New Acer Aspire V Nitro series

Notebookcheck summary translated:
Acer Aspire V 17 Nitro (VN7-791G-759Q)
18.09.2014

Good:
+ large assortment
+ relatively lightweight and thin
+ nifty design with interesting surfaces
+ good workmanship
+ dual band WLAN
+ ergonomic, illuminated Keyboard...
+ ...that sadly can be dent
+ excellent touchpad
+ overall well-made, bright IPS display
+ CPU- and GPU performance fully usable, optimal Turbo-utilization, no throttling even on maximum load!
+ fast enough for any software
+ extremely fluent handling
+ very fast SSD, fast HDD
+ fast enough for most up-to-date games in high or maximal settings
+ very quiet
+ stays cool
+ low power consumption

Bad:
- chassis not optimally stable
- can't be maintained easily
- battery poorly accessible and sticky
- RAM are buried deeply
- conflicting information regarding manufacturer's warranty
- display contrast could be better
- equalizer not normally usable
- mediocre battery

What they liked:
- Stays quiet and cool, even with unlimited performance power.

What they find lacking:
- A maintenance flap and a replaceable battery.

What's amazing:
- This notebook is even cheaper than comparable notebooks that have more disadvantages!

Possible alternatives:
- Medion Erazer X7613-MD98795
- Gigabyte P27G v2
- Asus G750JM-T4014H
- MSI GE70-2PEi716SR21B
- Nexoc G728II (Clevo W370SS)
- Lenovo IdeaPad Y50-70 (59424712)
- MSI GE60-2PEi781B

Final scores:

Chassis: 84 / 98 → 86%
Keyboard: 87%
Pointing device: 89%
Connectivity: 65 / 91 → 71%
Weight: 57 / 66 → 84%
Battery: 80%
Display: 84%
Gaming performance: 92%
Application performance: 93%
Heat management: 85 / 95 → 89%
Loudness: 91 / 90 → 100%
Audio: 76%
Camera: 70 / 85 → 82%
Average: 81%

Final score: 86%

Temperatures under heavy load:

 

CPU at 96°C, no turbo. And MAN... thats a huge fan compared to the 15. Nearly 3x bigger.

 

That's a pretty solid review coming from them.

 

Indeed it is. Hopefully they will review 15" version too.

 

Still no word of Canadian release, I gather.

 

uhm, ... no?
http://www.notebookcheck.com/filead..._759Q/Acer_Aspire_VN7_791G_759Q_33_von_41.jpg
-> thats the 17'' 791G

Bild: dsc_0888abfa8.jpg - abload.de
-> thats the 15'' 591G. yes, the fan on the right side is a bit bigger (my reference is the 2,5'' HDD), but not much. on the other hand: the left fan is bigger for the 591G, as far as I can tell by just looking at the pictures.

sure, the temps aren't that nice. but still better than Lenovos enforced throtteling.

they said so, but it was a liitle unclear, wheter they get only a 571G or a 591G.

side note: somebody with a 591G was looking for the dust defender tool on his NB and didn't find it. looking at the bottom of both NBs (591G and 791G), the assumption came up, that only the 791G does have the dust defender technology. it has those holes next to the fan intakes, which are nonexistent for the 591G.

http://www.notebookcheck.com/filead..._759Q/Acer_Aspire_VN7_791G_759Q_32_von_41.jpg
http://www.notebookcheck.com/filead..._759Q/Acer_Aspire_VN7_791G_759Q_31_von_41.jpg

that would be a pretty downside for the 591G, as the serviceability (cooler cleaning) of the 591G is as bad as that of the 791G.

 

I read somewhere that indicated that dust defender is a passive thing; a combination of metal fans that supposedly cuts the dust up better, and the fact that the fans will run in reverse on startup and in certain idle situations, in order to blow the dust out more efficiently.

Here's an older video from Acer showing just that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZX02hZsKMw

 

Will do it this WE.

 

It really looks like Acer is on to a hit with their V 17 Nitro.. seems like they got almost everything right.

Now the only question for me is what the price will be. I'm willing to pay some premium for better quality, but if the difference down to the Y50 is too big, I'm not so sure..

 

I can give you my experiences after having had it for a few days.

Overall, I'm really impressed with the laptop. It's sleek, good looking, and relatively lightweight - but still very powerful. The build quality is good, and it looks and feels like a high end machine.

