Acer Nitro 17 Gaming Laptop | AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS Octa-Core CPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU | 17.3" QHD 165Hz IPS Display | 1TB Gen 4 SSD | Wi-Fi 6E | RGB Backlit KB | AN17-41-R7G3, Black

Explanation of pictures - Two computers side by side shows the bright colors of the Acer Nitro 17 display vs. my wife's Lenovo 5 Slim which I had considered but dismissed after seeing the display at a local retailer. The other picture shows that my system came with DDR5 5600MHz vs. the 4800MHz it was advertised to have. Bonus for me! :)A quick recap of why I ended up purchasing this computer.Unfortunately we are in a position of having to downsize dramatically and our desktop computers will be going in to storage. My wife and I are both avid gamers, currently really in to playing Baldur's Gate 3 a couple times a week with some friends.I knew I needed something with enough grunt to play most any game I threw at it for at least 2-3 years, my previous experience with the 60 level (860M) GPU told me that this would be a good enough level to handle that want. I needed to have a CPU that would be able to handle my day to day work, enough umph to handle games, be higher end to remain serviceable for a good few years, and be efficient. My biggest want was a big vibrant display, followed by power port on the back, current gen ports (HDMI 2.1, USB 4 Type C, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type A) , DDR5, and last but so far away from least would be build quality.GPU is handled by a Nvidia 4060 8GB (would have gone 4070 if they had a 12GB version, but all I could find was 8GB). Performance different between the 4060 and 4070 is ~15%, not enough different to justify the price. While looking at this there was an Asus ROG with a 12th Gen i7 and a 4070 but it was built on an outdated system board that only ran DDR4, the performance gains going from DDR4 3200 MHz to DDR5 4800MHz is about 6-7% which brings than GPU advantage in to check. The CPU going to the Ryzen 7 7840 vs the 12th gen i7 gives about 5-7% as well. So there goes most of the gains. Sure some games won't be hindered by the loss of CPU or Memory and the 4070 will knock the 4060 back down, but as games get more advanced and more CPU intensive, I like having the extra grunt and the extra RAM speed. That was my reasoning for staying with the less expensive 4060.CPU, I'm an AMD fanboy. I have been for years. Ever single desktop I've built since I started building have been AMD. Started with AMD K5 P166 way back when. Then K6 200, 233, K6-2, Duron, Athlon, Athlon XP, FX, Ryzen 7 1700, Ryzen 7 5700X, and now Ryzen 7 7840HS. I opted for the Ryzen 7 over the Ryzen 5 (7640HS) which was available in a Lenovo I was comparing against, and interestingly enough the one my wife ended up with. I know this CPU will handle what I need for a long while and be very efficient.Display. Boy howdy, let me tell you this thing is gorgeous. Bright (in the picture it is at 50% brightness and it looks just as bright as the Lenovo 5 Slim 16" WUXGA display at 100%). Color reproduction is great, not the best in the world but let's be real here... this laptop does not cost that much. For a 17.3" display that puts out this much eye melting beauty is a steal. Blows away others that cost $500 more. Just look at the picture. Speaks for itself.RAM - 16GB, enough for now. And by some hiccup mine came with 5600MHz DDR5 instead of the advertised 4800MHz. I call that a win and it will surely help down the road.Build Quality - I was most worried about this and sort of still am. I've owned HP, Lenovo, and Dell. Never been happy with the HP. Dell held up great. My old Lenovo from 2014 was built like a tank and was what I held on to until I purchased this one. That system had a 4th Gen i7, Nvidia 860M, and 16GB RAM. It handled most things great until recently, it has been retired to being a garage computer. It doesn't feel cheap. The hinge is crazy tight. The palm rest doesn't flex under weight unless you push really hard. The keyboard doesn't dip while typing. The display doesn't shake at all while typing. Keyboard feels solid. No missed keys while typing this long review. Touchpad is a little cheap, wish it were a bit more accurate or made of a more slippery material so my finger wouldn't skip while dragging slowly. But let's be honest, I'm using a mouse when I do anything that required more precision than a touchpad can deliver. Time will tell if it holds up. The black plastic surface is a fingerprint magnet so keep a microfiber cloth for when you want to wipe it off. With all of that being said I am purchasing the 4 Year extended warranty for this laptop which means I likely won't have to make a claim because that's how it goes with these things, you know what I'm saying.All in all, I really do like this computer. I wasn't completely on board at first but after using it for a few days I am excited to spend the next few years gaming with this system.Before I close this out I would be doing you a disservice if I didn't say that yes this thing runs Baldur's Gate 3 butter smooth at full resolution (2560x1440). Not a hiccup. And it looks soooo good :).If you made it this far, thank you for reading my review.

TLDR: Two years ago I would have never purchased an Acer Nitro. I despised the thought of buying one of these things. The thermals, display, ports, and NitroSense are really well designed.I purchased this laptop so that I might step away from my molten mess of a Dell G15 5515 (Ryzen 7 5800H / 3050ti).The thermals on this laptop are quite impressive given the poor excuse of mid range gaming laptops that flooded the market years ago. Under heavy load (80%+) I see temperatures somewhere around 75*C. This is quite acceptable given my Dell's usual 100*C temps.NitroSense is the software equivilent of Alienware Command Center. The only difference between the two: NitroSense just works. Yeah! Amazing! I've grown tired of billion dollar companies creating minimum viable products. All the more so when it comes to monitoring and maintaining hardware that I've purchased. Gone are the days of waiting 2-5 minutes for Command Center to load up. Gone are the days where Alienware Command Center would sit there and download a 1.2gb "patch." It's quite alarming that I'm impressed with software that functions exactly as I would expect it to. In NitroSense I'm able to customize my power profiles, fan speeds, lighting, etc... without concern or worry! Hey! Thanks software guys!The screen is pretty darn cool. Sadly, it suffers a bit from panel glow. Most of the time I only notice it when the machine is booting up.With a native resolution of 2560x1440 and a GeForce 4060 -- gaming isn't too shabby. A lot of the time I'm hooking up my ultra wide and playing at a decent FPS in 3440x1440. Gaming in 1080p should be a breeze for most people.Ports n' ports n' ports! I have 3-5 monitors. This is one of the very few laptops on the market with (2) USBC and an HDMI port on the rear. There are (3) USBA ports; 2 on the right, 1 on the left. I can easily get by with a mouse -- ol' Squeakers.This laptop actually has a MicroSD slot. Hats off to Acer. I'm constantly using flash media.The battery on this thing is really, really quite impressive. I just turned on 'quiet' mode and dimmed my brightness down to 20%. This thing will outlast my Surface Pro 8 / Surface Go 3 at this rate. At my current usage rate I'll get 6.5-8hrs out of a full charge. Other reviews (such as JT) have claimed a full 8hrs while playing a 720p video. Pretty darn close.Some peopel complain about the touchpad having a coarse material. I have no idea what they're talking about. Mine is very smooth and I've had zero problems with it out of the box.A lot of the reviews here (10%~) note hardware failure shortly after purchase. I did run HWINFO on here to ensure I received a fresh laptop and not someone's return or refurb. Everything checked out o-k and everything has worked thus far.This review will be edited should any major hardware failure occur. I will update this in a year for kicks. Assuming everything goes well -- I'll upgrade my storage and probably ram in the future.