Our Verdict
You get what you pay for with gaming laptops, and at this cost level you can expect a few things to be less than premium. With its older CPU and low-end GPU, the Acer Nitro V15 still manages to pump out the frames at 1080p, but does it with a level of noise and bluster you might have thought a thing of the past.
For
- Fast
- Cheap
- Solid
Against
- Hot
- Loud
- Heavy
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| Header Cell - Column 0 | Avg CPU (°C) | Max CPU (°C) | Avg GPU (°C) | Max GPU (°C) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Asus TUF Gaming A16 2025 | 75 | 81 | 69 | 74 |
Acer Nitro V15 | 81 | 100 | 79 | 85 |
The maximum brightness of 300 nits isn’t bad, though—there are certainly less bright screens out there. Other corners have been cut too: the RAM is DDR4 rather than 5, and the SSD transfers at acceptable speeds for a PCIe 4.0 drive, but is nothing special. At least it’s 1 TB in the review model, though there are Nitros out there with 512 GB drives.
When it comes to playing games, the 1080p screen turns out to be an asset. Turn on the RTX 5060’s party tricks—DLSS upscaling and 2x Multi Frame Generation—in Cyberpunk 2077 and you’re looking at almost 80 fps. Increase the MFG to 4x and it’ll do over 140 fps, and that’s at the Ray Tracing Ultra setting.
Moving on, we’re looking at 48 fps in Baldur’s Gate 3 (easily boostable with a little DLSS), 60 fps in Black Myth: Wukong, close to the same in Metro Exodus with ray-tracing, and a CPU rendering result in the exhaustive Cinebench 2024 tests, which regularly reduce processors to quivering piles of sand, that beats the Core Ultra 9 in the Acer Predator Triton 14 AI. For a cheap machine, it’s a surprisingly competent showing.
✅ Cost is a massive consideration for you: There are a lot of similar laptops out there, and you might get lucky with a bargain. This isn’t a bad place to start your search, though.
❌ You’re always completely up to date: The GPU might be the latest, but that CPU is a few years old now and runs hot and loud, plus the screen is a bit washed out. It’s mostly fine, but isn’t on the cutting-edge.
There's more to a gaming laptop than just its performance, however. The Nitro has quite a nice keyboard, but the built-in speakers produced some dreadful crackling that, if it wasn’t just the review sample, will have gamers reaching for some wireless cans or a headset—never a bad idea with a laptop anyway. There's a single USB-C port, which hits the giddy heights of USB4, as well as three USB 3.2 Type-A sockets, so there's a lot of connectivity on offer. Wi-Fi is version 6E, which is good enough, and there's an Ethernet port for those who prefer to remain tethered to a router. You can’t charge through the Type-C port, instead using a dedicated brick with a simply enormous tip that you’ll have to find room for in your bag as the battery life while gaming is only two hours, though it can stretch to more than six if you’re just using it for watching videos.
Which brings us to the vexed question of value. The Nitro has an almost identical setup to the Gigabyte Gaming A16, right down to the 85 W GPU, but Gigabyte’s machine comes with more RAM and has a 16:10 IPS screen for just a tiny bit more money. The Asus TUF A14 costs a fair chunk more for a smaller, lighter machine with a higher resolution and a 5060 that goes all the way to 110 W. The Nitro is a serious machine that’s found a way to provide high frame rates for a relatively low cost, and that needs to be celebrated, even if you might not be able to hear yourself partying over the noise of its fans.
1. Best overall:
Razer Blade 16 (2025)
2. Best budget:
Lenovo LOQ 15 Gen 10
3. Best 14-inch:
Razer Blade 14 (2025)
4. Best mid-range:
MSI Vector 16 HX AI
5. Best high-performance:
Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10
6. Best 18-inch:
Alienware 18 Area-51
You get what you pay for with gaming laptops, and at this cost level you can expect a few things to be less than premium. With its older CPU and low-end GPU, the Acer Nitro V15 still manages to pump out the frames at 1080p, but does it with a level of noise and bluster you might have thought a thing of the past.
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