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ACER Nitro 5 Thanos Edition Review: Mad Titan Approved?

John Nieves

We go review the Thanos Edition of the Nitro 5!

Today we’ll be taking a look at the Limited Edition Nitro 5 Thanos Edition that ACER released in cooperation with Marvel for the Avengers: Infinity War. Now, reviewing this powerful beast was a bit of a conundrum for me, especially after seeing what Grimace’s cousin did during the course of the film. But regardless of your feelings for the man-that-mangled-The-Hulk, the notebook that bears his name is a pretty solid gaming notebook though it’s eclipsed by its non-SE brethren as you’ll learn in our review.

Acer Nitro 5 Thanos Edition Specs

Same design as the i7 Nitro 5, but decked in Thanos livery

Despite having a swanky Marvel-branded box, the Nitro 5 Thanos Edition has the same build and design as the Core i7 Nitro 5 we reviewed earlier. It’s not as flashy as the other gaming notebooks in the market, with its subdued, brushed aluminum finish and it’s lack of bright, multicolored LED lights.

That’s probably the reason why ACER picked the Nitro 5 as the notebook to bear the Mad Titan’s namesake. Instead of boring black, the lid of the SE Nitro 5 now bears the dejected mug of a being hell bent on mass murder (AKA Thanos), with a gold accents near the Infinity Gauntlet as well as the center of the notebook that bears the hinge.

There’s a few more artwork on the chassis of the notebook when you open the lid, but overall Thanos’ likeness is pretty subdued on the notebook that bears his name.

The chassis holds a fair number of connections, including 3 USB ports (with one being high-speed USB 3.0), USB Type-C port, an HDMI port, Ethernet port, SD card reader as well as a combo headphone jack.


Display is good for casual gaming

The Nitro 5 has a 15.6-inch full HD IPS display with ACER’s own ComfyView tech built in, which is their fancy way of saying that it has a matte, anti-glare screen. Viewing angles are good, though the notebook’s display has rather thick bezels on the side.

The notebook doesn’t have fancy display tech like G-Sync, but honestly it doesn’t have the specs to take advantage of the tech anyway.

As for actual display quality, it’s perfectly OK for gaming and multimedia. The notebook comes with an Infinity War splash screen when you start it up that replaces the regular ACER logo and Windows startup images that you typically see. The notebook also comes with Infinity War wallpapers as well.

Keyboard is a joy to type and play with, speakers need a little work though

The SE Thanos Nitro 5 comes with a full QWERTY keyboard with a numpad. The keys feel nice to type on, have plenty of travel despite not sporting mechanical keys.

The keyboard is also backlit, though you can’t change the color from the default red. The touchpad is responsive enough but you’ll probably be plugging in a mouse if you’re really serious about gaming with it. It’s a shame that ACER did not include a similarly themed gaming mouse for the notebook.

The notebook produces decent sound, though it distorts a bit at full volume.

Gaming performance is good but there are caveats

The Acer Nitro 5 is a gaming notebook first and foremost, sporting an 8th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, along with 8GB of RAM, a 1TB HDD, 128GB SSD and an NVIDIA GTX 1050 GPU.

This particular version of the Nitro 5 is a bit nerfed, especially when you compare it to the more capable Core i7, GTX 1050 Ti version Jamie reviewed earlier this week. While the GTX 1050 GPU is capable of running most games, you’ll have to sacrifice detail for the sake of frame rate, unless you like low framerates when you play.

Let’s get into the nitty gritty of benchmarks. Take note of the graphic settings of both Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Farcry 5 – we did two runs per game in medium and high settings. Both games have the files installed in the 1TB HDD.

As you can see you’ll have to sacrifice a bit of detail to get buttery smooth frames.

In normal use, the Nitro 5 fared pretty well. We didn’t hit any bottlenecks even with RAM-hungy Chrome, and the Nitro 5 kept up with all our open windows and multitasking.

Battery life is unimpressive

The Nitro 5 is a gaming notebook and just like any other gaming notebook, you shouldn’t expect a lot of battery life from it. Like its bigger brother, we recorded around 4 hours of useful battery life with the notebook. That’s with regular use and with WiFi on. You’ll definitely be lugging the power adapter with you when you’re out and about with it unfortunately.

Verdict: It’s a great way to commemorate Avengers: Infinity War, but get the Core i7 model if you’re serious about gaming

As far as special edition notebooks go, the ACER Nitro 5 Thanos Edition isn’t bad. It has enough power under the hood to play most AAA titles out right now, though you’ll have to compromise a bit and dial the graphical settings down to get decent frames out of it.

At Php 69,999 you’re paying quite a bit of coin to get special edition swag, considering that the same chassis with better specs is available for 10K less. If you’re a serious PC gamer on a tight budget, it’ll be wiser to pick up that model instead of this, but if you’re looking for a way to commemorate the culmination of nearly a decade’s worth of awesome MCU movies, then the Nitro 5 Thanos Edition is your best bet.

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