Acer Predator 21 X review: The most insane laptop ever built

Acer's Predator 21 X is giant, fast, and super-expensive.'

AT A GLANCE

There are three things you ought to instantly think about Acer's Predator 21 X PC. To start with, it's hands-down the quickest workstation we've at any point seen. Enough said. 

Second, it's the largest PC we've at any point seen: 22.4 inches wide, 12.4 inches down, and 2.71 creeps to 3.28 inches high, front to back. 

What's more, third: It's the most costly PC we've found in quite a while. Without a doubt, at $9,000, you'd figure it would be the priciest ever in PCWorld history, however, a 1990-period 286 PC that cost $6,000 balanced for swelling would be $11,367 today. Anyway, the Predator 21 X is very nearly an arrangement, isn't that so? 

In any case, genuinely, Acer's Predator 21 X isn't intended to be a standard item. For hell's sake, it's not intended to be a top of the line item. It's the simple meaning of a feature, low-volume, prominent "radiance" item, proposed to demonstrate that Acer can deliver the greatest, worst workstation on earth. Also, Acer's done only that.

Features: Everything inside the Predator 21 X

The most striking component of the Predator 21 X is its 21-inch bended screen. The board is 2560x1080, and underpins G-Synchronize with an invigorate rate of 120Hz. The high invigorate rate and G-Match up means the world is basically smoother—from gaming to simply moving windows and looking over a program windows. When you've utilized a high revive rate board, you never need to return. 

The board has not too bad off-pivot bolster and a light enemy of glare complete, yet it won't win any shading exactness challenges. It is tolerably splendid, however—we gauged its most extreme brilliance at 420 nits. 

We by and large incline toward bended screens to level screens—on broad boards estimating 34 inches. At 21 inches, the bend—appraised at 2000R—doesn't have a gigantic effect to our eyes, yet it positively adds to the panache of the Predator 21 X.

To drive that 2.8-megapixel screen, Acer stuffs no less than two GeForce GTX 1080 cards inside, in SLI mode. There's likewise a quad Center i7-7820HK, 64GB of DDR4/2400, two Toshiba 512GB NVMe M.2 drives, and a 1TB hard drive. It's difficult to bandy with that much stockpiling, however on the off chance that we needed to gripe, we'd state the hard drive is too little at 1TB. It would seem that the thickest hard drive you can get in the Predator 21 X is a 9.5mm HDD, which beat out at 2TB today. 

The uplifting news is there's without two M.2 openings that are effectively available once you expel the administration entryway on the base of the PC. The terrible news they work just at SATA speeds.

Keyboard and trackpad

The Predator 21 X includes a full-tallness mechanical console utilizing Cherry MX darker switches. Acer isn't the principal PC producer to coordinate full-tallness mechanical keys, obviously, yet it's a decent touch. The keys are separately RGB-lit, as well. In the event that you don't care for the hued WASD keys, Acer incorporates increasingly calm dark keys in the crate. 

There's a coordinated Tobii EyeX eye tracker under the showcase, and a fairly extraordinary trackpad. The trackpad is balanced to one side of the keys, however Acer knows any gamer good for anything won't utilize a trackpad to play, so the trackpad can be flipped over (it's appended by means of magnets) to uncover a 10-key cushion. The keys are not mechanical, but rather we won't get particular.

Ports and power

The Predator 21 X pours on the ports: one Jolt 3, four USB 3.0 Sort A, two DisplayPort, and one HDMI 2.0.There's additionally a SD Card peruser, Gigabit ethernet, a Kensington bolt opening, and simple mic and earphone port. 

As you can envision, the majority of this equipment takes a lot of capacity to run. Since no outside blocks are accessible in sizes bigger than 330 watts, Acer uses the old trap of slaving two 330-watt blocks together. Every block recovers its very own port in. Both are indistinguishable, so there's no explicit request for connecting them. 

In an indication of how much idea Acer put into the Predator 21 X, the organization incorporates an elastic represent the air conditioner connectors, decorated with the Predator logo and molded in a X. For appearance and tidiness, it's a pleasant touch you'd expect of a top notch machine. 

Power utilization itself, for what it's value, by and large sat in the 400-watt go under a graphically exceptional outstanding burden, for example, Furmark. We kept running into one fascinating conduct: On the off chance that you push the GPUs hard running Furmark, with the CPU and GPUs overclocked, and after that abruptly pull the attachment, the Predator 21 X promptly sliced capacity to the PC. For some other PC, you'd anticipate that it will change over to the interior battery. Be that as it may, considering the Predator 21 X's impressive power stack, it's presumably most secure to hit full stop as opposed to push a 400-watt stack onto the locally available batteries in a millisecond. 

At the point when there wasn't a heap on the Predator 21 X, the workstation would carry on in a progressively polite issue. Unplugging the PC would turn off the overclock and extremely tighten back the GPU clock speeds.

Other upgrades

You definitely think about the two M.2 SATA openings under the base administration entryway. But at the same time there's more equipment you can supplant on the best. Simply expel one screw and painstakingly pull off the customized plate, and you can supplant the hard drive (once more, restricted just to 9.5mm) and supplant the Slam in the event that you have to.

