The “D” stands for “design” (get your mind out of the gutter) and Acer has hit this market nicely with a pair of NVIDIA studio-validated laptops and all the drivers any artist/creative pro will need for enhanced performance even during the most intensive of tasks.
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Stuffed with more power: An interesting concept
On the face of it, not much has changed in the ConceptD 5 and 5 Pro. Same slick, utilitarian chassis, wealth of ports (Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, full-size SD card reader), Corning Gorilla Glass touchpad (which is 27% larger) and a scissor mechanism keyboard with 1.55mm of travel. But to really find the big updates, we need to look under the hood and at the screen. Up top, the display tech has been upgraded significantly to a pixel-packed 16:9 WQUXGA (3840 x 2400), 400-nit OLED panel, which is packed with HDR capabilities, a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut and a Pantone Matching System (PMS) for greater accuracy. And popping the bonnet, you’ll find up to an Intel Core i7-12700H CPU in throw, alongside an RTX 3070 Ti GPU, with the possibility of getting the uber-powerful RTX A5500 in the Pro models. Plus, with up to 32GB LPDDR5 RAM and a 2TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, this thing is going to fly. Now, we know the concerns. Read our Acer ConceptD 5 hands-on review from last year and while we applauded the slick design, there were some concerns about the thermal management. Plus, to keep all of this going for a while, the ConceptD 5 stuffs a 99.98-Wh battery inside for a “wireless web browsing, video playback and streaming” of 11 hours. Prices for the ConceptD 5 start at $2,499 and you can get your hands on one in August. As for the 5 Pro, there is no U.S. info, but this model will be available in September for €2,599.
Outlook
As a creative pro, the main demands are always for more power and a better screen. Acer has answered both of these with its refreshed ConceptD 5 models, and they’re coming with sizable price tags to boot. But do these upgrades make for a worthwhile pro-level laptop for getting processor intensive stuff done on-the-go? We’ll save that opinion for our review, but on paper, these certainly do tick the right boxes.
