Why did Porsche MAKE this laptop??? - Acer Porsche Design Book RS
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2021-05-05
·
2,332 words · ~11 min read
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- This right here is the Acer Porsche Design Book RS.
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And if you haven't heard of Porsche Design, they're like a subsidiary sort of
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like spin-off company of Porsche. And they sort of do things like sell $7,000 watches
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or one of the things that they did was, in Orlando, they made a high-rise where you could
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park your car like in the elevator and it takes you and your car up to your apartment.
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Anyway, it's ridiculous, rich people's stuff. Just stupid stuff that I never want to do.
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But, we can look at this laptop.
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It's you know, it's not as much as their watches, it comes at $1,400.
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So, maybe it's actually not that bad.
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Let's get into it. Oh, this isn't it.
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This right here is the optional accessories for the Porsche Design Book RS.
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And it's a $330 option for what you get,
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a mouse, we get this.
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Yeah, I don't know what this is for. It feels good.
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I'm guessing it's so that you can chuck your mouse and whatever else you want in there.
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And then, down here we get the carrying case.
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Hey, Andy. - [Andy] Yeah? - Would you spend $330 to get this leather-folio thing?
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This computer cover and... - [Andy] The mouse?
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- A kind of bad feeling mouse?
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- [Andy] I'll save up to get a real Porsche. - I was honestly hoping that this thing
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would be like made out of aluminum or something, given how freaking expensive it is,
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- [Jono] Is it plastic? - Yeah, it's just plastic. - [Jono] What?
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- Like listen to this. It's just like, it's...
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You can tell when something, you know, when you drop it, it sounds like a (mumbles),
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instead of like a (mumbles). Yeah, I haven't used this mouse yet,
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but I think it's pretty safe to say, the accessory bag is not worth what you're paying for it.
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This right here, it looks like it's a Bluetooth mouse, so I imagine the tracking and,
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oh, this just feels bad. I don't know who thought that this edge right here
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would be comfortable on your hand but it's not.
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Okay.
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Oh, you got another little card.
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- [Jono] Haha, in case it gets lost.
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- And, Porsche Design. I'm gonna keep on going.
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I wanna see what else is in the box. This is a lot of box for a little laptop already being out.
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- [Jono] Well you paid for it? - Yeah, you're definitely paying for the box here.
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65W charger of a Type C, that's pretty good.
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And then over here we get, International Travelers Warranty passport.
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What? What's in here. What?
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(soft music)
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Okay, I'm confused. - [Jono] Are there two chargers?
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- So we also have a 65W barrel charger for some reason.
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Okay, well that's it. A lot of companies have been you know,
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moving towards much more biodegradable
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and generally earth-friendly packaging.
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I think it's pretty safe to say that given pretty much all of this is just foam
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that smells like it came straight from the refinery.
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This right here, is not great for the environment.
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Whoa. (soft music)
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Interesting. Okay, wow. It's 2.65 pounds and it actually feels really light.
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Definitely just chuck this in your backpack. I'm surprised how light it feels actually.
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Okay, so I just looked it up and it turns out this actually is a real carbon fiber panel on the back here,
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so it's a 3K carbon fiber. The whole like chassis is made out of 60, 65 aluminum,
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and then it has a micro-arc finish which apparently gives it a ceramic-like coating.
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It's kind of similar to (mumbles), like in feel.
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Apparently it has really great scratch resistance. It also has a gorilla glass screen.
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So, you know, it should last quite a long time and look pretty good.
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Well, subjectively, I don't know.
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What are your thoughts on how it looks so far, Jono? - [Jono] Not bad, it looks light.
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- It feels light. It is actually really light. I don't know, for me personally,
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it's kinda trying too hard. It's got those real like, almost (mumbles) vibes,
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instead of like you know... - [Jono] Change your hood, bro.
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- Like you know, like real Porsche, they would just do like more subtle things
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instead of just being like, ah, carbon fiber, we put a sheet on the back, good for us.
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We lost the plot here (mumbles). So, you get a full sized HDMI,
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type A and Thunderbolt, Thunderbolt 4 actually, on the side.
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You also have barrel charging, which you're just gonna throw in the garbage
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'cause why the heck? Why? I'm still so confused, but anyway.
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And then on the other side you get headphone combo and another Type A.
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So, given its size and weight, that's actually pretty good.
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Oh, yeah, those can go. - [Jono] That's weird.
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- It is weird, I just don't get it. - [Andy] Put one at home, the other one in your leather pouch.
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- I guess that's probably what this is for. - [Jono] $300 babeyyyy.
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- Yeah, that's $330 well spent right there.
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Actually, this one fits better, so maybe you'd take it.
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Yeah, bang it, it attaches there, sort of.
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Okay, so is the laptop actually good?
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We'll find out, oh, one finger lift.
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Is it gonna (mumbles), come on, no.
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- [Jono] Gotta warm it up. - Two finger lift.
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Not really, one second. I like this mouse pad but we can't stiffness test on it.
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Okay, okay, our table is not flat. I thought that something was wrong with
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the laptop for a second there. So, we get this vajazzled fingerprint reader
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and a pretty small touch pad. It's a bit wonk.
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Do other touch pads do that? Nope, this one doesn't.
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The chassis overall though, is very stiff. You can definitely tell that the whole thing
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is made out of aluminum. Screen, same thing, like the feel of the laptop is great.
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Oh, and it is it's Evo certified which just made it haste things like,
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I think fast charging, you need to be able to get like 15 hours of battery life or something,
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super good standby and it needs to be able to turn on
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in like a second or something like that. I guess it's time to get into it.
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Who's our sponsor, Jono? - [Jono] Govee. - Govee.
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Govee offers high quality smart lights for any room or Christmas tree in your home.
