HP Omen 15 (AMD) vs Acer Nitro 5 (AMD): Which One You Will Choose?

• Share on Facebook
• Tweet it
• Share on Reddit
• Pin it

This is a comparison review of the HP Omen 15 AMD version versus the Acer Nitro 5 AMD version. Both are AMD gaming laptops and both perform really well in gaming and also other productivity works. Here, we will see the complete comparison of these two laptops.

For more HP Omen 15 reviews: HP Omen 15 vs Asus TUF A15.

BUY NOW	BUY NOW
HP Omen 15 (AMD)	Acer Nitro 5 (AMD)
PROS	PROS
Performs well for gamers and content creators. Great display with accurate color.	Controllable fan controls. Plenty of port selection.
CONS	CONS
The hinges seem unstable. Little heavier than other gaming laptops.	Poor audio quality. Display color.

SPECIFICATIONS

INTRODUCTION:

Here, we compare two laptops to decide which is the best budget workstation laptop for you. This comparison is for those people who are looking for a laptop that can suffice their needs for heavy CPU-intensive workloads like video editing, high-end animation in a blender, or for video encoding, high-end simulation, or emulation.

In this, we will compare the with the HP Omen Ryzen 7 and Acer Nitro 5 Ryzen 7. Both this laptop comes with a very somewhat similar price tag.

DESIGN:

Both have similar build quality but the HP Omen 15 does have some flex issue which people claim but the company doesn’t claim that they are facing any kind of issue with the flex. So, both have similar build quality. Weight-wise, Acer Nitro 5 is a little bit lighter than the HP Omen 15.

The Nitro 5 has a full-size keyboard with Numpad, and it also has full-size cursor control keys, and I really like the Nitro keyboard using a separator. Omen 15 also has a perfect layout, it has nice large keys, but the problem is the Omen doesn’t come with a Numpad. So, if you need a Numpad, you might have to get a USB number pad or something like that, but the Omen 15 does have full-size cursor control keys, but it sacrifices the Numpad.

DISPLAY:

In terms of display, both of these laptops are also similar. Both come with a 15.6 inch 60 hertz IPS display with 45% of NTSC and 250 nits of brightness, so these laptops are not recommended for professional color grading works. It’s a decent display but not really for professional work.

FEATURES:

Both the gaming laptops we are comparing, the HP Omen 15 and Acer Nitro 5 has AMD Ryzen 7 4800H processor with NVIDIA GTX 1650Ti and NVIDIA GTX 1650 graphics card respectively. So, as they both have almost similar hardware, the performance will also be almost similar. There may be little bit differences but not a lot.

In terms of storage solution, the Nitro 5 actually comes with a one terabyte hard drive which is a 7200 rpm hard drive that is quite fast. It also has two M.2 storage that you can populate with other M.2 SSDs in that one. Whereas HP Omen only comes with two M.2 storage, one is populated with the 500 gigabyte SSD and the other M.2 slot is empty where you can put another SSD. So, in terms of storage, Nitro 5 is the clear winner, it gives you more storage for SSD as well as for hard drive. So, for mass storage, the Nitro 5 is definitely the better choice.

One small but significant difference between the two laptops is in the software which controls the fan curves and the CPU profiles. Acer comes with Acer NitroSense software and the HP comes with HP Omen command center. The Acer NitroSense is my favorite command center for all these kinds of CPU controls and fan curve controls because the NitroSense software comes with manual fan control options which the Omen command center doesn’t have.

In terms of ports, the HP Omen has an advantage because it has three display out options, you can use the USB Type-C for Displayport 1.4 support. It also has HDMI 2.0 support and a mini display port out. So basically, with the HP Omen, you can drive three displays at the same time apart from the monitor itself, so it’s better for a multi-monitor setup. The HP Omen also has a full-sized SD card slot that is not present in the Nitro 5. The Nitro 5 comes with two USB 3.2 Type-A ports gen 1, one USB 3.2 Type-C gen 2 port. It does not have display port support from that Type-C port. It also has one USB 3.2 gen 2 Type-A port with power charging that supports charging through the USB. It also has an HDMI 2.0 port and it does not have a full-size SD card slot.

PERFORMANCE:

Many people have doubts about the power limit throttling, so the power limit throttling is only existed in the Acer Nitro 5 Intel variants, not in the Ryzen variants. The reason is, power limit throttling occurs when the CPU doesn’t get enough power from the power adapter to reach its maximum performance level. So, the Ryzen 7 4800H only needs about 54 watts of power when only the CPU is being used in CPU-intensive tasks, and in gaming, it only needs about 25 to 30 watts of power to play games. So, the supplied adapter is 135 watts, so there is no power limit throttling in the Ryzen variant of the Acer Nitro 5.

