Appearance
Even during the IFA 2020 exhibition, where this laptop was shown, Acer presented the company and admitted that the Preadator 21 X is a demonstration of its capabilities. But equipping a device with simply cool hardware is one thing, but making a distinctive and memorable design is completely different. Looking ahead, I will say that Acer has coped with both.
The dimensions of the Predator 21 X are 568 x 315 x 84 millimeters, and the laptop weighs as much as 8.8 kilograms. The body has different inserts, grilles and other elements on all sides. Some have a practical use (such as holes for ventilation), and some are simply made for beauty.
Of course, one cannot help but pay attention to the huge gap between the screen and the keyboard. But you shouldn’t blame the company’s engineers, this is not a technical mistake! The thing is that the Predator 21 X is the world's first laptop with a curved screen. Well, that is, with the ones called curved. If we discard all marketing explanations for the usefulness of this curvature, then in reality we have an incredibly powerful wow effect. What’s also cool is that the aspect ratio is 21:9.
As for the connectors, on the left there are two USB 3.0, microphone and headphone outputs, as well as a card reader. On the right are two more USB 3.0 ports and a Kensington lock. Since this is a laptop from Acer, there are a couple of connectors on the back: HDMI, two Display Ports, Thunderbolt, a network port, and also two (!) power connectors.
Through a small window above the keyboard you can watch the fan spinning. In combination with the lighting it looks gorgeous. By the way, the image that will be located near this very window can be selected during pre-order. This is customization.
Along with this laptop, you also get a special case for transporting it (it reminded me of a suitcase from DJI quadcopters). The kit also includes two power supplies, a palm rest and various straps for securing something there.
The Predator 21 X features a mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Brown switches, and also has five programmable keys.
It’s clear that this couldn’t be done without RGB backlighting. True, the numeric keypad on the right is no longer mechanical, but it can be turned over, turning it into a touchpad. But it was still more convenient for me to use the mouse.
Review of Acer Predator XB241YUbmiprz - Package Contents
The Acer monitor comes in a small cardboard box with high-quality printing. The packaging design is already familiar to us and it looks modern and stylish – as befits a fairly expensive gaming monitor.
On both sides of the box there are two identical photographs of the monitor, company logos and the Predator series.
There is a plastic handle on top for easy carrying. The main technical features are described by pictograms located in several places on the packaging. By one of the stickers you can find out the TX of the monitor, the location (China) and the approximate date (September 2020) of assembly of a specific instance of XB241YUbmiprz.
The delivery set of the new product includes the following:
- two power cables of two different standards;
- DisplayPort cable;
- USB cable for connection to PC;
- brief instructions for installing and configuring the display;
- prospectus with telephone numbers of service centers;
- Energy Star sticker.
The set is small, but everything you need to unlock the potential of the monitor is present. The main thing is that your video card has a GPU from NVIDIA and a DisplayPort interface version 1.2!
Forward →
- Page 1: Introduction, background information, delivery kit
- Page 2: Design and ergonomics
- Page 3: Menu and controls
- Page 4: Test results: color gamut, brightness/contrast and basic color rendering indicators, gamma curves, gray balance and UDACT results
- Page 5: Test results: additional features and settings, uniformity of gradients, stability of color temperature,
- Page 6: Test results: contrast stability and brightness range, matrix speed and input lag Viewing angles and Glow effect
- Page 7: Test results: viewing angles and Glow effect, backlight uniformity and color temperature, power consumption and heating, features (FE, PWM, etc.)
- Page 8: Conclusions
Screen and sound
As I already wrote, the Predator 21 X is the world's first laptop with a curved screen. Its diagonal is 21 inches and its resolution is 2560 x 1080 pixels. The aspect ratio is 21:9. There is also NVIDIA G-Sync technology, which eliminates image tearing in games. This happens by synchronizing the frame rate with the screen frequency. The maximum refresh rate is 120 Hz, latency is 4 ms. The viewing angles are maximum, and the picture looks quite realistic - we can thank the 130 percent sRGB for this.
The Predator 21 X also features Tobii eye tracking. The technology is very interesting and in some cases can replace mouse movements. As Sema already said in the video, Tobii can be used as an additional control interface in games. For example, if in a game you are in a dark room near a window, then, looking out of it, the exposure will be adjusted to the street, and looking around in the room, the window will be illuminated.
The audio system in the Predator 21 X consists of six speakers and two subwoofers. Considering the dimensions of the laptop, it was already clear that there would be no problems with sound. It is loud, high quality and relatively voluminous. But don’t forget about the noise of the fans; for some atmospheric games it’s better to get headphones.
