Credit: Ben Patterson/IDG
The second time’s the charm for the Porsche Design Acer Book RS, a slim, light, and Porsche-branded laptop that lacks the flash of its predecessor but nails it in the performance department. While 2017’s Porsche Design Book One, the first laptop with a detachable display and a 360-degree hinge, took a shock-and-awe approach in terms of its form factor, the elegant but much more traditional Porsche Design Acer Book RS keeps the fireworks under the hood.
Packing an 11th-gen Intel Tiger Lake CPU, this new Porsche absolutely tears it up when it comes to multicore CPU performance, all without compromising battery life or portability. The peppy integrated Iris Xe graphics should keep content creators busy. Even better, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS is priced more like a Honda (well, one of the nicer ones, anyway) than a Porsche 911.
This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best laptops. Go there for information on competing products and how we tested them.
Configuration
Let’s dive into the specifications of our Porsche Design Acer Book RS review unit (with the poetic model name AP714-51T-59ZV), which is available for $1,400 from Acer:
- CPU: Quad-core Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor
- Memory: Dual-channel 8GB LPDDR4X RAM
- Graphics: Integrated Intel Iris Xe
- Storage: 512GB NVMe SSD
- Display: 14-inch, 1920x1080 IPS touchscreen
- Webcam: 720p
- Connectivity: Thunderbolt 4, two SuperSpeed (5Gbps) USB Type-A ports, HDMI 2.0, combo audio jack
- Networking: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1
- Biometrics: Fingerprint reader
- Battery capacity: 56 Watt-hour
- Dimensions: 12.55 x 8.24 x 0.63 inches
- Weight: 2.6 pounds (measured), 6 ounces (power brick)
A second version (AP714-51GT-716C, $1,700 from Acer) steps up to a Core i7-1165G7 processor with discrete GeForce MX350 graphics, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Both are moderately steep price tags, but they’re much more reasonable that the $2,495 premium that 2017’s Porsche Design Book One commanded.
A third SKU, the Porsche Design Acer Premium Collection (AP714-51GT-76L3, $2,000 from Acer) bundles the pricier laptop with the Porsche Design Acer Travelpack RS, an accessory pack (available separately for $330 from Acer) that includes a snazzy, angular Bluetooth mouse (with an aluminum-framed left button that looks like a gas pedal), a polyester laptop sleeve, and a leather pouch and mousepad. The sleeve, pouch, and mousepad all snap together with hidden magnets, making for a handsome—if pricey—way to tote the Porsche Design laptop. (The leather smells great, too.)
Ben Patterson/IDG
The optional, $330 Porsche Design Acer Travelpack RS kit includes a snazzy, angular wireless mouse, while the polyester sleeve and leather pouch and mousepad all snap together magnetically.
At first blush, our test unit is an impressive configuration. Intel’s new, 10nm Core i5 Tiger Lake processor promises a substantial jump in performance over 10th-gen Ice Lake CPUs (stay tuned for our benchmarks). Iris Xe delivers gangbuster graphics performance for an integrated GPU, although (as we’ll see) it’s more oriented toward content creation than gaming. The 8GB of RAM is adequate for most uses, while the 512GB SSD is roomy enough for Office and a modest media library. The fingerprint reader will let you unlock Windows with a fingertip swipe—although for this much money, we would have liked to see IR facial recognition, too. Wi-Fi 6 networking means the Porsche will play nice with cutting-edge routers. The state-of-the-art Thunderbolt 4 (newly supported by Intel’s Tiger Lake chips) will drive a pair of external 4K displays and support longer cable runs.
Design
When I think of the Porsche brand, I imagine sleek, understated elegance (or at least that’s how I remember my uncle’s Porsche, back when I was an awe-struck kid). The Porsche Design Acer Book RS certainly delivers that aesthetic.
Ben Patterson/IDG
The chamfered front and rear edges of the Porsche Design Acer Book RS give it a refined, understated look.
The laptop’s aluminum unibody frame comes with chamfered front and rear edges. The CNC-machined, 3K carbon fiber lid features a subtle striped design that’s matched on the mouse in the optional accessories kit. The Porsche Design logo is etched onto the front edge of the top cover, and it’s also stamped on the chassis just above the keyboard. The design even carries over to the display’s default striped Porsche Design wallpaper.
Besides its sophisticated looks, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS is pleasingly light, weighing in at just 2.6 pounds. It comes with two AC adapters: a compact, six-ounce model with a traditional barrel-shaped tip, and a larger, USB-C tipped model weighing in at 10 ounces.
