For any other laptop, you'd expect it to switch over to the internal battery. We ran into one interesting behavior: If you push the GPUs hard running Furmark, with the CPU and GPUs overclocked, and then suddenly pull the plug, the Predator 21 X immediately cut power to the laptop. Power consumption itself, for what it's worth, generally sat in the 400-watt range under a graphically intense workload such as Furmark. For the sake of appearance and neatness, it's a nice touch you'd expect of a premium machine. In a sign of how much thought Acer put into the Predator 21 X, the company includes a rubber stand for the AC adapters, emblazoned with the Predator logo and shaped in an X. The Predator 21X runs on two 330 watt bricks that can stylishly be held together using the included X-shaped rubber coupler. Both are identical, so there's no specific order for plugging them in. Because no external bricks are available in sizes larger than 330 watts, Acer uses the old trick of slaving two 330-watt bricks together. The Predator 21 X pours on the ports: one Thunderbolt 3, four USB 3.0 Type A, two DisplayPort, and one HDMI 2.0.There's also an SD Card reader, Gigabit ethernet, a Kensington lock slot, and analog mic and headphone port.Īs you can imagine, all of this hardware takes a considerable amount of power to run. Gordon Mah Ung/IDGĪn offset trackpad can be flipped over to reveal a 10-key pad. The keys are not mechanical, but we won't get picky. The trackpad is offset to the right of the keys, but Acer knows any gamer worth a damn won't use a trackpad to play, so the trackpad can be flipped over (it's attached via magnets) to reveal a 10-key pad. There's an integrated Tobii EyeX eye tracker under the display, and a rather unique trackpad. The keys are RGB and Acer includes more sedate black keys in the box. Gordon Mah Ung/IDGĬherry MX brown switches will keep your fingers happy. If you don't like the colored WASD keys, Acer includes more sedate black keys in the box. Acer isn't the first laptop maker to integrate full-height mechanical keys, of course, but it's a nice touch. The Predator 21 X features a full-height mechanical keyboard using Cherry MX brown switches. The bottom of the Predator 21X gives you easy access to the guts that you might actually swap out. The bad news they operate only at SATA speeds.
The good news is there's two free M.2 slots that are easily accessible once you remove the service door on the bottom of the laptop. It looks like the thickest hard drive you can get in the Predator 21 X is a 9.5mm HDD, which tops out at 2TB today. It's hard to quibble with that much storage, but if we had to complain, we'd say the hard drive is too small at 1TB. There's also a quad-core Core i7-7820HK, 64GB of DDR4/2400, two Toshiba 512GB NVMe M.2 drives, and a 1TB hard drive. To drive that 2.8-megapixel screen, Acer stuffs no fewer than two GeForce GTX 1080 cards inside, in SLI mode.
At 21 inches, the curve-rated at 2000R-doesn't make a huge difference to our eyes, but it certainly adds to the panache of the Predator 21 X. We generally prefer curved screens to flat screens-on ultra-wide panels measuring 34 inches.
It is decently bright, though-we measured its maximum brightness at 420 nits. The panel has decent off-axis support and a light anti-glare finish, but it won't win any color accuracy contests. Once you've used a high refresh-rate panel, you never want to go back.
The high refresh rate and G-Sync means everything is simply smoother-from gaming to just moving windows and scrolling a browser windows. The panel is 2560x1080, and supports G-Sync with a refresh rate of 120Hz. The most striking feature of the Predator 21 X is its 21-inch curved screen. 21.yup Features: Everything inside the Predator 21 X It's the very definition of a showcase, low-volume, high-profile "halo" product, intended to show that Acer can produce the biggest, baddest laptop on the planet. And Acer's done just that. Hell, it's not even meant to be a high-end product. But seriously, Acer's Predator 21 X isn't meant to be a mainstream product.