Acer Nitro 17 AN17-41-R6L9 Review

The latest Acer Nitro 17 is a reasonably powerful gaming laptop that doesn’t cost as much as competing laptops with similar hardware. Most Nitro 5 units are based on a 15.6-inch display, but this AN17-41-R6L9 model bumps out the screen to an expansive 17.3 inches. It will not come as a surprise when you get to know this larger version is heftier and bulkier than the already hefty and bulky 15-inch model. And while the screen may be larger, it certainly isn’t any brighter than the dim display on the smaller model.

If you’re looking at getting the most bang for your buck and great gaming performance, and less on obtaining a sleek design with a bright display, this Nitro 17 unit delivers competitive AAA performance for a great price. For just over one grand, our review unit services up to an octa-core Ryzen 7 CPU from AMD’s latest 7000 series and a midrange GeForce RTX 4050 GPU. This combination stacks up to produce framerates usually found on some expensive systems.

Acer Nitro 17 Specifications and Features

Design

Acer claims that the Nitro 17 is a gaming laptop that won’t draw attention to itself even in the classroom or coffee shop. While it certainly lacks the LED festival as an Alienware device, it’s far from being discreet. At 15.76 x 1.1 x 11.55 inches and weighing 6.61 pounds, it certainly looks the part – a big-screen gaming laptop.

A look at the Nitro 17 reminds one of the traditional gaming laptops due to its bulk. It’s the complete opposite of the fairly svelte Alienware x17 R2. Everything on the Nitro 17 is thick, from its lid, bezels, hinges, and keyboard base. While you can carry it around, at least technically, it’s not one of those laptops that will make their presence on your backpack felt as you lug it around.

All ports and vents and ports are located along the side and rear. Save for blue and pink lines on the lid, the AN17-41-R6L9 has an all-black chassis that gives it an air of sophistication. In that case, Acer’s claim of this being an understated laptop isn’t entirely untrue.

Display

The good thing about big laptops is that they offer an appropriately big display and a spacious keyboard. The 17.3-inch FHD screen brings out all the fine details in graphically-demanding modern games. It’s also a great machine for movies and streaming content. While not every game that is played on the RTX 4050 graphics card can take advantage of the 144Hz refresh rate, the extra headroom ensures that you experience smooth frame rates when playing at 60 fps or higher.

The Nitro 17 is available in either full HD (1920. X 1080) or QHD (2560 x 1440) resolution. Our review model features the former, which suits the RTX 4050 GPU that’s best suited for 1080p gaming. Once again. The 1080p is sufficient, however, for this size of the panel, it leaves lackluster brightness as the display’s major flaw.

It’s a fairly dim display with dull colors that are best suited for gaming in a basement or other dark room. If your room receives some natural light, you’ll have the brightness set to maximum at all times and might often be tapping the brightness-up button in attempts to increase it further.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The spacious keyboard gives you lots of space to move around. The keys are thick compared to a regular laptop and provide a decent amount of resistance when pressed. The sides of the keys are white, and that breaks the monochrome matte-black look of the entire layout.

In addition to the sides of the keys. Nine keys feature a white border on the top surface of the keycap. Eight of these keys are popular among gamers: the four arrow keys and the WASD keys. The ninth key too gets the white-border profile is the “N” key above the Numpad launches NitroSense utility, which allows you to adjust the laptop’s power mode and the speed of the cooling fans.

It’s also possible to customize the RGB keyboard backlighting across four zones. More expensive gaming laptops like the Asus ROG Strix G16 offer per-key lighting, but the four-zone keyboard lighting still allows for enough gaming customization on the Nitro 17.

The keys themselves offer a tactile, quiet feel but they flex a bit if you hit them off-center. I just wish they were a little firmer and less mushy for a faster response. I also wish the touchpad were bigger – it just looks comically small on the expansive wrist rest. Though on the small size side, the touchpad feels accurate and has a firm, snappy click response.

Performance

Even with the bigger 17.3-inch screen, and featuring one of the latest mobile graphics cards, the Acer Nitro 17 is still on the affordable side of gaming laptops. Or, better still, it is a budget gaming laptop. This is important to keep in mind, especially for those looking for top-tier gaming performance. Still, you can get better than average performance, provided you’re going to stick to moderate settings.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 is a midrange GPU based on the AD107 chip and uses the Ada Lovelace architecture. It offers 2560 shaders and uses 6GB GDDR6 dedicated graphics memory with a maximum clock speed of 16GBPs and a 96 Bit memory bus. Its TGP (Total Graphics Power) varies between 35 and 115 watts, which leads to different performance levels, and the boost clock also depends on the TGP settings.

On the Nitro 17, titles like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Borderlands 3, DiRT 5, and Far Cry 6 run between 104 and 126 fps. In the newer Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1920×1080 resolution, the Nitro 17 averaged an impressive 116fps, which was again first among the RTX 4050 laptops.

Finally, on the more demanding Metro Exodus at 1920×1080 at the benchmark’s Extreme preset, the Nitro 5 averaged 82fps, which was right in line with the other RTX 4050 laptops and behind the 91 fps of the RTX 4060-based Acer Predator Helios 16. On the other hand, Cyberpunk 2077 averages 66 fps, staying in the mid to high 60 fps range – not surprising since Cyberpunk isn’t a well-optimized game.

Cyberpunk 2077 aside, the Acer Nitro 17 AN17-41-R6L9 delivers good performance that most will find acceptable, especially on a lower-priced gaming system.

Gaming laptops usually double as excellent productivity devices due to their powerful components. The Nitro 17, with its AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS, 16GB RAM, and 1TB SSD storage is great to get the job done, so long as you’re okay receiving some glances your way if you use a big laptop in public.

Battery Life

Gaming laptops aren’t known for excellent battery life, but we’ve seen a few like the Asus Zephyrus G14 beat that tradition; but with the Nitro 17, the status quo remains.

It lasts 5 hours 34 minutes in battery life tests, which task the laptop with endless web surfing over Wi-Fi with the screen set to 150 nits of brightness. This easily compares with the Alienware x14, which averages 5 hours and 28 minutes but is short of the Dell G5’s impressive 7 hours and 16 minutes.

That’s how long the Nitro 17 AN17-41-R6L9’s battery lasts while surfing the web. When gaming, it can run for 1 hour and 13 minutes. As always with gaming laptops, it’s always a good idea to keep them plugged in when playing.

Bottom Line

The Acer Nitro 17 is one great gaming laptop for its price. But as you have just read, it’s not without its faults. But every budget laptop makes a few missteps and none of our issues with this 17.3-inch Nitro 17 are deal breakers. Sure, the plastic chassis is clunky, the display isn’t the brightest, the touchpad is tiny, and the webcam is middling. These design drawbacks are what you must tolerate for the bang this Nitro 15 provides for your gaming buck.

At its core, the Nitro 17’s CPU-GPU pairing of the Ryzen 7 7840HS and RTX 4050 graphics allow it to meddle with pricier gaming laptops. For budget-first buyers, this Acer Nitro 17 AN17-41-R6L9 delivers strong 1080p gaming performance for the price, while also providing a roomy display, quiet operation, and adequate battery life.