Acer Nitro V 16 AI Review: The Best Budget Gaming Laptop

These preset fan modes are part of Acer’s NitroSense software, which lets you balance performance, fan noise and battery life to suit your needs. Performance mode is the default, but you can bump it up to Turbo to set the fans to maximum speed—and that’s where the problems lie. While these mods can get you up to 6 percent faster frame rates and cooler internal temperatures, they can also drain some games’ batteries. Anything GPU-heavy, eg Cyberpunk 2077Exhaust will be in both Turbo and Performance modes. There will only be a balance battery charge, which will automatically turn on when the battery drops to 40 percent. Meanwhile, games that are more CPU-heavy, like Marvel rivalsDo not completely drain the battery while plugged in.

This is all bad. Acer shouldn’t be selling a product that can’t do what buyers expect it to be able to do. If the company can’t ship the product with a high-wattage power charger, I’d at least like it if it disabled Turbo mode or added a notification to warn gamers when playing games in battery-draining mode. Acer isn’t supporting high-wattage power adapters either, so at least for now, you’re stuck with what you get.

I don’t know if this is necessarily the end of the world. A 5 percent difference between Balanced and Turbo mode isn’t enough that most people will even notice, and many gamers may be turned off by the crazy fan noise made in Turbo. Balanced mode still delivers very playable frame rates, especially if you’re willing to use some upscaling. I have a big problem with it More expensive Nitro V 16S configurationWhich costs more and aims for a more premium experience.

So, while the 135-watt power adapter keeps the Nitro V 16 from greatness, the price is the best for this type of product. The retail price of the Acer Nitro V 16 is $899, which is already cheaper than many of its competitors At a retail price of $629, though, its problems are much easier to overlook.