in this article you’ll know everything about Porsche Design Acer Book RS. When Porsche Design is stamped on a piece of engineering, you can be sure of one thing: it’s going to cost a lot. Oh, and a load of carbon fiber will likely splash all over it.
However, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS is one of the better “Porsche” gadgets to date. It’s not a lazy rebrand of an existing model, and it’s a great laptop in its own right.
It’s light, it lasts a long time between charges, build quality is good, and it can even play a few games when you’re done working / flashing its carbon fiber lid to everyone in the coffee shop.
There are a few problems. The value isn’t that great (no surprise), the ultra-glossy magnesium case doesn’t look that stylish to our eyes, and the display’s pixels are sloppy enough to cause obvious motion blur in high-contrast objects. Other than that, it is a cracker.
Design
- Diamond cut, CNC machined 3k carbon fiber cover and silver colored full metal chassis
- Dimensions: 318.7 x 209.2 x 15.99 mm / Weight: 1.25 kg
Porsche Design products have a number of things in common: a high price is number one; but the designers also have a thing for carbon fiber.
The lid of the Porsche Design Acer Book RS is decked out in the gear and it makes a nice change from metal or glass. This lid is where the Porsche Design side is shown the most, which makes sense if it’s what other people will see.
What is a Porsche Design laptop or phone but a status symbol?
The rest of the Porsche Design Acer Book RS shell is a mix of magnesium and aluminum alloys. This keeps the weight at a low level of 1,192kg according to our scales, and this particular magnesium blend holds the feel of metal well. Some magnesium laptops feel almost like plastic.
However, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS is arguably a bit too shiny. We’ve seen this before with Acer aluminum and magnesium laptops. The metal finish captures a lot more light than a Microsoft Surface Laptop or Apple MacBook , making it appear a bit gaudy. It’s just not quite as stylish as a fine satin finish.
The interior of the Porsche Design Acer Book RS is fairly plain, without the “look at me” theatrics of the lid. There are some other design choices to note, mind you. The lid and base are more square than the average top-of-the-line Windows laptop, which may be an attempt to combine an Apple-esque style. The MacBook Pro line doesn’t go for extremely tapered sides, which makes a laptop appear slimmer than it is.
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS is 16 mm thick, so not the thinnest laptop in town. However, the build quality is usually excellent. The lid and screen housing are extremely rigid, so the keyboard does not bend.
However, you don’t get the same density as a MacBook. There’s a certain hollowness in the resonance when you tap the keyboard, but that comes with the territory of a lightweight laptop with some pretty serious internal parts.
Screen
- 14-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS touchscreen
- 90% screen-to-body ratio, 400 nit brightness
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS doesn’t have as sophisticated a screen as you’d expect for the money. This is a 14-inch 1080p LCD screen.
There is no HDR (high dynamic range), no ultra-wide color gamut, no 4K resolution, no OLED panel. It’s a pretty ordinary-sounding display, although the 400-nit brightness is welcome if you’re using the Porsche Design Acer Book RS outdoors. This is a bright display.
Color is also satisfactory, even when tuned only to match the standard sRGB color gamut. Which, by the way, it does almost perfectly. The contrast is also very good around 1660: 1. And it is a touch screen. So the basics are here, but nothing too sophisticated to write home about.
You can get more feature-packed displays in laptops that are so expensive, and much sharper, too. The good color and the great contrast keep it looking great, like a really high-end screen.
There is a separate problem, however: the Porsche Design Acer Book RS has one of the “slowest” high-end laptop screens we’ve seen in a while. It seems to take a while for the pixels to change from bright white to black, for example, which means that you see traces in contrast-rich objects panning across the screen. It can be quite obvious when you are playing games or watching movies.
Touchpad and keyboard
- Textured glass touchpad with fingerprint scanner
- Unibody hinge raises the keyboard when opened
- Illuminated keyboard
There is one bad aspect to the touchpad of the Porsche Design Acer Book RS: it is ‘floating’ and moves up and down a millimeter before reaching the clicker. A great touchpad is sturdy. There is movement when you actually press the pad, but not when you lightly scroll over it, as seen here.
But the actual materials used are top-notch. The smooth, textured glass pad also has a built-in fingerprint scanner. We think these scanners look better when they are not visible at all. Other laptops bake them in F keys or power buttons. But we’re assuming this was a Porsche Design pick, so we’ll have to shrug it off and let your eyes judge.
There are no similar problems with the Porsche Design Acer Book RS keyboard. Well-defined control feedback makes the most of the limited key spacing that is offered. It is very comfortable for typing on the go, and this is not a keyboard with ultra-flat keys. Result.
Behind these keys is a backlight, but there is only one brightness level. Many laptops at this price have a ton of intensity levels. But yes, at least Porsche Design did not go overboard and used red LEDs.
Performance
- Up to 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor (i7-1165G7), up to 16GB RAM (LPDDR4X)
- Intel Iris Xe graphics, optional Nvidia GeForce MX350 (as reviewed)
- Cooling system with double copper heat pipes
The performance of the Porsche Design Acer Book RS is a pleasant surprise. If you asked us what to expect without seeing the thing, we would probably say a high-end low-voltage AMD or Intel processor. And that’s it.
But the Porsche Design Acer Book RS also has an Nvidia MX350 graphics chipset. This is not a card for hardcore gamers, but you can still have a lot of fun with it. It may have been a bit wasted on this particular spec as the RS has a good built-in graphics chipset called the Intel Xe. Sure, it plays Skyrim at around 35fps instead of the MX350s 60fps, but it’s still much better than the latest generation integrated graphics card.