Performance: Powerful, yet still relatively quiet

Gaming workstations have made considerable progress in only two years, thus have buyer desires. Two years back, noisy and gaming went connected at the hip. Today, individuals need their gaming as peaceful as could be expected under the circumstances. Luckily you get that with the Predator 21 X, which can expedite the GPU and CPU loads without seeming like a Huey chopper is taking off before you. 

This may not seem like a major ordeal to you, but rather keeping this much equipment cool under load is an amazing achievement. Of course, Acer's undertaking is made simpler because of the sheer size of the workstation, however it's as yet something the organization ought to get acknowledgment for.

Cinebench R15 Performance

Our first test is Maxon's prominent Cinebench 15 benchmark. It's a benchmark dependent on the organization's Cinema4D motor and scales well with clock speed and center and string tally. Generally, quad centers are quad centers, and the execution is unsurprising for the PCs you see here. 

The Predator 21 X at its stock speed is marginally defeated by the MSI GT73VR by around 4 percent. Overclock the Predator 21 X utilizing the implicit "Turbo" preset, however, and it releases an outcome 20 percent quicker.

Handbrake Performance

A great many people don't do 3D rendering, however, so we likewise measure CPU execution utilizing the free and prominent Handbrake encoder. For this test, we take a 30GB 1080p MKV record and convert it utilizing the Android Tablet preset. Like Cinebench, Handbrake cherishes CPU clock speed and CPU string and center check. 

Be that as it may, dissimilar to Cinebench R15, which keeps running in one moment or three, Handbrake can take 45 minutes to keep running on a quad-center, and well more than a hour to keep running on a double center. On little workstations, this is a test for their cooling frameworks. On monster gaming PCs, it's extremely no perspiration by any means. 

Once more, the GT73VR pulls ahead somewhat. (We presume both CPU results were overclocked results, yet we never again have the workstation to check.) And simply like with Cinebench R15, when you run the Predator 21 X in its Turbo preset, it's plainly before the pack. Everybody's sufficiently nearby, however, that the distinctions don't make a difference much.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Performance

You don't purchase a workstation like the Predator 21 X except if you need choice gaming execution, so our first gaming test is Center earth: Shadow of Mordor. We run the diversion at 1920x1080 goals utilizing the Ultra preset and the discretionary 4K surface pack. 

Similarly as with the CPU benchmarks, we ran this test with the CPU and GPU both set to the Turbo overclock preset. The lift is genuinely noteworthy amid the overclock. 

On the off chance that you take a gander at the outcomes here somewhat harder, you might be incredulous of the Predator 21 X's illustrations hacks. All things considered, the stock execution is a truly minimal advance up over the MSI GT73VR and its single GPU. 

A portion of the absence of grandness is likely because of the goals we set for this diversion. We run the majority of our certifiable gaming tests at goals that most gaming workstations bolster: 1920x1080. The Predator's 120Hz G-Adjust board has a local goals of 2560x1080 which is about 2.7 million pixels, versus the 2 million pixels of a FHD board. Running Center earth at its local goals and still overclocked, we saw the Predator 21 X really released 198 fps, contrasted with 190 at 1920x1080. Despite the fact that it was rendering 30 percent more pixels, the double GTX 1080's were all the while satisfying critical profits. Truth be told, double GTX 1080's most likely don't generally get an exercise until the point that you're playing recreations at 4K or running numerous screens at low goals.

It's so big, it has its own case

We've seen gaming workstations so huge, they accompany their own monster rucksacks. For the Predator 21 X, that isn't sufficient. It is, all things considered, a 18.7-pound workstation with another 6.5 pounds of intensity blocks. When you include the block coupler and attractively appended wrist rest, you need wheels. For all that, Acer incorporates a custom moving Pelican case. 

In the event that you know your hard cases, Pelican is one of the exceptional creators. The case highlights patterns and compartments for every one of your parts. One thing we do wish Acer had done was to generally rule out different frill, for example, a gaming-review mouse. (Look at our gathering of the best gaming mice.)

Conclusion

Ordinarily our audit should reveal to you whether to purchase this item. Noting that question for the Predator 21 X appears to be straightforward: most likely not. However, the real answer is progressively confounded. 

At the cost of the Predator 21 X, you could purchase an "ordinary" gaming workstation and have enough left over to purchase pleasantly assembled gaming work area, as well. Or on the other hand an utilized vehicle, or a while of lease on your loft. Be that as it may, that mentality misses the whole purpose of the Predator 21 X. It's not for you or me, or the sort of individual who gets feeble kneed over a decent equipment deal on Slickdeals. 

No, in case you're the sort of individual who is notwithstanding considering a $9,000 gaming PC, you likely likewise take a helicopter to the Burj Al Bedouin and have the steward roll your Predator 21 X up to the Presidential Suite for you. Along these lines, indeed, if that is you and you require something to get your diversion on, it is elusive a more properly over the top gaming PC than the Predator 21 X. Whatever remains of us can simply continue envisioning.