Acer has never been one to shy away from edgy looking gaming computers, but in recent years, the company has almost taken a subtle approach. Not so this year, as the company ends 2015 with a roar.
This week, Acer has taken the covers off what we suspect will be among the last computers for the manufacturer for the 2015 year ahead of whatever the company plans to show off at CES next month.
For now, you’ll just have to settle with a pair of beasts that aim to bring in the gamers keen on having something fast, powerful, and angry looking without needing to build a large desktop of sorts.
That’s the general idea with Acer’s Predator 15 and Predator 17, two laptops boasting some pretty high-end specs that should appeal to the gamer thinking of investing during one of the notorious Steam sales coming up at the end of the year.
The new lappies appear to be skewed directly to compete with what’s coming from Dell’s Alienware brand, and that’s no surprise given the hardware Acer has thrown in, which includes Intel’s Core i7 processor from the sixth-generation “Skylake” series, Nvidia graphics going as far as the GTX980, up to 32GB RAM, and even supporting enterprise-level solid-state drives as high as 512GB. Yikes.
Screens will come in either a 15 or 17 inch version, hardly a surprise given the “15” and “17” in each of the Predator names, but what interests us more comes from the idea that there may even be a 4K panel in these computers.
Even more interestingly, we’re seeing Acer’s hardware engineers get a little curious when it comes to engineering technology, and that’s party because this isn’t just a rehash of a computer like the Nitro was earlier on.
Released back in March, this was barely much of a change from Acer’s V series, with a slight refocus on the world of games.
It’s not that rebadging or remodelling a laptop is a bad thing, but we like to see devices engineered for the purpose, and that appears to be the case with the 2015 series Predator.
Case in point, you’ll find some changes to the machine, such as a change to the way the network is engineered with Acer “DoubleShot” which allows the Ethernet and WiFi to work together for better speed, a three-prong fan system to keep the system cooler and quieter, and a dust protection system along the front to keep dust out of the parts.
There also lights — it’s a gaming computer, you have to have those — with four lighting zones for the backlit keyboard, and a change to the keyboard to bring in a dedicated key to stop you from pressing the Windows key by accident and throwing you out of a game.
“The all new Predator 15 and 17 notebooks from Acer are designed from ground up to give gamers the edge,” said Gaba Cheng, General Manager of Product Management at Acer in Australia and New Zealand.
“We’re very excited about this new gaming range.”
Pricing on this range of computer is pretty much where you’d expect a gaming computer to be, and that means starting around the $3K price point, with the 15 inch model sitting at around $2999 while the 17 pushes it up to $3299.
We’re looking into specs right now, but if you want something high end, expect to have that wallet on standby.
