Acer Concep tD 7
A great creative laptop with one of the finest screens you’ll ever see, but you could go faster for less
SCORE
PRICE £2,333 (£2,799 inc VAT) from acer.co.uk
Even with laptops aimed at creative users, it’s surprising how little creativity seems to go into their design. Happily, that’s not the case with the ConceptD 7; from its elegant white aluminium chassis to the understated amber backlighting under the keyboard, it looks great. Even the grilles between the hinges at the rear of the machine look like they’ve not just been designed, but styled.
It’s not the most compact laptop on test this month, but with a 359 x 255mm footprint and 18mm thickness, you could hardly call it chunky. And the design works on a practical level. For one thing, the size allows for a cooling solution that can balance performance with noise. Even running at full tilt in our benchmarks, it was never offensively loud and there’s no sign of any odious throttling. What’s more, it packs in a wide range of connections, including three USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 ports and a USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 port that supports Thunderbolt 3 – this gives transfer speeds of up to 40Gbits/sec with compatible devices, or up to 10Gbits/sec with USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 drives. You can use the same port to run a screen over DisplayPort, with an HDMI port on the right-hand side if you prefer.
The ConceptD 7’s screen is pretty special. It’s a 15.6in IPS panel that covers 100% of the sRGB gamut and 99.7% of Adobe RGB, while also being Pantone-approved for colour accuracy: we measured a maximum brightness of 379cd/m2 and an average Delta E of just 1.94. You can switch instantly between Adobe RGB and a slightly more saturated Native colour profile using an applet in the Windows taskbar, and either way it looks fantastic. It’s not HDR, but the colours in movies and trailers really pop, making the most of the detail in 4K mate ri al . If you’re editing photos, it’s a joy to use, even if you have to be aware that your work won’t look as good in print or on other screens as it’s going to look right here.
There’s almost as much to love about the sound. There’s lots of detail, a hint of bass and a wider soundstage than most laptops conjure, even if there’s some congestion in the mid-range.
The softtouch chiclet keyboard could do with a little more spring, but the typing action is solid and the layout makes the most of the space. Our biggest complaint is that Acer has made one of the keys a
Power key, and placed it right in the top-right corner where you’d normally find Delete. The trackpad, meanwhile, is wide, smooth and perfectly responsive, although we suspect most creative users will be plugging in a mouse or graphics tablet before they get any real work done. The ConceptD 7 ships in a range of configurations. All share the same Core i7-9750H processor, but the base versions match it with RTX GPUs while the ConceptD 7 Pr o line packs Nvidia’s workstation-level Quadro RTX 3000 and 5000 GPUs.
The use of a ninth-generation Core i7 isn’t a worry here because the six-core CPU supports Hyper-Threading to give you 12 threads and a serious performance boost.
Throw in 32GB of DDR4-2666
RAM and an GeForce RTX 2080, as Acer did in our review sample, and the ConceptD 7 can hit impressive levels of performance. Granted, it’s not quite up there with the Chillblast ( see p87) and Gigabyte ( see p88) machines, but it’s strong in CPUintensive tasks and even stronger with 3D rendering and video workloads where the powerful GPU gets its chance to shine. What’s more, it doesn’t leave you with a miserable battery life. In our video-rundown tests, the ConceptD 7 kept going for the best part of six hours.
This all comes at a price, with the range starting at £2,000 for the model with an RTX 2060 and rising to £3,500 for the high-end Pro version with a Quadro RTX 5000. Our test unit sits in the middle. While it’s a compelling all-round package with a slightly superior screen, both its Gigabyte and Razer rivals have it beaten when it comes to speed and value for money.