Acer Nitro 16 review: a solid all-rounder at a promising price point

Acer’s Nitro range of gaming laptops amps up with the Acer Nitro 16, elevating its formerly entry-level standards to a comfortable mid-range price with the specs to match. In fact, it might just be one of the best laptops for gaming right now, offering enough performance to tackle the latest AAA titles while keeping the cost relatively low.

I used the Acer Nitro 16 for two weeks as my main laptop, putting it to the test with games like Cyberpunk 2077, and Starfield as well as creative software like Adobe Photoshop and Blender, and I was pretty impressed by how it tackled everything I threw at it. The model I was loaned for testing wasn’t even the beefiest of the Nitro 16 range, with configurations reaching up to an AMD Ryzen 9 CPU and Nvidia RTX 4070 graphics card versus my unit’s AMD Ryzen 7 and RTX 4060, demonstrating how it’s not only monster machines like the Acer’s more premium Predator Helios 18 that can bring the heat.

Sure, it’s a little on the clunky-yet-funky side design-wise, and both its speakers and webcam feel basic, but it’s otherwise a brilliant all-rounder, offering decent battery life, quiet fans, an abundance of ports and a wonderfully bright and vibrant screen.

Acer Nitro 16: Key specifications

Design and build

The Acer Nitro 16 wants to set one thing straight; this is a laptop for gamers. From its four-zone customizable RGB keyboard to its outlined WASD keys, this laptop is keen to establish its identity – and not just for the gamer aesthetic. With the Nitro 16, Acer has begun to distinguish the Nitro range, leveraging a new logo and an updated colour scheme to give its laptops some identity.

The wedge-shaped laptop is at its thickest 279mm tall, with a width of 360mm and depth of 280mm, weighing a respectable 2.7kg. In hand, there’s no two ways about it; it’s bulky, and even the angled rear-end can’t quite convincingly mask the heft of this laptop. Its deep keyboard deck adds to the overall footprint, too, and as you’ll likely want to keep this laptop elevated for ventilation, placement and space are worth considering. Still, that’s not uncommon for gaming laptops at this price range, and broadly speaking I wouldn’t imagine the Nitro 16 will spend much time away from home, so it’s not the end of the world for it to be less portable.

While the Nitro 16’s shell is plastic to keep costs low, it’s impressively robust from the lid to the keyboard deck, with very little flex to cause concern over its longevity. The lid features the range’s new ‘N’ logo, printed on a slightly chromatic grey plastic – a nice touch that catches the eye in the light. Surrounding the logo are geometric pink and blue lines, introducing the range’s new colour theme which replaces the black with red accents from previous models. As nice as it looks, though, it’s a total fingerprint magnet – and as a regular make-up-wearer, I can envision that causing problems in the long run.

Along the sides of the Nitro 16 are the vents, as well as a fantastic array of ports (there are some on the rear edge, too). Thankfully, Acer thought through the placement of these, sensibly arranging the most-used ports like the headphone jack, USB-A and Ethernet ports along the sides while less-trafficked ports like the HDMI, power and USB 2.0/USB-C reside on the rear. There’s also more venting on the underside of the laptop.

Between its four-zone customisable RGB keyboard and the WASD keys outlined in white, there are some lovely touches which emphasise that this is a gamer-first laptop, though its squishy keys and overall slightly tacky finish do belie the budget price point. Most of all, I wish the keys were a little clicker with better feedback for gaming, but the full keyboard does mean there’s both a number pad and full-height arrow keys, meaning fewer concessions when it’s time to game.

Rounding off the base of the laptop is the roomy wrist rest and smooth plastic 125 x 80mm touchpad for when you’re on the go or in case of emergency when your gaming mouse dies.

Features

The spacious display is a definite highlight of the Nitro 16, which opts for a taller 16:10 display rather than the more recently trendy 16:9 aspect ratio sported by other contemporary machines. It offers a 165Hz refresh rate, which is great for rapid-fire gaming, and 2560 x 1600 resolution with 100% sRGB Color Gamut.

This machine comes with the NitroSense app pre-installed, where you can customize your keys – or rather, you should be able to, but Windows 11’s irritating new lighting display features mean you have to jump through a few hoops before you can. Unfortunately, there’s no per-key customisation, but the four zones do have a nice gradient between them and illuminate to a pleasing brightness.

Elsewhere in the Nitrosense app, you can also monitor your CPU and GPU performance as well as your system temperature, and adjust your power mode and fan speed.

Benchmark scores

Performance

My Nitro 16 review unit was configured with the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 graphics and 16GB GDDR6 RAM, making for a pretty capable though not exceptional device, which was demonstrated well through my benchmark and real-world testing.

On test, its battery wasn’t the most impressive, nor was it a travesty; when using the laptop for general productivity (web browsing, video streaming and background activity) it lasted for a respectable 7 hours 12 minutes while using simple productivity tools that stretched to 8 hours 17 minutes.

While we’re on the subject of gaming, the Nitro 16 is amply powerful to hack most, if not all, contemporary games, though of course, you’ll need to take a bit of a concession on game settings and keep it plugged in. I only eked out an average fps of 25.76 in Cyberpunk 2077 using the Ray Tracing: Overdrive preset, and when I dialled it back to Medium I was hitting 43.54. In standard Ultra, the Nitro 16 hit 50.49. While playing in High, which offered the best overall performance, the GPU reached a temperature of 75 degrees Celsius, according to the NitroSense app, while the CPU hovered around 74 degrees and the system temperature sat at 57 degrees.

With this level of performance, you’ll also be able to enjoy some solid performance using creative software, and while it will struggle with bigger rendering jobs it’s great as a halfway house between a productivity laptop and a creative powerhouse.

There’s also an in-built 720p webcam, but its quality isn’t much to write home about – for hopping onto Discord and showing your face, it’s fine, but for anything more professional you’ll want to invest in a higher-quality peripheral. Similarly, the speakers are very shallow and won’t deliver punchy or immersive audio.

Price

As previously alluded to, the Acer Nitro 16 takes the range to a more mid-tier price point, though it starts at an enticingly low £999 / $999 for its most basic model. Compare that to the similarly positioned MSI Katana 15, which is priced the exact same, or the slightly higher-spec Asus ROG Zephyrus G15, starting at $1,499 / £1,599, and the Nitro 16 is a pretty well-priced clamshell.

Who is it for?

Without a doubt, this is a laptop for gamers. From its design to its features and hardware, it’s clear that Acer wants the Nitro 16 in the hands of gaming enthusiasts, though perhaps not hardcore or competitive players at the lower end of its configurations. You will need to make some compromises on high to ultra-high game settings, but for its price that’s not a huge ask.

Its bright and tall screen is a great canvas on which to enjoy the latest games, and it’s also fairly well-suited to creative tasks, though as you’d expect, more intensive tasks would require more power and a better chipset for processing. While it would double up well as a laptop for work or for students, buying it exclusively for that purpose is likely very excessive.

Buy it if

You want a budget-friendly option

At its price point, the Nitro 16 is far from budget-friendly, but it’s certainly not the priciest, even with its more powerful configurations.

You want to eke out a few years of current-gen gaming

Sure, you could save money by opting for a lower-spec machine, but in doing so you sacrifice the future-proofing of models like the Nitro 16.

Don’t buy it if

You’re an audiophile

The built-in speakers are a bit of a letdown, so if you’re someone who’s bothered by poor-quality speakers, you’ll want to invest in one of the best gaming headsets.

You want a portable device

At its weight and size, the Nitro 16 isn’t exactly portable – and that’s without accounting for its hefty power supply.