I'm definitely keeping it, unless something unexpected happens.


- it can run games like Watch_Dogs and Bioshock Infinite with high settings and good frame rates.

- I love that it has both a fast SSD and a big hard drive. I have no need for an optical drive, so that's perfect for me.

- It's pretty quiet in idle, but the fans ramp up under load, of course - but not in an unpleasant way.

- It gets hot under load, 90+ celcius, but it doesn't throttle like crazy like the Lenovo Y50 supposedly does. It tends to stay at the turbo freq, but ramps down to regular freq after prolonged 90+ temperatures. I don't know if the heat is a worry in the long run when the thermal paste gets weaker and dust starts to build up, but right now the laptop seems to be able to handle the heat without resorting to unacceptable levels of noise or throttling.

- I was initially disappointed with the screen. My impressions are better now and think that it was mostly a matter of habit and getting used to a new screen. It's by no means a high end IPS, though.

- I haven't tested it on battery for prolonged periods. I'd guess it's the standard 4'ish hours depending on what you're doing.

- Having all the ports on the right side doesn't really bother me.

- WiFi seems fine and stable - but I haven't really tested the range.

- The speakers are pretty good for laptop speakers, but it's not a priority for me. I have a nice pair of headphones.

- The keyboard is comfortable to type on. I'm not used to chiclet, but I really like it.

 

Here, in Denmark, the difference between the cheapest 15" Nitro (8 GB ram, 128 GB SSD, 1000 GB HDD) and the cheapest Y50 (8GB ram, 256 GB SSD, no HDD) is about 500 DKK, which is about $85 or €70 (i.e. the Y50 being the cheaper laptop).

The expensive versions of both are equally priced. With the Nitro instead having a 256 GB SSD and 16 GB of ram, and the Y50 having 16 GB ram, 512 GB SSD, 4 GB of ram on the GPU instead of 2 and a 4K screen.

 

I'm also in Denmark. Look at edbpriser.dk, the cheapest Y50 is 6000 DKK, the cheapest Nitro is 8300 DKK

Bærbar prissammenligning - 1400 bærbar produkter hos EDBpriser

 

Ah, right. I was just having a quick look at komplett.dk

I didn't know they had Core i5 versions of both.

 

Isnt there any utility to speed up those fans? Are they spinning on 100% of their potential? I dont mind a bit louder notebook, but i would like to keep it cool ...

 

well, at least Acer promised so - the coolboost was meant to be such a feature. 19% faster fans for 11% better cooling.

mayby some owners can contribute on that topic. the question for me is: are the fans running at 100% in auto-mode, when the CPU reaches temps of 90°C and above? or is there still room for the coolboost?

 

There's no CoolBoost app as far as I can tell. And the feature is not mentioned in the user's manual.

Fan speeds are not showing up in any of the hardware monitor programs I've tried (Open Hardware Monitor, Speedfan, HWMonitor). Is there another way to check it?

 

Received my 15 inch (i5-4210H CPU) VN7 yesterday, will test it out over the weekend when I get home from work, although I think there shouldn't be any surprises left after all that has been already said.

First impressions:

- looks VERY nice and high class (no seriously this notebook looks absolut amazing)
- top side is resistant to finger prints, keyboard area unfortunately not
- heavier than I expected, feels "bigger" than the Lenovo Y50

- VERY disappointing: worse screen than V5-573G: first thing you notice is that the screen isn't as bright, colours wash out very quickly on lower brightness levels, up and down viewing angles are not as good as on the V5-573G (again colours wash out fairly quickly), side angles are on par with the V5-573G, but overall the screen feels lackluster (when coming from the V5-573G)

- very quiet while doing light tasks, as quiet as the V5-573G (haven't installed any games yet)
- keyboard is a big improvement over the V5-573G, but spacebar often doesn't react when you tap it on the left side corner
- keyboard area gets quite warm, rear end gets almost hot, everything else very cool

- VERY disappointing: you can't take off the bottom panel to upgrade RAM/SSD, after further reading it looks like you have to remove the keyboard... Seriously Acer???? potential dealbreaker for me...

 

well, the biggest thing in removing the keyboard seems to be some rather short cables. other than that: whats the difference from removing some screws and opening the bottom panel to removing some screws and removing the keyboard? AFAIK the pictures, when you have the keyboard out of the way, you can access HDD and M.2-SSD-port just normally - only from a rather unusual side. the advantage: the NB can rest on its normal feet during that procedure.

why does the NB get warm/hot, if you haven't gamed yet? stresstests (XTU or alike)?

