A special edition gaming laptop and high-powered Chromebooks: Everything Acer just announced
Acer has a lot of new hardware to announce, including a Core i9 gaming laptop, a new white-and-gold look for the Helios 300, a potentially pricey Chromebook and even an Intel Xeon gaming desktop.
- Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
The new Acer Swift 5.
Acer has introduced a sizable lineup of new laptops and accessories at the company's annual New York press conference. Similar to the 2017 version of this event, the new products include mainstream laptops, Chromebooks and gaming PCs. Highlights include:
Acer Swift 5
A redesign gives this slim laptop a bigger 15-inch screen, now with a minimized bezel. The metal body weighs less than 2.2 pounds (1kg), according to Acer.
Acer Chromebook Spin 13
A powerful 8th-gen Intel Core i5 processor in a metal chassis with a 360-degree hybrid hinge and Gorilla Glass on its touchpad. It comes with a Wacom stylus. No price yet, but it's clearly aimed at the still-small "premium" Chromebook category.
Nitro VGO display
Acer introduced a 144Hz display for its consumer-priced Nitro gaming line. It's a 2018 Red Dot Design Award winner and features AMD Radeon FreeSync and up to a 1ms response time.
The new Helios gaming laptops.
Predator Helios 300 and 500
The Helios 300 is one of Acer's most popular gaming laptop, so they're making a special edition to celebrate. The new White and Gold Special Edition has a white-and-gold chassis and features a 144Hz display, an eighth-gen Core i7+ processor and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. Acer will also have a headset, mouse and backpack in a matching white-and-gold color scheme.
The Helios 500 is a 17.3-inch beast with a new hexa-core Core i9-8950HK with Intel Optane memory and overclocking along with an 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. The display features a 144Hz refresh rate and Nvidia G-Sync. Keeping it all cool and helping to prevent throttling is the company's dual Aeroblade 3D fans with 39 blades a piece.
The light inside the Cestus 510 mouse.
Predator Cestus 510
This customizable mouse comes in white and black versions and includes removable weights to adjust the feel. The sensor is 16,000dpi, and a removable cover shows off the internal lighting, supporting 16.8 million color variations.
The mid-size Predator Orion 5000.
Predator Orion 5000 and 3000
Joining the PC maker's largest gaming tower, the Orion 9000 are new midsize Orion 5000 and smaller 3000. The 5000 will have dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti SLI and Core i7+ 8700K processor wrapped up in a see-through case that's EMI compliant and cooled with Acer's Ice Tunnel 2.0 design. The 3000 gets the same processor, but just a single graphics card, up to the 1080 Ti.
Predator X
In a big switch, Acer is using dual Xeons (Intel's workstation chip) in its top-of-the-line gaming machine. Not many more details, or even a photo of what it looks like, but It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
We'll be diving deeper into a few of these systems soon, but note that exact price and availability details were not yet available.
Rewatch the full event
Want to see the even as it unfolded live at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall? You can watch the full video below.