Acer ConceptD 5 review: Hands-on

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At its press conference in New York, Acer announced a completely new range of products aimed at creative users under a new brand name. It includes laptops such as the MacBook Pro rivalling ConceptD 5 and here’s our hands-on review.

Price & Release Date

The ConceptD 5 will be available in the US in April, starting at $1,699. It will then be available in Europe in July starting at 1,699 Euro. 

There’s no UK price yet but we imagine, going by Acer’s other pricing, for things like the Predator Helios 700, that it will come in at £1,499.

The cheapest 15in MacBook Pro is £2,349/$2,399 for comparison. 

Design & Build: Plastic fantastic 

Apple’s design and build found on all its products is hard to beat. We can all agree surely that the MacBook Pro is a sleek thing of beauty.

It’s interesting then that Acer has gone in a completely different direction with its ConceptD laptops. Instead of premium materials like aluminium, they’re made of plastic.

Well, there’s mention of a ‘magnesium-aluminum alloy’ but it really doesn’t seem like it in real life.

Dressed in white like MacBooks of yesteryear, the ConceptD 5 does look quite striking. It comes in at 16.9mm and 1.5kg so thanks to the plastic, it’s lighter than the MacBook Pro.

However, we’re concerned about how dirty the chassis will get over time. More importantly, how durable the device is. While the main section around the keyboard is fairly stiff, the screen is very wobbly and bendy.

The matching white trackpad and keyboard seem ok, but don’t give a sense of a premium experience to rival the likes of Apple and Dell.

Specs & Features: All the colours of the rainbow

Acer makes up for the interesting design choices with some decent specs including a 15.6in display that’s got designers and other creative users in mind.

It’s been specced to reproduce colours accurately so you can work without worry. To this end it’s got 100% of Adobe RGB, a Delta E of 

The display is also 4K (3840x2160) in resolution, has a high brightness level of 400 nits and offers a matt finish.

Moving on and the ConceptD is powered by an 8th-gen Intel Core i5-8305G or an i7-8705G. These are quad-core chips with discrete Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics.

These are followed up by 8- or 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB SSD – it’s NVMe in RAID 0.

We haven’t been able to benchmark it, of course, but Acer says you’ll be able to “fine-tune images with professional precision and complete the trickiest 2D graphic design projects in no time.”

There are loads of handy ports including no less than three USB 3.1 Type-A ports along with HDMI, USB-C (with DisplayPort) and an SD card reader. Other features include a fingerprint scanner.

Early Verdict

We’re not convinced by the bendy white build quality of this laptop but it does seem to offer a cheaper alternative to those who can’t afford a MacBook Pro. 

There’s a decent array of ports which is good to see and the specs looks good too, especially the screen.

Specs

Acer ConceptD 5: Specs

• 15.6in 4K IPS, 400 nits
• 100% Adobe RBG, Delta E<2, Pantone Validated
• 8th-gen Intel Core i5-8350G or i7-8750G
• AMD Radeon RX Vega M GL
• 8/16GB DDR4 RAM
• Up to 1TB SSD
• USB-C
• USB 3.1 x3
• HDMI
• SD card reader
• Fingerprint scanner
• 360 x 242 x 16.9mm
• 1.5kg