Acer’s Predator 21X gaming laptop – Curved, wide, sli, mechanical and absurd

The game hardware market is a real playground for industrial designers. While the appearance of mainstream products cannot be too eccentric, there are actually no rules for game hardware, as long as it stands out, looks aggressive and is packed to the brim with colored LEDs. That thought is often extended to the components used, especially with gaming laptops. A regular desktop CPU in a notebook? No problem. Desktop video cards? In sli? Consider it done. Mechanical keyboards? Why not. Even water cooling is an option with gaming notebooks these days. And Acer proves at IFA this year with their new Predator 21X gaming notebook that the end is far from in sight.

Firstly, because the 21X is bizarrely large: as the name suggests, the screen has a diagonal of no less than 21″, which makes it very large even compared to other gaming notebooks. So large that it can no longer be used as a laptop. It will never fit in a backpack, with almost 8kg you can’t just take it with you under your arm and even if you could, you would still have to place the two enormous power adapters somewhere that can deliver 660w of power together. it is perhaps best to transport it in a suitcase on wheels.

A curved laptop screen

Strangely enough, the size isn’t the most striking thing about the 21X; that honor goes to the screen. Acer has built in a curved 21:9 screen, something we have not seen before in a laptop. Such a curved ultrawide screen looks impressive, of course, but we did see that the panel is not completely neatly packaged; backlight bleeding was clearly visible in all corners when dark backgrounds were displayed. And that will often be the case when playing games.

It is not surprising that laptop screens are generally flat, because you want a laptop not to be too thick and to be easy to fold. That is not the case with the 21X: if you close it, a gap remains between the two laptop parts. In this case, however, that is a plus, because it gave Acer enough space to build in a mechanical keyboard, based on Cherry MX switches. So no concessions have been made to the height of the keys and tapping on the 21X is therefore a pleasant activity for fans of mechanical keys. Each key has its own RGB LED and the supplied software allows you to place a rainbow of colors over the keyboard.

A normal touchpad is not present, probably because there was simply no room for it under the keyboard. Instead, the trackpad and number pad are combined into one physical block that’s recessed into the case next to the keyboard. On one side are the numeric keys and on the other a trackpad with two buttons. Changing is simply a matter of taking out the block and turning it around, with small contacts on the back providing the connection. As a feature it completely fits the theme of the 21X, but it is not practical.

The 21X also has all the buttons and connections you can think of. Both normal USB 3.1 ports and ports with the new USB-C plug, HDMI and display port for video output, and an RJ45 connection for wired network. To the left of the keyboard are six additional keys that can be programmed by the user as desired.

Hardware

The 21X’s two huge power adapters are mainly needed to provide enough power for the duo of GTX1080 video cards. Together with a still unknown CPU from Intel’s new Kaby Lake generation, they ensure that you should be able to play almost any modern game on this laptop. Especially since the image resolution is ‘only’ 2560×1080 pixels and not 4k. From our own tests with the GTX1080 in sli, we know that with such a setup you can play a fairly heavy game like GTA V at high settings with more than 130fps. In addition, it is nice that the screen supports G-Sync, so you do not suffer from tearing or have to fall back on v-sync and lower frame rates. The 21X clearly still has enough computing power in reserve, so it won’t be too fast behind the times.

Acer has also gone fairly far with the rest of the hardware choices. There is room for four SSDs and there are no less than five fans for cooling, one of which you can even see through a transparent panel above the keyboard. Of course with LED lighting. The remaining space on the inside is filled with four speakers and two subwoofers.

In practice: eye tracking

Acer has teamed up with the people of the Tobii company to equip the X21 with eye tracking. A strip below the screen contains infrared cameras and lights that can recognize and also track the user’s eyes. Within a game you can therefore move, for example, by looking at the edge of the screen with your eyes or aim by simply looking at what you want to shoot at.

We were able to try both situations in a short demo of a space shooter. Technically it worked fine and the system cannot be fooled by, for example, moving your head while keeping your gaze on the same point. But is it really useful? Changing the camera angle by looking at the edge felt clunky and cumbersome. Looking at enemies while firing already proved a little more intuitive, but we didn’t get the sense that it worked better than using a mouse. Perhaps there are games that use the technology much better, but based on this short demo we were not convinced.