Porsche Design Acer Book RS review: Sports car on the outside, sedan under the hood

Acer makes some of the best inexpensive laptops you'll find, as well as interesting premium models that are more about design than being a good bargain. With the name Porsche Design stamped on the lid of this one, I'm guessing you can figure out which group this falls into. Built from carbon fiber and magnesium with diamond-cut edges, the Acer Book RS certainly makes an impression and is something different -- at least on the outside. 

8.0

Porsche Design Acer Book RS

$1,400 at Acer

Like

• Excellent performance, battery life
• Nice-looking, lightweight design

Don't like

• Too much bloatware for a premium laptop
• Similar performance is available for less

The components on the inside, while quite good, are not exactly the sports-car engine you might be expecting for its $1,400 starting price direct from Acer or Porsche Design. For that price, you get an 11th-gen Intel Core i5 processor and integrated Iris Xe graphics that are readily available in laptops for around $1,000 or less. You can also get it with a Core i7 processor and discrete Nvidia GeForce MX350 graphics from Porsche Design for $1,700. That combo should give you more sprightly performance for things like basic photo and video editing and casual gaming. The Core i7 version is available in the UK for £1,900. The Acer Book RS is currently not available in Australia, but the US price converts to approximately AU$1,845.   

Acer also has a Porsche Design Acer Book RS Premium Collection for $2,000. Included is the higher-end Core i7 configuration along with a matching wireless mouse, a leather accessory pouch and a laptop sleeve. It comes with a leather mousepad, too, that magnetically attaches to the outside of the sleeve.

While you'll get better performance with the Core i7 version, the Core i5 model is Intel Evo certified. The Evo label means the system is tested to hit certain mobile performance requirements such as getting at least 9 hours of battery life with normal use (it lasted more than 14 hours in our tests), recharging quickly and being just as responsive on battery power as it is plugged in. 

The laptop turns on in a blink when you lift the lid, too, so it's ready to work immediately. There's a fingerprint reader built into the precision touchpad so you can quickly unlock it. The touch-screen display is bright and covers 100% sRGB color gamut and it even has antimicrobial coating on it. It's just full-HD resolution (1,920x1,080), which might be disappointing at this price, but the battery life just wouldn't be as good with a UHD display. 

What's more disappointing for me is that, despite being finely crafted by Porsche Design, the laptop comes with two generic power supplies. One of them is small with a barrel-type connector, the other is a slightly larger USB-C adapter with longer cables. Neither could be called premium compared to the braided cables or more compact adapters included with premium laptops from HP, Asus and Dell. 

Another thing that hurts the premium feel of the rest of the package is the amount of preinstalled apps and services. It's the kind of thing I'm used to seeing on midrange and budget laptops, but not on a model being sold as a showpiece. One or two relevant trial services are tolerable. But at this price, you shouldn't have to uninstall Booking.com, Evernote, Dropbox, Amazon and Spotify apps out of the box. I'm also not sure why a large HDMI sticker is necessary at the bottom of the display.

Aside from my quibbles about bloatware and generic power adapters, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS is an excellent lightweight premium laptop with some character. A lot of your money here is going toward design and branding, though. You don't have to look hard to find a lower price on a laptop with similar components. Even Acer's Swift 3x is $900 for the same basic configuration, just without the Porsche Design chassis. But again, this laptop certainly makes an impression.