Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsImpressive All Around With a Gorgeous Screen And Almost Silent Keyboard
Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2017
A gaming laptop is a laptop that focuses on, usually, the following things over regular laptops:
1. A dedicated graphics card that can play modern games, at least, on medium settings.
2. A premium leaning screen.
3. Better cooling when under stress.
4. At least a mid-tier CPU.
5. Various other design qualities that make it stand out (sharper edges, colorful lights etc.)
My experience in gaming laptops have been mainly with Alienware (the latest being the 15 r2 line with the GTX 980m).
Firstly, I am overall very impressed with this Acer laptop, in general. With every put together with the feel, the look, and the operation, I can say this is well made and it compares very well with the Alienware. Where it does not match the Alienware is in the case quality. As for the rest? The Acer is equal to or better on almost every level. Here's why:
[---Screen---]
Very vibrant and deep colors. Does not wash out greens/blues and looks very clear in pictures. There is a little grain on fonts and screen edges. Can be turned bright enough to easily work in sunlight with about 30-40% wash out in sunlight. Almost no angle diminishing, probably 2% if any ... at almost 180 degrees. This is a testament to the LG IPS screen. Therefore, you can work in the sunlight very easily with the brightness turned up, and regardless of the angle you are looking at the screen, the images stay the same with no angle 'washout'. Superb screen performance.
Travel of the lid is about 140 degrees; does not lay flat.
[---Case---]
A little on the cheap feeling side. Not necessarily a bad thing. Does not attract fingerprints. Matte and rough texture like the lower end laptops you find in stores. The lid has the vertical 'line' pattern that are slightly raised. While the case feels roughly the same as, say, one of the lower end laptops in stores I say this isn't a bad thing because the design and build is so well done. The case doesn't flex, and the overall design is sleek, sharp, and...very good to look at. If you remember the line of Asus laptops that took their inspiration of the stealth bombers, this is similar, except think of this as a Jet-Stealth bomber, with none of the bloat.
[---Weight---]
Light for what it is. Will be fairly light in the back pack. Can be easily picked up with one hand.
[---Size---]
Typical size for a 15" laptop. Will slide easily into carrying cases/backpacks because of the thin overall presence.
[---Keyboard---]
Matte and smooth, does not attract fingerprints. A very light 'thud' sound that does not 'click' and does not clack. Extremely quiet to use. Quality is good and similar to Alienware. Better quality keyboard than most laptops you find in this line.
Only one brightness setting for the backlit keys. Home and End keys are at the top, though the Home is above the backspace and End is above the asterisk. The PGUP and PGDN are together between home/end. A bit strange that they spaced out two keys between Home and End, however at *least* they didn't put the Home/End on the left/right arrow + Fn. This is a very suitable laptop for programmers as well.
[---Backlit---]
Backlit is a cherry red, with the WASD keys being outlined a little more in red. Backlighting is even and goes quite well with the overall appearance of the laptop.
[---Touchpad---]
It is difficult to find a fluid/sensitive/lag-free touchpad in any laptop not named 'Mac'. Thankfully, thankfully, thankfully the touchpad here is very smooth with no-lage. There are no separate 'click' areas, such that the entire touchpad is one solid platform. So, then, it clicks like a macpro. There is no left right click distinctions except for the 'left' side is left click and right side is right click.
Extremely sensitive and almost up to the level of a mac. Usually touchpads are lousy on almost all PCs and this one is one of the best I have used. The clicks, however are hard to press. So they require a decent amount of pressure to use.
*Negative* - When holding click and dragging a window, there is lag (like most laptops I have found).
[---Noise/Fan---]
Dead quiet for normal browsing, the fan runs a 0%.
~* For Us Nerds: *~
[---Drive Speed/Ratings---]
via AS SSD:
Seq:
Read: 1297 MB/s | Write: 506 MB/s
4k:
Read: 27 MB/s | Write: 63 MB/s
4k-64Thrd:
Read: 101 MB/s | Write: 270 MB/s
Seek:
Read: .070ms | Write: .037 ms
Score: 830
[---Graphics---]
Runs games slightly above the GTX 970m and slightly below the GTX 980m.
1911 Graphics MHz
3904 Memory MHz
GTX 1050Ti
Unigine Ultra Run w/ Tesselation and 8x AntiAlias:
Temp: 59 C
FPS: 35.4
Score: 893
Some FPS scores for current games:
RE7: High 1080p: 64 fps
Titanfall 2: Ultra 1080p: 56 fps
Battlefield 1: Ultra 1080p: 50 fps
[---Specs---]
CPU Intel Burn Test:
Stress: Very High
Temps: Max - 89 C
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700HQ (Soldered onto the motherboard) (Skylake), 4 cores/8 with hyper-threading. TDP: 45W, Cache: 4 x (32+32+256)+6M. Max clock: 2.8 Ghz, 3.8Ghz Turbo. Has an unlocked TDP level.
At stock speeds, the CPU is slightly better than the i5-6600 desktop processor to give you an idea.
Drive: NVMe Intel SSDPEKKW25 256 GB
Memory: 16GB DDR4-2400 / PC4-19200, Timing: 17-17-17-39 | Kingston ACR24D4S7S8MB-8 SDRAM manufacturer: Micron
GPU #1: Intel Kaby Lake-H GT2 1GB
GPU #2: GTX 1050Ti
Monitor: LG Philips | LP156WF6-SPK4 1080P IPS
Battery: 52497 mWh max, 6.5% wear level out of the box. Discharge rate on new startup: -12426 mW
Idle Temps: 50 C Average
[---Connections---]
2 x USB 3.0
1 x USB 2.0
1 x USB 3.1
1 x HDMI
1 x Ethernet
No CD/DVD drive.
Allows for an added laptop drive, however you will have to buy an additional HD caddy. Currently Acer is giving these away for free if you register your S/N at: csapps.acer.com/kit-request
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For the price, you are getting a very good gaming laptop that allows medium-to-high settings at 1080p, with a very beefy CPU. Overall laptop stays cool even when under stress (89 C or below), and has a decent build quality. For general browsers, or semi-hardcore gamers who want a great keyboard, touchpad, and beautiful screen this has exactly that.
