the battery will slowly discharge when gaming, at about 10% an hour. This might be a consideration for people that will use this computer for extended gaming sessions while plugged in. I believe it won't have issues if the battery dies while gaming, after testing with no battery it still seems to work fine giving great performance in demanding titles, but with no battery - or if the battery is below 40% it will no longer allow you to use the performance or turbo mode. Again not too big of an issue but consider this if it's going to be your impromptu "gaming desktop". I believe this could be fixed with BIOS updates in the future but I'm wary that will happen. The Acer Nitrosense software works well, and doesn't give any unwanted features or bloat. It's simple and to the point not using a lot of resources which I appreciate. The keyboard feels fine and I have no complaints besides the orange backlight, I think I'd prefer white if you're limited to one color, but this isn't a deal breaker and just part of the experience. I'd post a longer review, but I hit the character limit... :/