Acer is refreshing its laptops, desktops, and Chromebooks this year with the latest silicon from Intel and Qualcomm.
To start, the company unveiled the Porsche Design Acer Book RS, marking Acer’s entry into the luxury PC market. Prior to this Acer collaboration, Porsche Design had launched several luxury PCs under its own label, including the Ultra One.
Melding a minimalist machined metal body with a carbon fiber cover, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS borrows design cues from Porsche’s motorsports heritage. The use of carbon fiber gives Dell’s popular and iconic XPS 13 some competition in the space. The Porsche Design Acer Book RS is co-engineered with Intel and meets the Intel Evo platform certification.
The 14-inch laptop is powered by Intel’s 11th-generation Core i7 processor. Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics are also onboard, as is 16GB of RAM. Nvidia’s discrete GeForce MX350 GPU is optional.
The package weighs just over 2.75 pounds and is just 0.63-inches thin. Other key specs include a 90% screen-to-body ratio, 100% coverage of the wide sRGB color space, and up to 17 hours of battery life.
Acer will also launch complementing accessories, including a travel pouch made from Ecco Palermo XA leather and a carbon fiber-clad mouse. The laptop starts at $1,399, while the mouse will start at $109. The Porsche Design Acer Book RS will be available starting in December.
Acer is also partnering with Qualcomm to bring the Snapdragon chipset to several Chromebook models. The Acer Chromebook Spin 513 and Acer Chromebook Enterprise Spin 513 will both be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7c compute platform.
Acer says the Snapdragon processor will help give its Chromebooks better battery life as well as the option to add 4G LTE cellular broadband connectivity for an always-connected experience.
The consumer edition will launch in February 2021 starting at $399, while the enterprise edition will go on sale a month later starting at $699.
If you’d rather opt for a Windows laptop that’s powered by Intel’s silicon, Acer is updating a few of its laptop models. The new Swift 3x features the latest 11th-gen Intel Core processor alongside Intel’s new discrete Iris Xe MAX graphics, a 14-inch FHD display, and 17.5 hours of battery life on a single charge. The Swift 3x will launch in December, and pricing starts at $899.
Acer is also updating its Spin 5 and Spin 3 convertibles. Both laptops ship with Intel’s 11th-gen processors and Intel Xe graphics, so the biggest difference between these two series is screen size. The Spin 5 comes with a 13.5-inch display with a 3:2 aspect ratio, while the Spin 3 features a new 16:10 aspect ratio screen that measures 13.3 inches diagonally.
The Spin 5 will go on sale in February for $999, while the Spin 3 will debut a month later at $849.
The Aspire 5 series is being updated with three new models featuring different screen sizes. The Aspire 5 features Intel’s 11th-gen chipset, and you can choose between Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics or optional discrete Nvidia GeForce MX450 graphics. The lineup will be launching in December, and pricing starts at $499 for the 14- and 15.6-inch version. A larger 17-inch variant will start at $549 when it launches in February 2021.
Acer is even updating its ConceptD laptops and desktops to include Intel’s latest silicon. The ConcetD 7 and ConceptD 7 Pro notebooks now feature Intel’s 10th-gen Core processors and a new Vortex Flow cooling system. The ConceptD 7 will launch at $3,299 in December, while the Pro edition starts at $3,499.
Acer’s compact ConceptD 300 desktop tower has been updated, and it now ships with up to a 10th-gen Intel Core i7 processor — Intel’s 11th-gen desktop chips aren’t quite available just yet — alongside Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2070 Super graphics. The company is targeting creative professionals with this 18L desktop. Acer did not disclose pricing or availability information for the ConceptD 300.
Acer also announced a prosumer monitor with Eyesafe technology. The Acer CBL272U features a 27-inch QHD IPS panel, a refresh rate of 75 Hz with a fast 1ms gray-to-gray response time, and built-in stereo 2W speakers. The panel can reach up to 350 nits of brightness and covers 99% of the sRGB color space.
Although gamers will likely want a monitor with even faster refresh rates — and, in fact, Acer is launching six of them — the CBL272U’s color accuracy and built-in speakers make it a great companion for quick edits and consuming videos. The monitor will debut in January at $299.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.