Display
The 17.3-inch Acer Predator can be equipped with matrices with FullHD resolution or, optionally, 4K. Our test sample has a basic matrix installed, which is quite good, because there is no temptation in games to set the resolution higher, thereby negatively affecting performance. Although the pixel density of 127 ppi is far from what can be seen in flagship smartphones, it is enough for a gaming laptop.
The display is matte and absorbs all external glare. This is very important for a gaming machine. Moreover, the picture also looks great. The IPS matrix perfectly reproduces colors and the image looks unchanged from almost any angle. It's a pleasure to play on this monitor. True, demanding players would probably like a picture refresh rate higher than 75 Hz. I liked the monitor in all respects, both for gaming and for watching movies, browsing and more.
The screen also supports G-SYNC technology. Another nice bonus can be found in the settings of the Acer Quick Access application - Bluelight Shield, which reduces the display of blue shades (something in the spirit of f.lux), thereby making work a little more comfortable, especially in the evening.
Performance
The laptop's hardware fully matches its wild appearance. The Acer Predaor 21 X has two full-fledged NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 video cards in SLI, an Intel Core i7-7820HK processor, 64 GB of RAM with a frequency of 2400 MHz, four SSDs in RAID 0 of 512 GB and a 1 TB hard drive (but there will also be versions with more memory). Here are a few screenshots of memory tests (on the left - SSD, on the right - HDD):
All this is cooled using five fans: two for video cards, one for the processor, and one each for RAM and disks. By default, there is an automatic rotation speed, which itself is adjusted depending on the load, but there is also a custom mode. The maximum speed is 5400 rpm. The whole thing is configured in a proprietary utility.
And, by the way, it is not that the laptop maintains a stable rotation speed all the time; even with some simple action (for example, when opening a folder), the number of revolutions increases.
Why are there so many fans at that speed? Well, suddenly you want to play around with overclocking. And it’s simply impossible not to do this on such a laptop! All through the same proprietary utility, the processor can be overclocked to 4.3 GHz, and the graphics to 1732 MHz. The important thing is that overclocking is only possible when connecting two power supplies at once (yes, there are two of them in this laptop). It's clear that performance will be very different when the Acer Predator 21 X is running on battery power, with one power supply, or two. Here are some screenshots so you can understand the difference. On the first, the laptop runs on two power supplies, on the second, on a battery:
Also this laptop is VR Ready, 3D Ready and even 4K Ready. In short, the Acer Predator 21 X is ready for almost anything.
Tobi Eye Tracking
The laptop is equipped with Tobii Eye Tracking technology: under the screen there is a Tobii sensor that tracks the position of the user's eyes and allows you to control applications with one glance... well, almost. The proprietary utility shows the technology’s capabilities for controlling the mouse cursor using your gaze and allows you to calibrate the sensor, plus it can turn on a mode that displays a ring at the point you are currently looking at. In this mode, it becomes clear that recognition is quite accurate, but not ideal - in our case, even after calibration, the center of the ring was slightly higher than the gaze (almost 1 cm).
In games, Tobii Eye Tracking is typically used to create an "infinity screen" (which refers to the rotation of the camera in the direction the player is looking) and for a "clean interface" (highlighting HUD elements that the player is currently looking at; the rest of the time it is done almost transparent, so as not to distract the gamer from what is happening on the screen). We tried Tobii Eye Tracking in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Tom Clancy's The Division, Ghost Recon Wildlands and Rise of the Tomb Raider - in addition to the above, the technology is used, for example, to highlight enemies for your team in The Division, throw a grenade and highlight pick-ups items in Rise of the Tomb Raider. In addition, support for Tobii Eye Tracking is announced in Watch Dogs 2, DayZ, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, ARMA III, Elite: Dangerous and a number of other games - about fifty projects are listed on the site. True, a significant part of them are all sorts of little-known indies, so you can get a dozen or so big names here at most - in general, not a lot, at least for the moment.
It must be said that in general the technology still gives the impression of more of a funny toy, and the “endless screen” soon begins to only get in the way. But the “clean interface” turned out to be very useful; for the sake of such a function, Tobii is worth keeping turned on - it’s a pity that it does not work everywhere.
Conclusion
The asking price is $8,000. It is clear that this is a lot, but the Predator 21 X is the world’s first laptop with a curved screen, two full-fledged GeForce 1080 video cards, the latest generation Intel Core i7 processor, 64 GB of RAM, an unreal amount of internal memory (as you have already seen in the screenshots, four SSDs in RAID 0 simply work at unrealistic speeds) and other cool things. Just look at the support for Tobii technology, the cooling system and the mechanical keyboard. Overall, this laptop is cool. And he's cool in everything!
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