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Acer updates its Swift 3 laptop with AMD and Intel's latest processors
Acer is giving its thin-and-light Swift 3 laptop a useful shot in the arm. It just introduced two versions of the portable that use the latest chips from both AMD and Intel. The AMD-powered version, the 14-inch SF314-42, uses the brand new Ryzen 7 4700U to deliver reasonably brisk performance and WiFi 6 in a system that's a comparatively svelte 2.6 pounds and 0.63 inches thick despite its metal chassis. It also touts mostly thin bezels (that chin is another matter) for its 1080p display, up to 16GB of RAM and between 128GB and 512GB of SSD storage. You can expect up to 10 hours of battery life, although real-world longevity is likely to be less.
Acer is showing off a 55-inch 4K OLED gaming monitor
We all know someone who bought a big TV to use as a PC monitor, refresh rates be damned. Thankfully, Acer is joining the not-so select group of companies producing enormous displays that are actually suitable for PC gaming. The company's Predator division is announcing the CG552K, a 55-inch, 4K OLED display that sports adaptive sync, NVIDIA G-Sync and a 120Hz refresh rate. It's smarter than your average TV, too, with a light sensor that optimizes brightness depending on the local environment, and a proximity sensor that activates the monitor when it detects your presence. It also packs plenty of connectivity options, including three HDMI 2.0, two DisplayPort v1.4, one USB-C and two USB-type-A, as well as pair of 10W speakers nestled inside. Additionally, the display has 98.5 percent DCI-P3 color gamut and 400 nits brightness, so it should do well for work as well as play. And no gaming monitor would be complete without a customizable light strip, would it?
Acer's ConceptD 7 Ezel laptop is part tablet, part mini desktop
Acer has been expanding its ConceptD line of powerful, not-gaudy PCs made for creators, and at CES 2020 the company has a new pair of laptops to add to the family. The ConceptD 7 Ezel and ConceptD 7 Ezel Pro are NVIDIA RTX-powered machines in surprisingly sleek bodies, but they also feature new hinges that enable their displays to swing almost 360 degrees. This way, you can use them in five different modes -- sharing, floating, pad, display and stand.
Acer’s Spin convertible laptops get 10th-gen Intel chips
Acer's Spin line of convertible laptops are really designed for people who need flexibility but don't want to carry around too much stuff. They've never been outrageously heavy, but were never the lightest or prettiest devices. Which is precisely why the 2020 refresh of the Spin 3 and Spin 5 is so welcome.
The best ultrawide monitors
By Thorin Klosowski This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commission. Read the full guide to ultrawide monitors. After spending 10 hours researching monitors and then 25 hours testing five, we found that the Acer XR342CK Pbmiiqphuzx (yes, that's the full model name) is the best ultrawide monitor. The 34-inch, 3440×1440-pixel display is as color accurate as we've seen in an ultrawide. The display's wide resolution makes it an excellent replacement for a dual-monitor setup, provided you're willing to pay between $600 and $700. The viewable space of the Acer XR342CK is just short of what you get from two 24-inch 1080p monitors. This monitor is huge, and the adjustable stand lifts, tilts, and swivels. Its two HDMI ports and DisplayPort offer plenty of ways to connect devices, and the four-port USB hub lets you easily keep cable clutter to a minimum. The XR342CK is the only ultrawide in this price range with a USB-C port that outputs 60 W, so you can connect and charge a modern MacBook Pro or Windows laptop with a single cable. And it supports a few nice-to-have features such as a faster-than-normal 100 Hz refresh rate and AMD's FreeSync (it also works with Nvidia cards in our testing), which makes it an excellent choice for gaming. But the picture-by-picture mode on this Acer model doesn't work as we expect, making the XR342CK a bad choice for two-computer setups. Although this model has an HDR mode, we recommend leaving that off because it makes everything look worse. And its three-year warranty doesn't cover pixel failure like the warranty for our runner-up, the Dell U3419W, does. If the Acer isn't available, or if you want to connect two computers to one monitor, get the Dell U3419W. It's as color-accurate as the Acer and has a similar selection of ports but typically costs more. Alongside a USB-C port that provides up to 90 W of power to a connected laptop, the U3419W has two upstream USB ports so you can connect two computers to the built-in KVM switch. (The USB-C port also works as an upstream port.) This Dell model's picture-by-picture mode is much better than that of the Acer monitor, making the U3419W the more useful option if you're replacing a two-computer, dual-monitor setup. Like Acer, Dell offers a three-year warranty, but Dell's covers more, including replacing the monitor if a pixel dims or burns out.
