Acer Nitro 14 review

We're at a very strange place right now with gaming laptops. None of the current models on the market seem to acknowledge—in either their price or design—their comparative value will plummet the instant new notebooks are launched next year. Teases for future models talk of «next-level performance» and «AI-accelerated» power, yet current laptop builds are launching in an almost identical state to those you would have bought at the exact same price point last year.

The Acer Nitro 14 I've been testing, complete with an RTX 4050, Ryzen 7 8845HS, and 512 GB of SSD storage, demonstrates this tension well for me. It's quite a pretty laptop, and its size and heat dissipation make it super convenient, yet I don't see why it's launching now at its current price point given the aging tech inside it. It's a bit too late and a lot too expensive to make much of a splash, even if I think it'squite nice.

This isn't to say it doesn't handle those specs decently. The RTX 4050 GPU inside my machine has a 110 W TGP, and even manages to outpace lower-powered RTX 4060 machines we've tried before, such as the HP Omen Transcend 14, in some tests. Games perform okay given the specs and the 120 Hz sRGB 100% screen is accurate enough to let the likes of Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure and The Plucky Squire shine, even if I might have wanted something a little sharper or smoother for that £1,200 price point. 

The 300 nits peak brightness the 16:10 screen reaches isn't distractingly dull but, once again, it feels like you're paying for more and getting less here. 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050
Graphics power: 110 W
Memory: 16 GB, LPDDR5X
Storage: 512 GB NVMe SSD
Resolution: 1920x1200 (16:10)
Refresh Rate: 120 Hz
OS: Windows 11
Dimensions: 22.84 x 324.12 x 255.9 mm
Price: £1,199 | $1,300 (RTX 4060 version) 

It is worth noting the RTX 4050-equipped review model I got my hands on is not currently available to purchase in the US, and there doesn't seem to be any sign of it