Looking for a laptop that can balance work and play? Maybe something that doesn’t cost a small fortune? Acer has you covered, offering the Aspire V Nitro Black Edition series with some serious high-class specifications.
Acer’s new V Nitro Black Edition now offers 3,840 x 2,160 4K Ultra HD screen resolution, which is four times the pixel count of a standard Full HD 1080p panel. Images should look crystal clear on this 282 pixel per inch display. Thankfully, Acer didn’t super size the laptop’s physical dimensions too, keeping things relatively portable at 15.6 inches.
While it’s not necessarily solely dedicated to hardcore gamers or business customers, the new V Nitro Black Edition mostly brings the best of both worlds together. Gamers should rejoice at the sight of its back-lit keyboard. Working pros should have their security and productivity needs fulfilled by a Kensington lock slot, Acer’s Build Your Own Cloud service, and a sufficiently spacious 1TB hard drive, which is paired with a 256GB SSD.
Graphics processing is handled by an Nvidia GeForce GTX 860M card with 2GB of GDDR5 RAM, so don’t expect to game at 60 FPS in 4K. The V Nitro Black Edition wields a mid-range member of the Intel Core i7 Haswell family of CPUs (4710HQ), and should be more than enough to handle whatever processor-centric tasks you throw at it. You also get 16GB of memory here.
The V Nitro Black Edition features an impressive slew of ports, including three USB 3.0 connectors, one HDMI, Ethernet, and headphone/mic jacks.
Crisp sound is always a concern with laptops, and the V Nitro Black Edition aims to make this a non-issue with its Dolby Digital Plus Home Theater system. It features four built-in speakers, totaling eight watts of power output.
The design walks a fine line between gamer and business-friendly, sporting a textured exterior, and slim profile. The V Nitro Black Edition measures less than an inch thick, but at 5.29 pounds, it’s not the lightest 15 inch laptop around. That’s still quite slim for a gaming notebook, though.
Last but not least,“select” V Nitro Black Edition purchases will include complimentary digital downloads of Assassin’s Creed Unity. Currently up for pre-order, Ubisoft’s next action-adventure blockbuster rolls out November 11, and regularly costs $60. How generous of Acer.
The 4K Aspire V Nitro Black Edition may be a smart buy on the whole, going for $1,500. We won’t know for sure until we get a review unit, but if you’re a fiend for 4K resolution, this is probably among the cheaper laptops out there with a 3,840 x 2,160 screen.
You can check it out on Amazon here, though this configuration includes a different processor, and costs $300 more. We reached out to Acer about the price/CPU discrepancy, and we’ll update this article accordingly when we get more information.
Update by Konrad Krawczyk 12:56 p.m. ET – The Amazon page has the incorrect CPU model and price. They should both be corrected shortly.