Acer Nitro 14 Review

Acer manages to combine a few qualities that usually don’t go together in this laptop. However, it falls short in other areas.

The Acer Nitro 14 is a compact 14-inch laptop with a powerful processor, complete with AI features, making it suitable for both gaming and work. When the screen is open, the WASD and arrow keys are clearly marked. My only wish is for a better placement of certain buttons on the right side.

It’s easy to accidentally press the power button, media controls, and a special key for Acer’s control program Nitro Sense when I intend to hit Enter, Backspace, or Delete. The trackpad below the keyboard is also a bit small but generally well-built and provides good precision.

Compact Dimensions

It’s not a lightweight or slim laptop, but rather a boxy chassis mixing plastic and aluminum, over 2 cm thick, and weighing more than 2 kg. If you can handle that, it’s easy to carry around, durable, sturdy, and without overly sharp edges. The matte plastic surface on the bottom provides an excellent grip.

The processor is AMD’s powerful AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, featuring eight cores with a high base clock frequency and boost, built on Zen 4 architecture. It’s not enough for Copilot Plus, but at least the simpler version of Windows Studio effects for the webcam is included.

Handles Gaming Smoothly

It also comes with 16 GB of DDR5 RAM and a fast 1 TB SSD. Doubling the RAM would have been appreciated, and unfortunately, it’s not possible to expand or replace it, so you are stuck with just 16 GB. If you need solid performance for AI-based features in programs like Adobe Creative Cloud, the Nitro 14 is also equipped with a Geforce RTX 4050 graphics card.

This is primarily intended for gaming, and while it’s not the most powerful Nvidia card, most games I tested install and run well on the built-in screen.

However, it only has a resolution of 1920 x 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, you can achieve smooth gameplay in most cases.

Noisy Camera

The webcam has only a 720p resolution. It delivers images without lag and with ample brightness, but not much detail. It can get noisy in low-light settings, and some colors appear washed out. It’s sufficient for a Teams meeting, but just barely, and is not suitable for professional streaming. The same AI-supported noise reduction on the built-in microphone provides clear but thin voice recording. The noise removal is effective, perhaps even overly so.

Better Battery Life Than Expected

In one area, the Nitro 14 is a pleasant surprise, with a large 46 Wh battery and better power management at the chipset level than expected, providing surprisingly long battery life. This is unusual for such a powerful laptop, but here it performs better. It’s definitely positive that even high-performance processors are following the trend toward more dynamic and flexible energy usage, and the screen is also very power-efficient.

With full load on the processor and graphics, such as when gaming, a full charge lasts only about an hour. However, with more moderate use, it can stretch to a full workday. Around 8 hours of mixed browsing and Office use with a 120 Hz screen and medium brightness, and up to 16 hours if I dim the screen more and switch to 60 Hz.

In Nitro Sense, you can choose between four “scenarios”: Silent, Balanced, Performance, and Turbo. Or two, Eco and Balanced, when running on battery. In Balanced mode or lower, the laptop can mostly run on passive cooling, so you don’t have to deal with fan noise during lighter tasks. In the two performance modes, or if it overheats in Balanced mode, the fan noise can become significant. A convenient shortcut button above the keyboard allows you to switch between these modes, which I appreciate.

In Nitro Sense, you’ll also find additional settings for battery charging, USB ports, backlighting, battery health check, storage, and other useful features that Windows settings don’t cover. A few pre-installed extra programs and icons exist, but none that launch and disturb at startup, so they can be ignored.

Verdict

Getting this level of processor performance, real gaming graphics, and good battery life, despite the small 14-inch format, is rare. Especially at such an affordable price. However, the substantial weight, boxy design, and at times aggressive cooling can’t be ignored. I could overlook that with better quality in the screen and speakers, but they are just average. ■

Model: NH.QQKED.003 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, slot for microSD Screen: 14.5-inch matte IPS, 1920 x 1200 pixels, 120 Hz Webcam: 720p Connections: USB 4, USB-C 3 Gen 2 with DisplayPort, 2 USB-A 3 Gen 2, HDMI, headset Wireless: WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 OS: Windows 11 Home Additional: RGB keyboard Noise Level: 0–45 dBa Battery: 76 Wh, 50 min (high load, full brightness, 120 Hz) to 14 hours (low load, low brightness, 60 Hz) Dimensions: 32.4 x 25.6 x 2.3 cm Weight: 2.02 kg Price: $1,290

Performance

Cinebench R23, CPU multi-core: 11,026 points Cinebench 2024, CPU multi-core: 928 points Cinebench 2024, CPU single-core: 101 points Geekbench 6, CPU multi-core: 11,918 points Geekbench 6, CPU single-core: 2,467 points Geekbench 6, GPU: 80,032 points 3DMark Fire Strike (DirectX 11): 20,155 points 3DMark Time Spy (DirectX 12): 8,751 points

Powerful processor. Fast enough graphics for gaming. Well-built keyboard. Good battery life.

Only average screen. Mediocre speakers. Not particularly thin or light. Noisy cooling system.