Acer has unveiled some new laptops at IFA in Germany, including the utterly monstrous curved-display 21-inch Predator 21X. Acer says it's the world's first laptop with a curved screen.
The new Predator 21X laptop sits at the very top of Acer's gaming laptop range. The curved screen, which has a resolution of 2560×1080, is powered by two of Nvidia's latest mobile GTX 1080 graphics cards. The screen is G-Sync enabled, too.
CPU-wise, the laptop has a new 7th-gen Kaby Lake Intel Core processor, but we don't know exactly which model. Given the laptop's desktop-replacement aspirations we are probably looking at some kind of quad-core 45W TDP chip, rather than one of the dual-core low-power parts unveiled by Intel this week. Intel isn't planning to release its quad-core Kaby Lake parts until the first quarter of 2017—which incidentally is when the Predator 21X is meant to go on sale.
The Predator 21X also has Tobii eye-tracking hardware, 4.2 audio (what's the only thing better than one subwoofer?), and a full-size illuminated Cherry MX mechanical keyboard. The numpad (which isn't mechanical) can apparently be flipped over to become a touchpad. Really, the whole thing is a bit of a beast. Update: Acer told Ars that the Predator 21X will weigh 8kg (17.6lbs)—just under half the weight of Elvis, the world's heaviest domestic cat.
Acer hasn't provided even a rough ballpark for pricing on the Predator 21X, but considering top-end Predator 17 laptops cost £2,000 or more, the Predator 21X could cost upwards of £3000 ($4000+).
Elsewhere at IFA 2016, Acer unveiled two other laptops: a rather fetching MacBookalike called the Swift, and a hybrid 360-degree-hinge laptop called the Spin. The top-end Swift 7, which has two USB Type-C ports, a 13.3-inch screen, a 7th-gen Core i5 chip, and a 256GB SSD, is the thinnest laptop in the world according to Acer (9.9mm).
Pricing starts at $1000/€1300 (~£1100) for the Swift 7, scaling down to $750/€750 for the Swift 5, $500/€500 for the Swift 3, and just $250/€350 for the low-end Swift 1 model (all of which are thicker, heavier, and slower than the Swift 7). Judging by the weird dollar/euro pricing, the European Swift 7 model might be higher-spec than in the US.
The Spin follows a fairly similar model lineup: there's a Spin 7, 5, 3, and 1, with pricing ranging from $260/€300 up to $1200/€1300 (~£1100). The Spin 7 is pretty svelte at 10.9mm thick, and comes with a 7th-gen Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. The Spin 5, though thicker than the 7, can be specced out with up to 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. It sounds like the Spin 5 will also have access to some kind of stylus attachment.
The first Spin and Swift laptops will go on sale in October, though some models won't arrive until November and December. The story has been updated with eurozone pricing, which will probably be very close to the UK pricing (the euro pricing includes VAT; the dollar price doesn't).
