Acer Nitro 16 review: a solid all-rounder at a promising price point

The Acer Nitro 16 AMD is a bit clunky, but a powerful proposition with good value for money.

A black Acer Nitro 16 laptop
(Image: © Josephine Watson)

Our Verdict

While it’s not winning any design awards, Acer’s mid-tier gaming laptop, the Acer Nitro 16, offers some decent specs and great performance at an approachable price point. Not all of its specs are showstopping, with both its webcam and speakers leaving some “oomph” to be desired, but it’s a compelling option if your entry-level laptop isn’t cutting it for you.

For

  • Great performance at this price point
  • Bright and vibrant 16-inch screen
  • Ports galore, including at the rear
  • Decent battery life

Against

  • Design is a little clunky and dated
  • Speakers are very basic and lack depth
  • Low-quality 720p webcam

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Acer’s Nitro range of gaming laptops amps up with the Acer Nitro 16, elevating its formerly entry-level standards to a comfortable mid-range price with the specs to match. In fact, it might just be one of the best laptops for gaming right now, offering enough performance to tackle the latest AAA titles while keeping the cost relatively low.

I used the Acer Nitro 16 for two weeks as my main laptop, putting it to the test with games like Cyberpunk 2077, and Starfield as well as creative software like Adobe Photoshop and Blender, and I was pretty impressed by how it tackled everything I threw at it. The model I was loaned for testing wasn’t even the beefiest of the Nitro 16 range, with configurations reaching up to an AMD Ryzen 9 CPU and Nvidia RTX 4070 graphics card versus my unit’s AMD Ryzen 7 and RTX 4060, demonstrating how it’s not only monster machines like the Acer’s more premium Predator Helios 18 that can bring the heat.

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Row 0 - Cell 0 Our review unitOther configurations
CPU:AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS w/ Radeon 780MIntel Core i5-13500H processor Dodeca-core 2.60 GHz
Graphics:NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 and 4070
Memory:16GB GDDR632GB
Screen size:16-inch 16:10 LCD IPSRow 4 - Cell 2
Resolution:2560 x 1600p1920 x 1200p
Refresh rate:165HzRow 6 - Cell 2
Colour coverage (stated):100% sRGBRow 7 - Cell 2
Storage:1TB SSD512GB and 1.5TB
Connectivity:1 x HDMI, 1 x USB 2.0, 2 x USB-A, 1 x USB-C, EthernetRow 9 - Cell 2
Dimensions:27.9 x 360 x 280mm Row 10 - Cell 2
Weight:2.7kgRow 11 - Cell 2
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Geekbench 6Row 0 - Cell 1
Single-core:2,555
Multi-core:11,660
GPU OpenCL:94,722
PCMark 10Row 4 - Cell 1
Score:7,868
3D MarkRow 6 - Cell 1
Time Spy:9,742
Fire Strike:23,628
Cinebench 2024Row 9 - Cell 1
Multi-core:937
Single-core:187
HandbrakeRow 12 - Cell 1
Video encoding:3m52s @ 82.7fps
The Verdict
8

out of 10

Acer Nitro 16

While it’s not winning any design awards, Acer’s mid-tier gaming laptop, the Acer Nitro 16, offers some decent specs and great performance at an approachable price point. Not all of its specs are showstopping, with both its webcam and speakers leaving some “oomph” to be desired, but it’s a compelling option if your entry-level laptop isn’t cutting it for you.

Erlingur Einarsson
Tech Reviews Editor

Erlingur is the Tech Reviews Editor on Creative Bloq. Having worked on magazines devoted to Photoshop, films, history, and science for over 15 years, as well as working on Digital Camera World and Top Ten Reviews in more recent times, Erlingur has developed a passion for finding tech that helps people do their job, whatever it may be. He loves putting things to the test and seeing if they're all hyped up to be, to make sure people are getting what they're promised. Still can't get his wifi-only printer to connect to his computer.