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They're currently having a Black Friday promotion with up to 35% off the lights,
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as well as a cyber Monday sale with their prices as low as $6.99.
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The sale includes RGBIC light strips that allows for this cool chasing color effect.
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Normal RGB LED lights with Alexa and Google Assistant support,
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and a TV backlight that allows for different scenes. Head to the link in the description
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and check out Govee's Black Friday sale today. (soft upbeat music)
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- [Jono] That's pretty good. - Okay, I guess the first thing
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that I noticed here, is this touch? Okay, so it's a touch screen,
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it's a 1080P touch screen, that's 16 by 9.
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In this price range, you could also be looking at like the XPS 13 which has the 16 by 10 display,
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and I guess it also has a carbon fiber wrist rest if you like that and it kinda just
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looks more premium (laughs). So it's a 14 inch display with a maximum brightness
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of 340 nits, which is underwhelming.
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What do we have for power? (mumbles) I think there's only one config,
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but there might be a couple. But the one that we have though is the $1,400 model,
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which gets you... How much RAM do you think it does have, Jono? - [Jono] 16?
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- It has 8 gigabytes of RAM. - [Jono] What? - With an i5-1135G7,
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and a 512 Gigabyte hard drive.
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So, it's not fast. - [Jono] The graphics card?
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- Well, there's no graphics card Jono.
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It's got the Iris Xe graphics which in fairness are actually pretty good for something of this size.
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But, you're not games on this (laughs).
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Well, one thing that is good about the i5 though,
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is that we have a 56 watt hour battery in here,
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and I imagine you actually do get like all workday
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plus a fair bit battery life with that.
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Then again, that's basically the same size battery as what you get in an XPS 13, you know, an HP Spectre.
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You're not getting a lot of laptop for $1,400 here.
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- [Jono] You get a Porsche laptop. - You getting carbon fiber on the back (laughs).
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Oh, one thing that you do get, it does that thing where it slightly angles up,
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when you open it. That allows for more air to get in the bottom, so it runs cooler and it also kinda like
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tilts it just a tiny bit, which is nice for typing. So, let's see how the keyboard actually feels.
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(keyboard clicking)
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This keyboard feels like fine,
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but it kind of gets to the whole problem
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that I have with this laptop. This doesn't feel like a keyboard
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that belongs on a $1,400 laptop.
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So, let's see the other laptop that's Acer, you know,
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unveiled at the same time as this one is the Spin 3 which has a 16 by 10 display,
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and starts at 850 bucks. There's also have the Spin 5,
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which is $1,000 and has a 3 by 2 display,
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the Swift 3X has 17½ hours
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of battery life and is $900. So, I think it's safe to say that
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any of those options are much better than this,
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as you get a better and bigger screen.
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You get basically the same computer,
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but you're spending less money so that you don't have carbon fiber on the back.
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I don't know who this laptop's for. Actually, I'm gonna look it up.
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I remember seeing a slide about it. Okay, target audience.
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So first of all (laughs), those guys.
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The Porsche Design Acer Book RS, is designed for trend-conscious mobile professionals,
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looking for convenience and style while they work. The new notebook will appeal to their solid sense of style
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and desire for a super lightweight laptop, that provides spectacular visuals and effortless computing.
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For fancy people, fancy people with heaps of cash.
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You can see the whole deck just kind of flexes,
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I guess not a lot, and the switches actually are quite good.
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But it's the sort of thing that you just don't see
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on laptops that are this expensive with an i5.
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And same with like this track pads, just,
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it's just not quite there. It just doesn't quite offer like, you know, that premium experience that you would expect
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from Porsche, I guess. And so, we do have a fingerprint reader,
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but it does not have Windows Hello facial recognition, which is a bit of a bummer.
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Is it even a laptop review on ShortCircuit, if you don't like (mumbles).
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Who wants to bet money that this will be underwhelming?
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The clarity is actually not bad,
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and there's no balls (laughs). (upbeat music)
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I would say that this is like perfectly acceptable for like conference calls, that sort of stuff.
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You'll be able to hear the other people just fine. It is in fairness to them, a very clear sound.
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(upbeat music) This is the Porsche Design,
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and that's the XPS 15. So, in fairness to Acer, this is a 15 inch laptop,
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but also in fairness to Acer not being that great,
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you know, the MacBook Air is still the same or better than the XPS 15.
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So, it is possible to have amazing sound in something of this size.
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- [Jono] And at that price too. - Yeah, and at this price too (laughs).
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MacBook Air is cheaper than this thing, and it's better in basically every way.
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Oh, let's open it up, let's do that. I like opening laptops.
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Wow, that's a really small motherboard. Look at this, it's only this big,
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it's just a little guy,
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and you're definitely not upgrading the RAM in this thing,
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which you kind of do expect in a laptop like this but it's pretty unfortunate
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that like eight gigs is your option. You can replace the SSD though, so that's nice.
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Oh, this big old 56 watt hour battery and you know, just a nice little pretty
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standard cooling system, but I imagine it's gonna be more than fine.
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We've got two heat pipes that lead over to here. Heaps of space to intake air,
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kind of quite a bit of wasted space here and here
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and kind of around here (laughs).
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So I guess my thoughts on this laptop,
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they probably made this laptop so people like me would review it,
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and then tell you to wait around for next thing
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that you should actually do, like get a Swift 3 or a Swift 5,
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or a Spin 3 or a Spin 5. Those actually look really good.
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I'm excited for those. So good job, Acer.
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You have laptops that I'm excited about, and I was really excited about this one
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'cause I thought it would be stupid and it really was (laughs).
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So yeah, if you wanna see more laptops from Acer that are actually sensible,
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get subscribed, hit like and I don't know, just have a fantastical day.
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See you later.