Review of the beautiful ultrabook Porsche Design Acer Book RS
Material content
Packaging and appearance
It’s definitely worth starting with the packaging. Premium is a must. Inside the noble black box, we find the device itself in a fabric case, under it is a tab with a case and a mouse pad. Next, the mouse itself and two chargers + documentation. We also find a case for Z / U.
We got the pleasure of unpacking, now it’s time to pay attention to the laptop.
The Acer Book RS with Porsche Design features a diamond-cut carbon fiber lid, CNC machining, looks interesting. There is a glossy Porsche Design logo on the top, and a darkened Acer logo on the bottom of the carbon fiber. The lid hinge adds a touch of flair to the design and evokes the aesthetics of a sports car.
Consider the ports: on the left side we see the power connector, hdmi, USB 3 and type C (Thunderbolt 3). On the right headphone jack, another USB 3, activity and power indicators, Kensington lock connector.
On the bottom cover there is a ventilation grill. Core i7 is hidden inside, which means there is active cooling.
Video
The screen is maximum for such a case
Many Windows laptops usually have matte displays. They usually look cheaper and are recessed into a deep frame.
The Acer Book RS has a glass front panel. Therefore, there are no ugly protrusions when the screen 14 inch diagonal switched off. And during operation, the entire front area looks like a single canvas.
A webcam was inserted into the narrow upper frame. The layout is classic, no experiments with an external lens or a module near the keyboard
The glass frame is also needed for the reason that the display is touch-sensitive. The finger will pass without obstacles even on the most extreme pixels.
The Full HD (1920×1080 pixels) IPS screen renders colors accurately without shifting to blues or pinks. With a brightness of 340 nits, everything will be visible even in sunlight, and the average will be comfortable indoors.
Battery life
The manufacturer assured that the battery lasts for 15 hours of battery life. I couldn’t help but check out such a big statement, so I left the laptop at 50 percent brightness and YouTube videos turned on to get an accurate result.
Public domain image
In two hours, the Book RS lost 23% of the charge, that is, it will last for 8-9 hours. This is not the best result in its class, but it is ideal for a device with an Intel Core i7 processor and an Nvidia MX350 graphics card.
It can be charged with a barrel adapter or USB-C. And in the box with the device will be both adapters (65 W). Real luxury, right?
#Synthetic performance tests
With high CPU clock speeds, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS leads the isolated processor benchmarks of the same form factor computers based on previous generation Intel chips, and in short benchmarks (such as Geekbench 4), Tiger Lake can compete with some configurations based on eight-core Ryzen 4000 (also with ARM’s Apple M1 chip in x86 emulation mode). But the main advantage of Tiger Lake is, of course, an outstanding level of single-threaded performance.
Strict temperature limits do not prevent the GeForce MX350 discrete video adapter from delivering performance at the level of conventional MX250 and MX350 varieties under short or not very intensive loads. This is an entry-level GPU designed for light gaming or GP-GPU support operations in production applications.
#Screen quality
The screen is a sore point of many ultrabooks, including expensive models, but we are pleased to report that the Porsche Design Acer Book RS has got a quality matrix in all respects. Let’s start with the fact that not every laptop screen can boast a brightness of 300 cd / m2and the contrast is in full order here (973: 1).
In addition, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS matrix is quite accurately tuned to a color temperature of 6500 K.
The same applies to the gamma correction curve approximated to the reference exponential function of 2.2.
The color gamut exactly corresponds to the sRGB standard.
The result of a good matrix setting was excellent estimates of color accuracy: there is a serious deviation in only one shade. The backlight is uniform, there is no flickering of the screen noticeable to the naked eye at low brightness.
Ultrabook Specifications
The key hardware feature of the Porsche Design Acer Book RS is the latest Tiger Lake silicon processor. While these are quad-core models, however, their power reserve is more than enough for current tasks and purposes. The most popular question is the comparative characteristic with Ryzen. AMD processors set the bar in 2020. Now the initiative is intercepted by Intel.
The integrated Intel Core i7-1165G7 with 2.80 GHz auto-boosting 4-core Turbo Boost processor in this model shows better performance than 8 Ryzen cores in many programs. In conjunction with the processor, there is a discrete video card of the mobile format NVIDIA GeForce MX350. Video memory is provided up to 2 GB (GDDR5 format), which is a very worthy option. It is important to understand that such a laptop is not about games, but for all other tasks its power is enough. RAM format LPDDR4X is estimated at 8 or 16 GB. It works in dual channel mode.