Subnautica plays well with 1080p Medium graphics. Skyrim spends most of its time racing at 60fps, even with Ultra graphics. And you can play The Witcher 3 at around 40fps using the low presets, or around 30fps using medium. That’s native 1080p, and the Witcher 3 even sticks to around 30fps at low graphics when unplugged. No, it’s not a PS5 , but if you like to dig into the past, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS can handle a lot of classics.
The CPU is an Intel Core i7-1165G7, a brand new processor at the time of the launch of the Porsche Design Acer Book RS. The overall performance is excellent, supported by the reasonably fast (2000MB / s fast) SSD storage. And that processor, coupled with 16GB of RAM, means you can really gobble it up, open stacks of browser windows, and leave apps open and idle without feeling the difference too much.
A year ago, we may have compared the Porsche Design Acer Book RS to a comparable MacBook Pro to see what value it really represents. But we can’t do this in good faith anymore, as Apple’s M1 processors have just turned the world upside down with performance that beats anything an Intel laptop CPU can produce.
However, if you’re quoting a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a similar amount of storage and RAM, you’re paying a similar price. A Dell XPS 13 with similar specs would cost a bit less with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage – that gets you a nice 4K display too, but you don’t get Nvidia’s MX350 graphics card. There’s no getting around it: the Porsche Design Acer Book RS is much nicer than a Dell XPS 13. Of course it also costs a little more, but probably less than you might think.
We are happy with how the Porsche Design Acer Book RS also sounds under pressure. After running around in The Witcher 3 and bashing a few monsters, the fans of the laptop give a harmless buzz. No “planes taking off” here. However, after some effort, the Porsche Design Acer Book RS does take a while to dissipate the heat and run the fans idle, so their noise is not noticeable. No surprise: it doesn’t have a gaming laptop cooling system.
Battery life
- 15 hours of claimed battery life
- 65W charging
Acer says the Porsche Design Book RS battery lasts up to 15 hours. Most laptop battery claims are a Tolkien-quality fantasy, so we left the laptop to stream video from YouTube at 50 percent brightness to get a generous idea of how long it could take in the real world.
In two hours, it lost a 23 percent charge, suggesting it lasts about nine hours. We used the energy profile “best battery life”. This isn’t a class-leading result, but is perfectly solid for a laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor and an Nvidia MX350 graphics card.
Look for a laptop with a Snapdragon processor or one of Apple’s new M1 MacBooks for some really great battery life. But both limit the apps you can run, especially those Snapdragon laptops.
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS can be charged with a cylindrical adapter plug or a USB-C. And, unusually, you get both adapters in the box. Pure luxury, right?
Each is a 65W charger so there isn’t a big difference in charging speed, but the USB-C adapter is a bit smaller. You get one for home, another to keep in your bag. By using the classic adapter, the USB-C port is not blocked either.
Connections and peripherals
- 1x USB-C (Thunderbolt 4), 2x USB-A (3.2), 1x HDMI, 3.5mm jack
- Dual band Intel Wi-Fi 6 (Gig +)
- Optional accessories
You can really see the influence of both Acer and Porsche Design in this laptop. And our geeky side really appreciates the Acer parts, as evidenced by the connections of the Porsche Design Acer Book RS.
When we imagine a style laptop, an image of a computer with hardly any connections appears. But the Porsche Design Acer Book RS has two full-size USB ports, as well as a full-size HDMI and a brand new Thunderbolt 4.0 connection.
Many of us have a new respect for HDMI ports in laptops in 2020, spending time working from home between the couch and a cobbled home office.
You can buy the Porsche Design Acer Book RS with or without accessories. For an additional charge you get a mouse, a laptop sleeve, a case for the power adapter and mouse and a mini mouse pad.
Our first reaction was that this travel package is not worth the money. However, it adds an extra layer of that all-important Porsche Design branding and there are some clever design touches here.
Magnets in the laptop sleeve keep the pad and accessory bag connected. You don’t get that kind of elegance with a laptop sleeve you bought from eBay for a tenner.
Conclusion
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS is one of the best Porsche Design products to date. It’s less of a superficial rebrand than some Huawei design studio phones, and it’s not as bad a deal as you might guess.
Yes, you pay for the name. But the laptop has a Core i7 CPU, a massive 1TB SSD and 16 GB RAM. When you add up the cost of those upgrades in a Dell XPS 13 or MacBook Pro 13, you might be surprised how close those prices are.
There are only two real disappointments: the touchpad is “floating” and the screen’s relatively slow pixel response occasionally results in blurring in fast-moving objects.
We also like the little extras that make the Porsche Design Acer Book RS more versatile or fun in the real world. Generation-spanning connectors mean you don’t have to carry USB adapters, while the Nvidia MX350 graphics card makes this laptop a bit like a portable console.
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS is a true pedigree rather than an existing laptop with an unnecessary body kit lobed on top for good measure.
Quick conclusion
A surprising launch, which stands out even more – perhaps bizarre, depending on your point of view – Porsche Design design language for Acer’s laptop series. That RS badge is also guaranteed, given the specs on offer. But it is certainly not cheap.
In Favour of buying Acer Book RS
- Slim and light
- Has legitimate low-key gaming skills
- It has specifications to match the price
- Includes Thunderbolt 4
- The Porsche Design tax is less than you might think
- Quirky optional accessory bundle
Against Buying of Acer Book RS
- Floating touchpad
- Relatively slow pixel response – and only 1080p resolution
- Accessory package is expensive
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