UNBELIEVABLE CURVED SCREEN GAMING LAPTOP - Predator 21x Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,497 words · ~7 min read
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Holy crap. The top-of-the-line laptop
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market has been expanding, even
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exploding in recent years. And it seems now pretty much everybody and their dog
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has a laptop with a GTX 1080 desktop
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edition or even two of them in SLI. So,
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how do you set yourself apart from the crowd? Well, Acer decided to conjure
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forth the purest, maddest gaming laptop
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ever created. Gaze upon the Predator
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21X and tremble puny mortals.
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The Master Keys Pro keyboard lineup from Cooler Master is available in three
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sizes each in white or RGB flavors.
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Check them out at the link below. All right, so we really can't go
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any further without addressing the
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display. It's freaking amazing. It's a
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21 in curved ultrawide display on a
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laptop. When you open this thing up, it
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is immediately clear. It means
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business. While it does have a little bit of backlight bleed, it's bright, has
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great viewing angles and vivid colors. And the 120 Hz refresh rate along with
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G-Sync compatibility cements it as the
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laptop gaming display to end all laptop
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gaming displays. And speaking of games,
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if your game dips below 120 FPS, well,
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you can pretty much blame the developers since this baby packs more power than
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your average split Atom. dual power
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bricks feed the two GTX 1080s in SLI, a
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Core i7 7820HK quad core, two NVMe SSDs
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in RAID zero, and 64 gigabytes of DDR4
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memory. So, these specs and the monitor
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make playing frantic games like Doom
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extra awesome with no perceptible input
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lag and colors popping like the overwrite postules dotting the cranium
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of a demon. IO, while we're at it, is
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also near desktop class, but there's a
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bunch of way cooler stuff that we want to get to. So, we're going to kind of
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gloss over that. In games, this thing crushed everything
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we threw at it, regularly getting into the hundreds of frames per second while
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running at ultra settings. The ultrawide display made all those frames even more
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sweet, except in DSX and DirectX12,
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where things outside of the 16x9 aspect
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ratio kind of drendered. Now, since Acer was the first
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one to include an ultrawide display on a laptop, we had to actually step it down
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to 16 by9 and rerun all of our
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benchmarks in order to do direct comparisons against anything else. Good
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news for Acer, though, even compared to other top laptops, the Predator 21X took
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no prisoners. Although to be clear, it is still not quite able to take on a
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desktop running GTX 1080s and SLI. And
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it should also be noted that these benchmarks were taken with the fans on
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what we call jet engine mode. More about
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that soon. So if you expect it to be quiet!, you might see frame rates that
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are a little bit lower. Thermals then.
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The Predator 21X's thermals surprisingly actually aren't that amazing when you
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leave it on the auto setting. It does keep it nice and quiet, but it falls
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into the same CPU thermal limiting issues that all of
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the hyperlaptops seem to run up against with
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a bit of throttling when running ID 64.
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But if you have the fans to max, aka
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hope you have active noiseancelling headphones because an F-18 is taking off
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in your backyard mode. The internals are kept nice and cool, which you'd hope
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would be the case because there are five fans and nine freaking heat pipes. I
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mean, don't get me wrong here. With a machine like this, I expect you're going
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to love the noise because this isn't Civic with a hole in the muffler. This
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is Ferrari V12 as it screams at over
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8,000 RPM. And you can make it roar
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anytime you want with the uh oh yeah,
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four speakers and two subwoofers. This
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is the loudest laptop I've ever heard in
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every possible way. Even the keyboard is fully mechanical with Cherry MX Brown
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switches. And with the wrist rest attached, it actually feels like typing
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on a standalone mechanical keyboard.
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Now, the astute among you might have noticed there isn't a
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trackpad, but have no fear. All you got
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to do is lift up the number pad and turn it around if you've forgotten your
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mouse. Pretty sweet. Now, the Predator
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21X also features Toby eye tracking,
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which allows for dynamic lighting and
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aiming depending on where you're looking. And as more games begin to
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support it, I can see this becoming a really cool feature, but at the moment,
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it doesn't do a whole heck of a lot. Routine disassembly of the 21X is
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actually relatively easy with only one screw required to remove the top panel,
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giving you access to the spinning storage and half of the RAM. Opening up
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the bottom requires removing three screws and gives you access to the four
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M.2 drive bays, plus the rest of the
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RAM. This is all that can be easily
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accessed though and any other internal components are only possible to reach
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through pretty much a full disassembly. So then by this point in
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the video you must be thinking to yourself, wait a second, L minus at
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17.8B. Isn't portability kind of out the
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window? And the answer is no.
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Fortunately, Acer thought of this and they included this incredibly convenient
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custom Pelican case with every
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21X. Its compact size and ergonomic
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wheels and handles mean taking the 21X
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with you on the go is almost simple, and
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it can fit in the trunk of your average van with ease. Joking aside though, the
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21X is still considerably easier to pack up
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than a full desktop computer. And with the hardware it's packing, that is
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really not an unjust comparison. So, if
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you want full-on performance at a land
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party or if you move around a fair bit,
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it's actually a pretty incredible
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option. I was slightly worried that the
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curved monitor would be easily damaged
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in more casual transportation though, like say in a backpack. But during our
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testing, we actually found that it remained quite sturdy even when you put
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pressure on it. Using it on your lap, go
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figure, it is a laptop still, is surprisingly comfortable. That is to
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say, until your legs start to go numb. And if you roll up in the coffee shop to
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do some work, it does work, even if you
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might get a couple of funny looks. But bottom line then, should you get one?
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Well, really, it's more of a question of
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can you get one? To which the answer
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is probably no. First of all, it costs
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$9,000, which is enough to get you at this time 608 shares in Acer or two mini
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trucks. And second, they're only making
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300 of them, of which I already have one. So, if you didn't order one
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already, chances are you're out of luck.
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But the Acer Predator 21X isn't about
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practical things like price, availability, noise, weight, thinness,
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general usability, professional appearance. It's a chest thumping piece.
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This was about Acer delivering the
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craziest gaming experience that anyone's
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ever seen in a laptop. And I have to say
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this, mission accomplished, Acer, I absolutely
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love this thing. Dollar Shave Club. The
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concept here is very, very simple. Hair
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grows out of your face or other parts of your body, you got to remove it. So, you
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might as well do it on the cheap and in a way that's convenient. And if you head
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over to dollarshaveclub.com right now, we've got it linked in the video description. You
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can get a trial. Woo! Being a member is
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awesome. They deliver amazing razors directly to your door, meaning that you
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can afford to shave with a fresh blade anytime you want. Try it with their Dr.
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Carver shave butter, which goes on clear, and maybe check out their
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aftershave. And uh while you're at it, maybe their peppermint scented butt
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wipes, one wipe Charlie's. So, if you're in the US, Canada, and Australia, you
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can get your first month of any razor for just a buck with free shipping after
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that, and it's only a few bucks a month. So, thanks for watching, guys. I hope
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you enjoyed this video as much as we enjoyed making it. If you didn't, well,
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there's that button. But if you did, hit that like button, get subscribed, maybe
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consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured if you can at the link
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in the video description. Also down there is a link to our merch
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store, which has cool shirts like this one, and our community forum, which you
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should totally join.