I got it because I wanted a laptop that I can use as my main workstation(development) for at least a few years, that can handle gaming decently, and with a touch screen that would make it more usable on the go and test out touch features.
Pros:
The hinge system is an engineering masterpiece. It's incredibly sturdy(I can even rest my palm on it when it's not touching the keyboard part, and as long as it's not near the edges it doesn't make it rotate). Switching from tablet to regular mode or any other is really convenient, the other mods are pretty useful(for example when it's on my lap I can have the screen at an angle but closer to me than regular laptop mode), and the way it's bottom side is always the same is a big advantage. I feel it's well worth the compromise(the extra width for the hinge) over the standard 2 in ones, with the 360 rotation.
Also, while most 2 in 1s are too big to be actually used as a tablet, with this form factor I can have the laptop's body on my lap, and the screen above it, where I would naturally hold a tablet anyway.
The screen is amazing. It's not just the accuracy and the brightness, the matte finish looks great and I really wish all touch screen devices were like this. It looks less impressive when turned off, but you don't get any distracting reflections which is great, and surprisingly it doesn't make the touch experience any less pleasant(touch it does add some minimal friction which is mostly noticeable with the pen, and provides some feedback when drawing).
I think hd rather than 4k for a 14'' device is a positive, since I couldn't tell the difference but the battery consumption should be much better.
Performance - I expected it to be good, but I was a little surprised with how good it was considering it's the weakest GPU of the previous gen, and especially with the stability. I played Red Dead Redemption 2, Just Cause 4, Outer Worlds, and Fifa 20 - all in 1080P and medium-high settings, they all looked great, ran perfectly smoothly, and no frame drops even after very long periods of playing. I use an external fan-stand which usually helps dropping the temperature by 1-3 degrees, but either way neither the gpu never got to 65 degrees, and the cpu is usually at 70-80 degrees, with short peaks at 90.
There are a lot of venting holes and it seems like they put a lot of thought into the thermal performence.
Otherwise it was perform really good, as I'd expect with this hardware.
Had no issues with virtualization - setting up docker and WSL2 was as straight forward as it gets.
Touchpad - really big, and really accurate. never had it miss my gesture, and using it was the first time I enjoyed using a touchpad and could understand mac fans.
Keyboard - very comfortable to me, I think this layout is the best that we can have with a 14'' laptop(besides the numpad and fn issues mentioned in the cons, that can be turned off), but I really wish the power button was at a separate location, and for dedicated volume buttons.
Neutral:
The pen - for me it works pretty well. when turning off the smoothing and drawing diagonal lines the jitter everyone complain about was definitely there, and the off pressure is less sensitive than the on(so you don't get the really thin line as you lift the pressure). As I mostly using it for sketching diagrams and with pretty harsh smoothing anyway, and it does the job well for me, and I think would be the same for most people that don't look for a device to replace their wacom tablet.
It's location in the bottom is pretty annoying, especially when using it on an angled stand or on the lap, and I really wish it was spring loaded.
Fans - you can get some work done in power mode and the fans being completely silent, but they make noticeable noise when you push the hardware. It's what you'd expect, but acer's advertisement seems inaccurate in this aspect.
Cons:
The keyboard has 2 very annoying features: the f keys by default activate their multimedia functionality, and you need to hold fn to get the original f1-f12 functionality; and there's a "numpad" on the "7890-uiop-jkl;" buttons, which activates whenever numlock is on(so when you click o you get 6 instead), which I found useless, and annoying since I like to always have numlock turned on for external keyboards.
Both can be turned off in the bios, but from what I understand the bios is locked by default(I sent it to a lab to replace the SSD with a bigger one before realizing those issues existed, and they told me they had some trouble unlocking the bios).
Power cable - When you plug it in, it feels like you pushed it all the way(and on any other laptop it is), but then there is a bit more to push with a click sound. If you don't do the extra push, it doesn't charge, and After 1.5 months I still get it wrong sometimes.
The backlighting - I wouldn't mind the orange-ish backlight on a black laptop(and regardless, I really wish I could get it in black), but on a white keyboard it's really weird, because it makes the key text almost invisible when you are not in the dark, since you get white-ish text on white background. I hardly use backlight anyway, but this decision is just weird.
No charging through the type c port - which means there is no option to connect everything through a single cable with a charging dock. I haven't tried connecting it to a screen through that output yet.
The fingerprint sensor seems to be to small and too deep inside, which makes it's recognition pretty poor. when I manage to put the finger right it connects instantly, but way to often I end up forced to use the pin.
The speakers can get to a decent volume, but it's not an enjoyable experience to listen to them.
The camera is usable for zoom calls, but that's the best I can say about it. At least the microphones seem to be decent. There's no physical cover to the lens, which is a little disappointing.
I think that when the lid is not open the ventilation suffers, the temperature can get higher and fans get much more active.
There's no ethernet connection, which is understandable but still a bit annoying, especially because the docking options on this aren't as good as they could be.
I really wish there was a black option, it would look so much nicer.
| Standing screen display size | 14 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 Pixels |
| Processor | 5 GHz apple_ci7 |
| RAM | 16 GB DDR4 |
| Memory Speed | 2.6 GHz |
| Hard Drive | 512 GB SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 4 GB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ax |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 3 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 14 Hours |