 

The heck? Finally thought there was a computer with 860m and a nice screen, and now this?

 

Thx for the short review, makes it easier to make the decision. Will probably make an order during the weekend.

 

Does anybody know the difference between the VN7-591G-77A9 and the VN7-591G-790C?

Also, does anybody know if it is easy to add a SSD to this machine? I'm thinking about buying the VN7-791G-759Q and add a SSD to it

Thanks in advance

EDIT > cyberport is showing some weird info for the VN7-591G-790C

Checking the data sheet

1.28TB hybrid

28.1 TB Hybrid Consists of: 2 x 128 GB SSD Drives1 M.2
1 x TB HDD

 

the M.2 slot and SATA port are on the outside of the motherboard, so that shouldn't be the problem. you can notice where it is immediately as you take off the D pad. one thing you should know is that the screw placement on the mobo only allows 80x22mm M.2 SSD, if you got a different dimension you'll have to figure out on your own on how to keep it in place

removing the back panel takes brainless effort, get a philips screw driver and screw, problem solved. removing the ENTIRE motherboard not only takes extra work, you also have to know how to put it back properly, be careful with cable managements and you also have to deal with more parts around.

it simply just shouldn't take this much effort to add extra RAM. most notebooks don't have to give you easy access to the heatsink, but easy to access RAM and hard drive is just a standard.

you can argue for any other weakness of VN7, but you just can't get away with the poor maintainability. that is just a flat stupid thing to do. with cooling you can give or take, with screen you can give or take, but for this? just why

 

I might have been not that clear. What I write above was my opinion on removing only the keyboard (to access the HDD and SSD).

I agree with you, that it's rather hard to change anything on the RAM or clean the coolers, though the fans are accessible from the top, too.

And for sure it IS a downside. But in my book, it's no deal breaker. Inconvenient, sure. But not a total screwup.

 

To repaste do you go through the bottom of the laptop, or the top (down through the keyboard)? And to additionally confirm, RAM swap is through bottom and ssd/hdd swap and m2 swap is via top?

 

You always have to go through the top by removing the base top-cover (one piece with keyboard and palmrest). This will give you an access to HDD and M.2 SSD. If you want to access RAM or CPU heatsinks you have to continue with disassembling by removing the mainboard. It is necessary to remove harddrive, battery and some cables in order to do that.

I've already try both. The first part is about 2 minutes, the second is about 10 minutes.

I have 16GB of RAM from factory so the only reason to remove the mainboard is to maintain the cooling system. On my previous gaming Acer I did that every two years so I can live with this kind of inconvenience.

 

Yeah - I'm thinking even if it's a pita to access anything, it's not like you do that every day - perhaps once or twice in the lifetime of the laptop. Cant wait for this to come out in uk - quite excited something that ticks almost all of the boxes after all the recent disappointment with asus etc.

 

Could you try something like this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/711908-acer-7551g-fan-control-utility-fixes-overheating.html

or this?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer/536084-fan-control-utility.html

Thanks

 

First one doesn't show fan speed. The second one seems too experimental and time consuming for me to try.

 

Anyone know anything about a U.S. release date? I'd like to get one of the nitro blacks, but I have no idea on a release date and can't seem to find one.

 

Whilst i wait for release in uk, are any current owners planning on doing a before and after repaste temperature check?

 

my trackpad is even with the chasis on the bottom and sinked 1mm on the top and when i click it it has a bit of play. can you guys have tell me if its like that on yours too? or i am spoiled because i was using macbook trackpad for the last 2 years..



also, @locke, can you describe your wifi problems and solutions?

thanks!

 

That's is not normal. The one on the notebook that I was tested was perfectly flat.

 

Test Acer Aspire V 17 Nitro (VN7-791G-759Q) Notebook - Notebookcheck.com Tests

17" model now tested by notebookcheck.

No CPU/GPU throttling under stresstest, and temps seems good for stresstesting! Pretty impressive.

Flaws in my book: the IPS screen only has middling contrast, battery not that great, pain in the *** to open/access memory.

 

Same on mine.

 

We announced the test almost immediately after release.

 

Been away few days, only checked last 2 pages here

 

hehe. never mind.

