Acer Nitro 17 Gaming Laptop | AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS Octa-Core CPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU | 17.3" QHD 165Hz IPS Display | 1TB Gen 4 SSD | Wi-Fi 6E | RGB Backlit KB | AN17-41-R7G3, Black

Explanation of pictures - Two computers side by side shows the bright colors of the Acer Nitro 17 display vs. my wife's Lenovo 5 Slim which I had considered but dismissed after seeing the display at a local retailer. The other picture shows that my system came with DDR5 5600MHz vs. the 4800MHz it was advertised to have. Bonus for me! :)A quick recap of why I ended up purchasing this computer.Unfortunately we are in a position of having to downsize dramatically and our desktop computers will be going in to storage. My wife and I are both avid gamers, currently really in to playing Baldur's Gate 3 a couple times a week with some friends.I knew I needed something with enough grunt to play most any game I threw at it for at least 2-3 years, my previous experience with the 60 level (860M) GPU told me that this would be a good enough level to handle that want. I needed to have a CPU that would be able to handle my day to day work, enough umph to handle games, be higher end to remain serviceable for a good few years, and be efficient. My biggest want was a big vibrant display, followed by power port on the back, current gen ports (HDMI 2.1, USB 4 Type C, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A) , DDR5, and last but so far away from least would be build quality.GPU is handled by a Nvidia 4060 8GB (would have gone 4070 if they had a 12GB version, but all I could find was 8GB). Performance different between the 4060 and 4070 is ~15%, not enough different to justify the price. While looking at this there was an Asus ROG with a 12th Gen i7 and a 4070 but it was built on an outdated system board that only ran DDR4, the performance gains going from DDR4 3200 MHz to DDR5 4800MHz is about 6-7% which brings than GPU advantage in to check. The CPU going to the Ryzen 7 7840 vs the 12th gen i7 gives about 5-7% as well. So there goes most of the gains. Sure some games won't be hindered by the loss of CPU or Memory and the 4070 will knock the 4060 back down, but as games get more advanced and more CPU intensive, I like having the extra grunt and the extra RAM speed. That was my reasoning for staying with the less expensive 4060.CPU, I'm an AMD fanboy. I have been for years. Ever single desktop I've built since I started building have been AMD. Started with AMD K5 P166 way back when. Then K6 200, 233, K6-2, Duron, Athlon, Athlon XP, FX, Ryzen 7 1700, Ryzen 7 5700X, and now Ryzen 7 7840HS. I opted for the Ryzen 7 over the Ryzen 5 (7640HS) which was available in a Lenovo I was comparing against, and interestingly enough the one my wife ended up with. I know this CPU will handle what I need for a long while and be very efficient.Display. Boy howdy, let me tell you this thing is gorgeous. Bright (in the picture it is at 50% brightness and it looks just as bright as the Lenovo 5 Slim 16" WUXGA display at 100%). Color reproduction is great, not the best in the world but let's be real here... this laptop does not cost that much. For a 17.3" display that puts out this much eye melting beauty is a steal. Blows away others that cost $500 more. Just look at the picture. Speaks for itself.RAM - 16GB, enough for now. And by some hiccup mine came with 5600MHz DDR5 instead of the advertised 4800MHz. I call that a win and it will surely help down the road.Build Quality - I was most worried about this and sort of still am. I've owned HP, Lenovo, and Dell. Never been happy with the HP. Dell held up great. My old Lenovo from 2014 was built like a tank and was what I held on to until I purchased this one. That system had a 4th Gen i7, Nvidia 860M, and 16GB RAM. It handled most things great until recently, it has been retired to being a garage computer. It doesn't feel cheap. The hinge is crazy tight. The palm rest doesn't flex under weight unless you push really hard. The keyboard doesn't dip while typing. The display doesn't shake at all while typing. Keyboard feels solid. No missed keys while typing this long review. Touchpad is a little cheap, wish it were a bit more accurate or made of a more slippery material so my finger wouldn't skip while dragging slowly. But let's be honest, I'm using a mouse when I do anything that required more precision than a touchpad can deliver. Time will tell if it holds up. The black plastic surface is a fingerprint magnet so keep a microfiber cloth for when you want to wipe it off. With all of that being said I am purchasing the 4 Year extended warranty for this laptop which means I likely won't have to make a claim because that's how it goes with these things, you know what I'm saying.All in all, I really do like this computer. I wasn't completely on board at first but after using it for a few days I am excited to spend the next few years gaming with this system.Before I close this out I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't say that yes this thing runs Baldur's Gate 3 butter smooth at full resolution (2560x1440). Not a hiccup. And it looks soooo good :).If you made it this far, thank you for reading my review.

I am a power user, have to have the best setup with the latest hardware, yup, I'm that annoying guy. When it came to getting a gaming laptop however I didn't want to spend the bank so I tried the streaming route, it's nearly there, maybe in 5 years it'll be perfect but it's still too fussy, so back to shopping...I came across this laptop and the price was right and the 4060 is one of the rare cases where the laptop and the PC versions are the same so I gave it a shot. Very surprised on performance, the 1080p screen is great. Build quality my only gripe is the case is plastic so it's a bit smudgy but other than that I really like the laptop. I immediately went and bought 32gb and swapped out the 16gb however...

I've had this a year. It is a very nice computer when it works. But, the build quality is garbage. It arrived and the touchpad wouldn't work. I was using it with a docking station, so it wasn't a big deal. I started to use it more mobile and having to carry around a mouse and find a place to put it made me send it in for service.I got it back and touchpad worked, but too well. Any pressure at all on the lower left part of the keyboard would result in random movements and mouse clicks. Using a lapdesk helps a little, but I'm constantly deleting things or pasting garbage into my text and it is infuriating. I took the case off to look for loose connectors or maybe a screw, but didn't find anything, although it did reduce the frequency for a while.It is supposed to charge via USB-C with a sufficient current. It sorta, kinda works. The USB-C ports just randomly stop working. I've tried multiple cables and multiple 100A chargers, they'll all start charging fine. Some nights, everything is o.k., some nights it is constantly connecting and reconnecting, even with everything stationary on a table.The ethernet port is the same. It'll nearly always recognize a wire wired network, but doesn't take long to revert back to wireless.The side USB-A ports are similar - I do a lot of photography and have some old equipment and after a day of shooting it is a crapshoot whether all of the pictures can be transferred before they just stop working.The final straw was the multi-monitor support. A few months back, the 34" external display would randomly go black for a bit and then start again. All while shifting all of the windows to the laptop display, and then restoring them again. The black spells started getting longer and longer, which took it from an annoyance to really impeding workflow while culling 1000s of pictures. Now, it doesn't even recognize there is a second monitor. Not with the two rear-facing USB-C ports specifically marked as multi-monitor (even witth different docking stations and cables tried). But even plugging into the HDMI port directly and skipping the docking station, it doesn't even acknowledge there is a second monitor, let alone display anything.One of these problems wouldn't bother me too much, sometimes you get a bad part, no big deal. But so many different parts have stopped working in the year I've had it, there seems to be zero quality control and marginal design for build quality.Going back to my cheap POS Acer I "upgraded" from. I was always buying bargain basement models and upgrading every year as I outgrew them, and this was my first kind of expensive top end system that I was hoping to last a bit and didn't quite make it a year. Luckily, I bought it to get into video editing and my job changed and my hobbies changed and I'm back to straight photography work and the old one should work fine for that.