Acer teams up with Porsche Design for the luxury Acer Book RS laptop
Acer is teaming up with Porsche Design on a new high-end “luxury” laptop, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS, which looks to combine Porsche Design’s product designs with Acer’s laptop know-how.
The partnership here is an important one, given that the last Porsche Design-branded laptop, the Porsche Design Book One (which the design studio developed on its own), had some key flaws caused by prioritizing style over functionality.
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS, on the other hand, looks like a more conventional laptop (albeit, one that’s still covered in carbon fiber). The specs are also encouraging, with a choice of Intel’s 11th Gen Core i5 and i7 processors, 8GB or 16GB of RAM, and either 512GB or 1TB of storage. Graphics can either be left to Intel’s integrated Iris Xe graphics or an optional discrete Nvidia MX350 GPU. The display is perhaps the least impressive part of the package, with a fairly ordinary 14-inch 1080p touchscreen.
The laptop itself is also far cheaper than Porsche Design’s last laptop, starting at $1,399 in the United States, although exact pricing and a release date have yet to be announced. The two companies are also offering a variety of matching accessories to go with the laptop, including a $109.99 mouse (also with carbon fiber accents) and a case, which can be bundled together for $329.99, or in a “premium package” that includes the higher-specced i7 model of the laptop for $1,999.99
Acer also announced several other major laptop updates, including the new Acer Swift 3X, which will be one of the first laptops to feature Intel’s new discrete Xe Max GPU. For more details on that model, including an early hands-on, click here.
The company isn’t just focusing on fancy designs and flashy new GPUs, though. It’s also rolling out Intel’s latest chips to several other laptops in its lineup, too. Both the Spin 5 and Spin 3 (last updated at CES 2020 earlier this year) are getting refreshes.
The Spin 5 is the less interesting of the two, featuring the same basic redesign that it received earlier this year (with a 13.5-inch 2K display), but it now offers a choice of Intel’s 11th Gen i5 and i7 processors. It’ll start at $999.99 when it ships in February 2021.
The Spin 3, however, has gotten a more substantial update, with a new 16:10 13.3-inch display (with both 2560 x 1600 and 1920 x 1200 resolution options). The new model is also getting Intel’s 11th Gen processors (with Core i3, i5, and i7 choices), 8GB or 16GB of RAM, and the option to add a second SSD. It’ll be available in March 2021, starting at $849.99
Acer is also updating its Aspire 5 lineup with 11th Gen Intel processors, with the 14-inch, 15-inch, and 17-inch models all adding Intel’s latest laptop chips as configuration options, along with the additional choice of adding discrete Nvidia GeForce MX350 or MX450 GPUs. The 14-inch and 15-inch models will both start at $499.99 when they release in the US in December, while the 17-inch Aspire 5 will start at $549.99 when it arrives in February 2021.
Lastly, Acer is also refreshing its ConceptD 7 and ConceptD 7 Pro laptops for creators, adding Intel’s 10th Gen H-series laptop chips that it released earlier this year, although the design of the two models remains largely unchanged. Both the ConceptD 7 and ConceptD 7 pro will be available in the US in December, starting at $3,299.99 and $3,499.99, respectively.
Acer is teaming up with Porsche Design on a new high-end “luxury” laptop, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS, which looks to combine Porsche Design’s product designs with Acer’s laptop know-how. The partnership here is an important one, given that the last Porsche Design-branded laptop, the Porsche Design Book One…