I just made a discovery in the test from NBC: they added an update on 19.09. - a statement from Acer concerning the change of battery. in Germany, that costs you (only) 59€, which is all inclusive (meaning transportation, work costs and the battery itself). very fair in my eyes, though you still have to send them the NB for the exchange.

 

That's actually a good price for an all-inclusive service. To clarify what SCARed wrote - it is not a recall because of a faulty battery, it is an additional info from Acer that in spite of the fact that the battery is built in, it still can be replaced if needed.

 

Hi guys!!
I'd like to buy a new laptop and i'm looking for some new models. I've seen the Acer Nitro v15 (the 591g version with 16 Gb of ram, i7 4710 CPU and gtx 860m and 1Tb + 8 gb ssd cache). I'm a gamer, so i won't play for hours (maybe 30 minutes on the weekends) and a throttle is not a problem for me.
I'd like to know some things from you (because you've already tested the notebook):
1. The temperature in idle and the loudness. I need a really silent notebook when i surf on the internet. Could you confirm that in idle is the notebook silent?
2. The battery. Is it enough long when you don't do game sessions?

P.s. sorry for my english, i'm italian. Ahahahahahah

 

well according to an actual owner of the VN7-591G (over in the NBC-forum - but only in german) he couldn't hear the NB while surfing. if this is actual true is unknown. the VN7-791G in the test at NBC had it fan running even in idle, but they stated, that you had to pay real attention to the fan to hear it running.

battery life should be quite similiar to the VN7-791G, which did only 3 hours 40 minutes, thanks to the rather small battery. don't expect much more from the the VN7-591G.

 

Thank you for your speed.
I'm glad to hear that the notebook is quite silent (of course the fan couldn't be off). About the battery I've hoped a little better, but it's a game machine and 3h 40m could be quite good during standard sessions.
I've also seen the Asus N550JK and asus n750jk. Which is better about experience of use (i know that about performance the Acer is better i suppose..)?
Thank you so much

 

I have the 15". It's surprisingly quiet in idle - even though it hovers around the 50 degrees celcius mark.

I'm really satisfied with my purchase. It's a powerful gamer laptop, but still gorgeous and sleek, and relatively thin. Not like an ultrabook, but much better than previous generations of bulky gamer laptops.

I think it really depends on what your needs are, and on what kind of games you want to play. It might be a bit overkill and expensive, if you're only going to do some casual gaming. But if you have the money, I think it's a great buy.

 

I know that is expensive if i don't use it to play a lot of game, but when i buy a new laptop i stay with it for 4/5 years without change it.. so i prefer to buy a good one.
The high temps are not a problem for you, i hope (heither for me ahah).
I'd like to know another thing: have you got an ssd chache? And if you had, what the boot time is?
Thank you Guy!

 

The high temperatures are not a problem for me. It gets quite hot under load, but as discussed earlier in the thread, the cooling seems to be able to handle it without much throttling. But like with all laptops, that might degrade over time as dust accumulates and the thermal pasting gets weaker.

I have the version with a separate 256 GB SSD and a 1 TB HDD. It boots really, really quick from the SSD. Less than 10 seconds, I'd say.

Not sure how fast it would boot with the hybrid SSHD.

 

I'd like to know what is the difference between the black edition and a normal edition. For example i'm going to buy the Vn 591g 79aa model. Is this a black edition? What has the black edition more?
Thank you

 

the normal edition is AFAIK the 571G. it has ULV-CPUs (i5-4210U or i7-4510U) and only the GT840M, though I have seen versions with GTX850M, too. plus it has an ODD (DVD or BR).

the black edition is the 591G, where you can either have an i5-4510H or an i7-4710HQ as CPu and then the GTX860M. as these NBs need more cooling, they get two fans but have to sacrifice the ODD for this.

my advice: don't think about BE or non-BE. think about, what level of performance you need and then choose the appropriate NB. both versions get the same screen (the okay but not superb LG-IPS) and keyboard and both share the bad port placement (all three USB in the right side ... ).

the non-BE should achieve way better battery time (expect around 7-8 hours) due to the ULV-CPU, but even the i7-4510U is only dualcore (if you have programms that make use of more than two cores - like video editing and such).