Ben Patterson/IDG
It wouldn’t be a Porsche without the Porsche logo, would it?
Display
Encased in scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS’s 14-inch display is both sharp and bright. Rated at 340 nits, the touchscreen easily tops our low-water mark of 250 nits when it comes to indoor brightness, even if it can’t hold a candle to the brightest gaming laptops. The display also boasts wide viewing angles thanks to its IPS (in-plane switching) panel.
The display falls a bit behind the times in one key area: its shape. The 16:9 aspect ratio is going out of style as vendors go back to a taller, narrower 4:3 ratio, which is better suited for productivity mavens working with long documents or spreadsheets. Of course, mobile content creators might prefer the more video-friendly 16:9 aspect ratio, so your opinion will depend on your use case.
At any rate, the Book RS’s display does benefit from a 100-percent sRGB gamut (take note, content creators), while the screen’s slim side bezels (they’re a tad chunkier on the top and bottom) give the laptop a generous 90-percent screen-to-body ratio.
Keyboard, touchpad, speakers, webcam
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS’s backlit keyboard delivers a pleasant typing experience, combining solid travel distance with satisfying feedback, while keeping your keystrokes reasonably quiet.
Ben Patterson/IDG
The comfy keys on the Porsche Design Acer Book RS make for an enjoyable typing experience.
There aren’t any dedicated media playback keys, nor is there an Airplane mode key, but you do get function-level hotkeys for sleep, display brightness, display project, screen on/off, keyboard backlighting (there’s only one backlighting step, unfortunately), and volume.
My main complaint focuses on the page up/down keys, which I frequently hit by accident because they reside directly above the left/right arrow keys. I’d normally be nervous about the location of the power button right above the backspace key, but this one was designed to be dummy-proof. You must press it and hold it for several seconds to shut down the laptop, and even then you must swipe down on the display to confirm.
The Book RS’s touchpad has a glass coating that makes it feel soft to the touch, and it was generally responsive. The cursor did occasionally jump across the screen when my palms brushed against the trackpad by accident. I’ve experienced much worse, but still, there were a few instances when I found myself suddenly typing in the wrong paragraph because of a false input on the trackpad.
While its down-firing stereo speakers are augmented by DTS processing and Acer’s TrueHarmony audio technology, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS’s sound quality was decidedly wan. Streaming Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising from my Plex media server, “Lonesome Day” sounded clean but almost entirely free of bass, while Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” sounded mushy and empty. Now, we usually don’t get too worked up about laptop speakers (as a rule, they’re pretty cruddy), but the Porsche Design brand naturally inspired dreams of a high-end stereo in the dash. Unfortunately, if you want a Blaupunkt in this Porsche, you’ll have to supply your own, in the form of a nice pair of cans or souped-up Bluetooth speakers.
Back on the plus side, the Book RS’s 720p webcam captures reasonably sharp video. There’s still plenty of noise, mind you, but the camera opts for a sharper rather than blotchy look, which should translate pretty well on a Zoom or Skype call.
Ports
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS’s array of ports includes a single Thunderbolt 4 connector on the right side of the laptop.
Ben Patterson/IDG
The left side of the Porsche Design Acer Book RS features a Thunderbolt 4 port, along with the first of two SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps Type-A connectors and an HDMI port.
While it offers the same 40Gbps bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4 comes with a series of more stringent standards. For example, a single Thunderbolt 4 port must be able to drive two 4K displays or a single 8K display, and it must support docks with up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports. The new Thunderbolt standard will also support longer cables, including upcoming 50-meter optical cables.
The Book RS also features a pair of SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps Type-A ports (one on each side) for legacy USB devices, along with an HDMI 2.0 port on the left and a combo audio jack on the right. A barrel-shaped power port sits on the left side of the laptop.
Ben Patterson/IDG
On the right side of the Porsche sits its second SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps Type-A port, along with a combo audio jack.
That’s a pretty solid selection of ports, and we’re pleased that Porsche Design brings both new (Thunderbolt 4) and older (USB-A) interfaces to the table. There’s no media card reader, however, which will be disappointing for content creators looking for an easy way to transfer photo or video files from an SD or microSD memory card. (That's where a USB-C hub or Thunderbolt 4 hub could come in handy.)
Click here to read about the Porsche Design Acer Book RS’s performance