This amount of RAM is enough for the speed of the system and software. During testing, we did not find any slowdowns or freezes. Information is stored on a 1TB SSD. Wireless communication is provided thanks to a module consisting of Wi-Fi 6 version (IEEE 802.11) and Bluetooth 5 version. There are only 3 USB ports in the plan. Of these, there is also Type C. There is also a full-size HDMI, which allows you to display the image on external displays.
Screen
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS received a 14-inch IPS screen with a resolution of 1920×1080 at 157 ppi. It cannot be said that this is a hi-end solution, but one can definitely say that the screen characteristics correspond to business models.
100% sRGB color gamut and 78.4% DCI-P3 color gamut, which is below average if we are talking about the premium segment. Also, on a glossy screen, 356 nits of brightness seemed to us not enough. On a sunny day outside, the eyes will not be very comfortable.
These are decisions for the sake of autonomy. But should there be compromises in premium?
An HD camera eye and two microphones are hidden in the upper frame of the screen.
Touchpad and keyboard
The touchpad is glass, textured, has a built-in fingerprint scanner. In my opinion, the scanner would look better if it wasn’t visible at all, but the manufacturer decided otherwise.
The panel also has one bad aspect – it is “floating”, bouncing up and down half a millimeter before you reach the clicker.
The touchpad is excellent, durable. There are no problems with the keyboard. The buttons work clearly – typing is very convenient. There is a backlight, but the brightness level is only one. Many devices in this price range have multiple intensity levels. But at least the Book RS didn’t use red LEDs.
Specifications
- Ports: 1x USB-C (Thunderbolt 4), 2x USB-A (3.2), 1x HDMI, 3.5mm jack
- 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor (up to max), up to 16GB RAM
- Intel Iris Xe graphics, optional Nvidia GeForce MX350
- Cooling system with two copper heat pipes
- 15 hours battery life, fast charging
- Dual Band Intel Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+)
- Additional accessories
We don’t know yet how well the battery life will hold up as we’ve only been working with the Porsche Design Acer Book RS for a short period of time. But the companies promise up to 15 hours – a decent innings. This figure is based on a collaboration between Porsche Design and Intel – the latter introduced the Intel Evo, which it says is designed to optimize performance and real-time battery life.
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS comes with the latest Intel chipsets, 11th Gen Core i processors up to the i7 with Intel Iris Xe graphics. Or you can go as far as nine yards and add turbo mode in the form of an Nvidia GeForce MX350 discrete graphics card.
Inside, there is a system with two copper pipes for cooling, designed to dissipate heat from the processor and graphics units to cool the machine and extend battery life. There’s even fast charging here, in just 30 minutes at a wall outlet, which is said to provide more than 25 percent of the laptop’s battery life – to provide 4 hours of use. We expect these features from our phones, so it’s nice to see this in laptops.
The port array is fast too, Thunderbolt 4 is fast, which means 40Gb/s is possible – four times the already impressive 10Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 (which you won’t find on so many machines in its current form). We can see where the “RS” badge, which means “racing sport” in German, takes its place here.
Porsche Design is a high-end company, and the Acer Book RS doesn’t end there – it comes with additional accessories. Called the Porsche Design Acer Travel-pack RS, this travel case is of course made of fancy leather and pairs with a laptop sleeve that doubles as a mouse pad for the also included Porsche Design Mouse RS (included with more fancy carbon fiber. ).
So how much will you pay for this fancy drawing machine? That’s from £1,899 for the laptop alone ($1,399 / €1,799 in Europe) or £2,099 with the travel-pack included ($1,999.99 in the US / €2,399 in Europe).
First Impressions
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS is a truly unexpected launch, bringing even more of the standout – perhaps outlandish, depending on your point of view – design language to the Acer laptop lineup.
It also includes a host of the latest technologies, from 11th Gen Intel Core i processors to Intel Evo for better battery life and Thunderbolt 4 boot speeds. We can see where he got the “RS” badge from.
Whether all of this applies to real value to most people – given the high asking price of £1,899 / €1,799 / $1,399 just for the laptop – is another big question entirely. Recession, what is the recession? Give me the already fancy carbon fiber material.
Written by Mike Low.