The Acer Nitro 14 is very promising on paper. It’s a compact 14-inch laptop with a powerful processor, complete with AI features, and great specs for both gaming and work. And all of this at an affordable price, around 1 433,57$
Nitro is Acer’s series of more budget-friendly gaming products, which also means a somewhat less typical gaming design. The design is quite minimalist, apart from some plastic decorations around the large exhaust vents at the back and a zoned RGB keyboard.
When the screen is open, the WASD and arrow keys are also clearly highlighted. However, there’s no difference in typing feel. The keys have a satisfying high key travel for a laptop, with a soft yet clear click feel and dampened typing noise, making it pleasant for both gaming and typing.
The only thing I wish for is better placement of certain buttons on the right side. There’s a high chance I might accidentally hit the power button, media controls, or a special button for Acer’s control program, Nitro Sense, when trying to press Enter, Backspace, or Delete. The touchpad below the keyboard is also somewhat small, but overall well-built and offers good precision.
Small Dimensions but Massive Build
This is not a slim and lightweight laptop, but rather a chunky chassis that mixes plastic with aluminum, over 2 cm thick, and weighing over 2 kg. If you can tolerate that, it’s easy to carry around, sturdy, and solid, with edges that aren’t too sharp. The matte plastic surface on the bottom offers excellent grip.
The sides house additional cooling vents, dual USB-C 4 ports, dual USB-A 3 ports, and HDMI. Acer even managed to fit in a micro SD card reader. No USB-C ports are taken up by the power source, as the laptop has its own dedicated power connector and a large, powerful adapter.
The hardware demands quite a bit of energy. The processor is AMD’s powerful AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, with eight cores, a high base clock frequency and boost, built on the Zen 4 architecture, equipped with good integrated Radeon graphics, and the Ryzen AI NPU providing 16 TOPS in AI performance.
It’s not enough for Copilot Plus, but a simpler version of Windows Studio effects for the webcam is included. The laptop also has a Copilot button on the keyboard, but it doesn’t launch a separate Copilot app. That will likely come with a future Windows update.
Handles Gaming Smoothly
You also get 16 GB of DDR5x memory and a fast 1 TB SSD. A double dose of RAM would have been appreciated, but unfortunately, it’s neither upgradable nor replaceable, so you’re stuck with just 16 GB. If you want solid performance for AI-based features, such as in Adobe Creative Cloud programs, the Nitro 14 is also equipped with a Geforce RTX 4050 graphics card.
It’s primarily designed for gaming, and while it’s not Nvidia’s most powerful card, most of the games I installed and ran played smoothly on the built-in screen. At least as long as I don’t push too hard on ray tracing and enable DLSS. There’s also a model with RTX 4060 graphics, but that comes at a significantly higher price.
However, the screen resolution is only 1920×1200 pixels, a manageable task for modern RTX graphics cards. With a 120 Hz refresh rate, response times as low as 3 milliseconds, and G-Sync support, it’s easy to achieve smooth gameplay. The screen is an IPS panel with good contrast, minimal light bleed, and consistent colors and gradients.
Unfortunately, the color accuracy isn’t top-notch, and the color gamut is limited to sRGB levels. However, it still provides a pleasant image for browsing, office work, and media or gaming. HDR would have been nice, but you’ll have to do without it. The brightness isn’t the best either, peaking at around 400 cd/m², which can be challenging in bright outdoor environments.
Poor Sound Detracts from the Experience
The built-in speakers produce flat and muffled sound with muted treble, and tweaking with DTS:X sound enhancement helps somewhat, but not as much as I had hoped. It’s neither powerful nor rich, but in a quiet environment, some details in the sound are still present. With headphones connected, whether analog, via USB, or Bluetooth, the sound is better, though still not optimal.
One “culprit” in this scenario is Acer’s own AI-powered noise reduction, which seems to take away too much of the ambient sound. It’s great for video calls but should otherwise be turned off. This feature is accessible via a small app called Acer QuickPanel, which also opens up additional webcam settings.
The webcam only has 720p resolution. It delivers an image without lag and with plenty of light, but not much detail. It can get grainy in low-light situations, and some colors may look washed out.
It’s acceptable for a Teams meeting, but just barely, and completely unsuitable for professional streaming. The same AI-supported noise reduction on the built-in microphone results in clear but thin voice quality when I try to record my voice. The noise cancellation is effective, maybe even a bit too much so.
More Battery Life Than Expected
One area where the Nitro 14 surprises positively is its large 46 Wh battery, and better power management at the chipset level than I had expected. It can deliver surprisingly long battery life, which isn’t usually the case for such powerful laptops. Here, it performs better. It’s a positive sign that even high-performance processors are following the trend toward more dynamic and flexible energy consumption, and the screen is also impressively energy-efficient.
At full load with both processor and graphics running, for example when gaming, a full charge lasts just under an hour. However, under lighter loads, you can stretch it to a full workday. Around 8 hours with mixed browsing and Office use, 120 Hz screen, and medium brightness, and up to 16 hours if you lower the brightness and switch to 60 Hz.
In Nitro Sense, you can choose between four “scenarios”: Quiet, Balanced, Performance, and Turbo. Or two, Eco and Balanced, when running on battery. In Balanced mode or lower, it’s possible to run the laptop mostly on passive cooling, avoiding fan noise during simple tasks. In the two performance modes, or if the laptop overheats noticeably in Balanced mode, the fans can get quite loud. A handy quick button above the keyboard lets you switch between these modes.
In Nitro Sense, you’ll also find extra settings for battery charging, USB ports, backlighting, health checks for the battery and storage, and other small features not available in Windows settings. There are a few pre-installed extra programs and icons, but none that start up or interrupt at boot, so they can be ignored.
Specifications
- Product Name: Nitro 14 (NH.QQKED.003)
- Tested: September 2024
- Manufacturer: Acer
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS
- NPU: Ryzen AI, 16 TOPS
- Graphics: Nvidia Geforce RTX 4050, 6 GB
- Memory: 16 GB LPDDR5x
- Storage: 1 TB SSD, micro SD slot
- Display: 14.5-inch matte IPS, 1920×1200 pixels, 120 Hz
- Webcam: 720p
- Connections: USB 4, USB-C 3 Gen 2 with DisplayPort, 2x USB-A 3 Gen 2, HDMI, headset
- Wireless: WiFi 6e, Bluetooth 5.3
- Operating System: Windows 11 Home
- Extras: RGB keyboard
- Noise Level: 0–45 dBA
- Battery: 76 Wh, 50 min (high load, full brightness, 120 Hz) to 14 hrs (low load, low brightness, 60 Hz)
- Size: 32.4 x 25.6 x 2.3 cm
- Weight: 2.02 kg