 

I've bought the vn7-791g with Seagate SSHD 1TB. In everyday use the difference is irrelevant. The boot time is about 15/30 sec, depends on the "windows mood". If you want real speed buy an SSD.
With only firefox open, no usb drives attached, said battery level 90% and battery life 2 hours and 45 minutes. Nothing special.

When you really start to use the CPU, like a 3d rendering, the real noise starts, but like all notebooks.

The vn7-791g is the black edition, from what I saw the only edition. At least for the models nx.mqret.004 and nx.mqret.007.

Last but not least:
aesthetically awesome
zero noise in idle...almost
powerful
very light

ps:
now, battery level 68% and battery life 2 hours and 8 min

 

Finally got around to do some testing on the VN7-591G (with i5-4210H), overall impression is: Good notebook with some flaws. Good price-performance value for 999 Euros, but not the best price-quality value.

Keypoints:

1. Very quiet. Fans are always running, but they operate very dynamically and without steps. Inaudible with regular ambient noise during surfing, watching youtube, working with office, etc. They ramp up notably during games, but are often drowned out from game sounds + ambient noises. Amazing job by Acer, they're reaching Asus level of fan control.

2. Temps are not so good. CPU was hovering at around 50C under light load. After 2 hours of Prime + Furmark it reached 98C. Throttling to 2,2-2,8GHz occured after 80 minutes. It did stay at 3,2-3,3GHz for a good hour. Careful: It doesn't take much to hit 90C on the CPU. From boot up into 15 minutes of 3D Mark 2011, the CPU reached 89C. GPU reached a max temp of 91C during Prime + Furmark. Undervolting might help to keep the CPU temps in check, haven't tested it yet. Chassis got very hot during Prime + Furmark!

3. Gaming Performance: Runs everything on max details on Full HD without AA. Newest game I own is Thief which ran with a very playable 27fps without AA and AF. Any other game I tested (DotA, Diablo, Tomb Raider, BF3) ran close to 50-60fps.

4. Disappointment 1: Screen is good on max brightness, but falls really off when compared to the V5-573G. Viewing angles are not as good, dark colours look really off on lower brightness. Especially black colours are pretty bad. All in all I wished they put in a good TN panel instead of a mediocre IPS. The AUO11ED-TN-panel from my 3 year old Clevo P150HM looks waaaayyyyy better.

5. Disappointment 2: Maintaining this notebook. My 30 day return guarantee expires, if I open the notebook, so I didn't. But from what I read on the german forums, the 591G does not have the dust defender feature and I couldn't find this feature anywhere myself. Removing the keyboard + mainboard to get to the heatsinks seems a bit excessive for my taste. Considering how hot the CPU runs, easily accessible fans would have been very nice.

6. Anything else: Notebook looks very classy, not too flashy, not too booring, just perfect. High quality chassis, little to no flex, feels very solid and stable, keyboard is above average, touchpad is good and responsive. Sound is very good.

7. Nitpicks: Arrow keys are too small, spacebar not always responsive, speakers are under the notebook which can lead to muffled sounds, bloatware, bloatware, bloatware.


Closing Thoughts: I might return the 591G to test out the 17inch version, but the price/performance of the V791 is pretty mediocre. Not a good time to buy a notebook now in my opinion, since the only direct competitors are the Y50 and the Clevo brands. And both of them have their own flaws. All other notebook manufacturers are not gonna release new machines until the new nVidia GPUs are released which might take another month or two. So yeah.....

 

There is a thing about this notebook that i can't understand: There is 1 Tb hdd and 8gb cache ssd; but how it works? I mean: the 8gb are on the m.2 sata port? (I suppose yes but 8gb are not enough for the OS, so the OS could be on the Hdd) How can the ssd work in this situation?

P.s I've seen from some review that the Hdd is a WD wd10jpvx (Scorpio Blue), so i'm sure that there is no cache ssd inside that hard drive (it's not like momentus xt)

 

The 8GB "SSD" is a flash drive that is part of the HHD. It doesn't use up another port, hence the name Hybrid hard drive. They way it works is, windows and often used programms save their cache (not sure if that is the right term) in the SSD flash drive to start up faster. But you can't actually manually store/save data on the 8GB flash drive.

Edit: Just to clarify, you only get 1 hard drive.

Edit 2: In praxis good hybrid hard drives can somewhat match real SSD hard drives in terms of booting time. But real SSDs write (for example installing games) and read (loading times) much faster. The 8GB flash drive is too small to handle everything.