The best gadgets of 2019
It's the end of the year, and everyone from Santa to Time is making lists. Engadget is no different. Each year, we take stock of the hits and misses from the past twelve months to inform us as we look ahead. But as we hurtle towards the close of a decade, our picks feel even more important and telling of how far we've come.
Watch Acer’s IFA 2019 event in just over 10 minutes
If you weren't up this morning to watch Acer's IFA 2019 keynote, we don't blame you: it started at a very early 5:30AM ET for those of us in North America. Thankfully, the Engadget crew was on the ground in Berlin to catch all the latest announcements from the Taiwanese manufacturer. And we've got 10 minutes of the presentation's highlights for you. Acer's press event had a bit of everything, including new laptops aimed at creative professionals, entry-level gaming machines and a new cooling material the company says will replace thermal paste. To top it all off, Acer showed off its new $14,000 Thronos Air Gaming Chair.
Acer’s $14,000 Predator Thronos Air is a chair fit for gaming royalty
What do you get the gamer in your life that has everything? And we mean absolutely everything. If you ask Acer, the answer is the company's new Predator Thronos Air Gaming Chair. Unveiled at this year's IFA, the Thronos Air is a more affordable version of the Thronos Gaming Chair Acer announced at the same show last year.
Acer's Predator PowerGem could boost CPU performance by over 12 percent
Between some powerful updates to its creator-focused ConceptD PC series and new Predator gaming laptops, Acer wanted to show off its latest component innovations on stage. At the company's IFA press event, Acer boss Jason Chen brandished the Predator PowerGem, a new material intended to aid in the cooling of PC components. Details are extremely scant, but it's apparent that PowerGem is a type of thermal interface material (TIM). It's supposed to take the place of thermal paste, which sits between a chip and the cooler above it. While these pads are already found atop components like NVMe storage or GPU VRMs, CPUs are still typically cooled with thermal paste, or more exotic materials like liquid metal. PowerGem appears to have been developed specifically to cool CPUs.
Acer’s Predator Triton 300 is its new entry-level gaming laptop
With waves of GPU upgrades and Intel processor refreshes keeping things interesting, gaming laptop competition has never been fiercer. In a bid to pick up gamers not quite willing to spend thousands of dollars on their rig, the Predator Triton 300 keeps the thin-and-light credentials of the series (this one is just 2.3kg), and ties together a 9th-gen Intel Core i7 with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1650 GPU. There's 16GB of DDR4 memory which is upgradeable, and a 15.6-inch HD IPS display with a 144Hz refresh rate. Yes, there are more powerful machines out there, but the spec sheet sounds suitably gamer-friendly -- just don't expect ray-tracing. It'll support up to two 1TB SSDs in RAID 0, and there's WiFi 6 alongside a mandatory ethernet port if you're playing online.
Acer adds RTX Quadro power to its high-end ConceptD laptops
Acer is chasing the creative professional with the pro-grade line of ConceptD laptops it launched in April. These powerful notebooks with rich, accurate displays come in eye-catching designs that help them stand out even as other laptops up their style games. When the series was first unveiled, there were just three products -- the 17.3-inch ConceptD 9, the 15-inch ConceptD 7 and ConceptD 5 (available in both sizes). Here at IFA 2019, Acer is expanding the lineup by adding a 15-inch ConceptD 3, as well as offering Pro editions of each model. The Pro versions come with NVIDIA's Quadro RTX graphics cards for those who require the extra muscle for extremely taxing tasks.