Both the Acer Nitro 5 and the HP Omen come with the Ryzen 7 4800H 8 core 16 thread CPU 2.9 gigahertz base clock and a boost clock of 4.2 gigahertz and both of these laptops can easily maintain that high clock speed across all its 8 cores and 16 threads due to the impressive cooling solution inside both of this laptop. So, this laptop is perfect for all your CPU-intensive tasks like editing, rendering, blender works, MatLab work, and everything which requires a lot of CPU horsepower. Both of these laptops come with 8 GB of single-channel DDR4 3200 megahertz RAM. These are all the similarities between both the laptops.

The Ryzen 7 4800H is a very impressive CPU for any kind of multi-threaded workload. In multi-threaded workloads, it is on a level with the intel core i9 10980HK, so that’s a huge difference in price tag if you go for the i9 laptop and will also heat a lot more. The Ryzen 7 4800H is very efficient, it gives you a lot of multi-threading performance and it will be great for all those kinds of CPU-intensive tasks.

The major difference between the two is that the Acer Nitro 5 comes with 1650 graphics and the HP Omen Ryzen 7 comes with 1650Ti graphics but you can also get the GTX 1650Ti in Acer Nitro 5. The difference between the two graphics cards is very less. In gaming, the 1650Ti is only about 7% on average faster than the 1650 and in CPU intensive work like in productivity works, the difference will be even smaller almost it’ll be similar, that’s because most of the productivity applications don’t take advantage of hardware acceleration even if they take advantage of GPU acceleration, it will be only like 25%-30%. At that level of utilization, both the 1650 and 1650Ti will perform exactly the same.

You can also do one thing that will make the Nitro 5 1650 perform better than the HP Omen 1650Ti. You may know that any Ryzen CPUs perform a lot better when you put dual-channel memory into them. Both the Ryzen 7 on Acer Nitro 5 and on HP Omen 15 come with 8 GB single-channel 3200 megahertz RAM at their respective price tags. So, you can kit the Acer Nitro 5 with an additional 8 GB of 3200mhz RAM and that will give you 16 GB of dual-channel RAM performance that will boost the Ryzen 7 4800H performance by 15%-25%, and with that performance advantage, it will definitely perform better than the 1650Ti and 8 GB single-channel configuration of the HP Omen Ryzen 7.

In terms of the cooling solution, both the laptops are extremely capable of cooling the Ryzen 7 4800H and maintaining high boost clocks for long periods of time because they have a really good cooling solution. The Nitro 5 has four heat sinks, one shared heat pipe, and two dedicated heat pipes, whereas the Omen 15 has two shared heat pipes and one delicate heat pipe with three heat sinks. So, both the laptops are capable of cooling the Ryzen 7 4800H. So, without any problems, you’ll have a really cool laptop even in intensive workloads.

BATTERY:

When we looking at the battery life of both these laptops, the HP Omen has a bigger battery of 70.9-watt hour, while the Nitro 5 has a 57.5-watt hour battery. So, we can assume that as the Omen 15 has a bigger battery, it will give you better battery life.

WHICH TO BUY?

The price range of both these laptops is so similar as per the configurations and the performance is also almost similar. You may see few differences in hardware and in performance but overall both the laptops are really good for gaming, video editing, rendering, and some works like that. So, it’s in your hands, which one attracts you more for some specific points.

Expert reviews of HP Omen 15 (AMD):

By Pcmag
Premium quality, long battery life, and an expert pairing of AMD and Nvidia components make HP’s Omen 15 a formidable…

By Tomshardware
The HP Omen 15 offers solid performance for the price in a newly refined chassis, but it can get a bit hot under load, and you’ll spend time uninstalling bloatware.

By Techadvisor
The HP Omen 15 (2020) is affordable, with a brilliant CPU, a decent graphics card and good looks. The screen, battery and build quality and mediocre, though, and the keyboard could be better. It’s good, but there are plenty of decent rivals.

Expert reviews of Acer Nitro 5 (AMD):

By Tom’shardware
2020’s Acer Nitro balances budget pricing with entry-level performance. It’s not going to match the…

By IGN
The Acer Nitro 5 offers better gaming performance and much longer battery life while…

By Cnet
Pure and simple, the Acer Nitro 5 is just a good deal with excellent…

Arya

Hello! I'm Surendar Arya, a passionate tech writer from Uttar Pradesh, India. I'm a freelance contributor to the tech blog - The World's Best And Worst. My enthusiasm for technology drives me to explore the latest trends and innovations in the field. I take immense pleasure in guiding individuals on how to leverage technology for their benefit, making their lives easier and more efficient.