What to expect at IFA 2019
There's just one big technology show before the end of the year, IFA, where we'll see the last goodies revealed before everyone goes into buying mode. As usual, a team of Engadget's finest will descend upon Berlin in the first week of September to uncover all of the best things being shown off. Before we do, however, you can whet your appetite with what we're expecting, or at least hoping, to see when we land.
Acer Predator Triton 900 review: Who needs a crazy swiveling screen?
Remember when we said gaming laptops were going to get wild this year? Behold Acer's Predator Triton 900, a massive 17-inch notebook with one of the craziest screens we've ever seen. It can swivel forward and backward to give you something like the flexibility of a standalone monitor. But is a funky screen hinge enough to justify a $3,800 starting price? Probably not.
The best Amazon Prime Day 2019 deals: Best of the rest
This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, Wirecutter and Engadget may earn affiliate commissions. that support its work. Read Wirecutter's continuously updated list of Amazon Prime Day deals here.
The biggest news at Computex 2019
Our week in Taiwan is coming to a close, and as Team Engadget bids goodbye to the dumplings and beef noodles, it's time to look back on all the news we saw this week. As always, ASUS was the star of the show in its home turf, and this year was especially significant as the company celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. It unveiled attractive new special editions of the ZenBook and ZenFone, as well as a dual-screen laptop.
PC makers are getting better at copying smartphone innovation
For a long time, the PC industry was stagnating. Computer makers had grown comfortable with iterative annual updates to their devices, relying on yearly processor advancements to push consumers to buy new laptops. But recently, things changed. PC makers started borrowing features from smartphones to make their laptops stand out, just as phones keep trying to become more like computers. There were plenty of examples at Computex 2019, but instead of displaying purely imitated features, the PC industry showed it can actually do some of them better.
Acer ConceptD 7 laptop hands-on: Quadro RTX power in a stylish package
Acer's pro-grade family of laptops, ConceptD, is getting an upgrade already, less than two months since it broke cover. Following up on the company's promise of making a strong bid for the PC-buying dollars of high-end laptop users, the ConceptD 7 the first laptop we've actually handled that packs NVIDIA's new, powerful Quadro RTX 5000 GPU.
Here are all the laptops getting NVIDIA’s new Quadro RTX graphics
After NVIDIA revealed its Quadro RTX 5000 designed for laptops, a number of manufacturers announced machines that'll pack the new gear. Acer, ASUS, MSI, HP and Razer have all launched machines that offer the most powerful in professional mobile-graphics hardware. Here's a brief run-down of what's going to be available in the near future, and how much you can expect to pay for it. Now, these aren't all the RTX Studio laptops, which NVIDIA is using as branding for all devices that it will supply special drivers for. These are just the models packing, specifically, the new Quadro RTX 5000 GPU.
Acer brings NVIDIA’s Quadro RTX 5000 to its ConceptD 7 laptop
Earlier this year, Acer announced its ConceptD range of high-end notebooks designed to woo away folks who had gone sour on the MacBook Pro. The company touted the range's sharp looks and sharp specs paired with a commitment to color accuracy on the display. Now, with the advent of NVIDIA's new Quadro RTX graphics for laptops, Acer will now offer the RTX 5000 inside its ConceptD 7.
Acer's Nitro 5 and Swift 3 laptops pack the latest AMD Ryzen processors
Acer isn't just sticking to Intel for chips in its latest laptops. The company has rolled out versions of its Nitro 5 gaming laptop and Swift 3 thin-and-light that pack second-generation Ryzen Mobile processors. The 15.6-inch Nitro 5 (above) carries a 2.3GHz quad-core Ryzen 7 3750H and dedicated Radeon RX 560X graphics to handle a moderate amount of gaming. The 14-inch Swift 3 uses the more modest (but still quad-core) 2.3GHz Ryzen 7 3700U and defaults to integrated Vega graphics, but you can get Radeon RX 540X video if you'd like to squeak in some Overwatch when you're not writing reports.
