Acer says the $1,499.99 ConceptD 3 Ezel is intended for illustrators, designers, photo and video editors, and animators, but this 14-inch convertible laptop strikes us as one of the most oddly positioned we’ve seen. According to the company, it targets creative pros who don’t necessarily need the most powerful CPU and GPU—although its six-core Intel Core i7 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q are hardly sluggish—but demand a deluxe display with accurate color…yet, are also content with 1,920-by-1,080-pixel resolution in a world full of sharper 4K (3,840-by-2,160) screens. If this hair-splitting describes you, the ConceptD’s Pantone-validated touch screen with Wacom AES stylus is indeed attractive. But the system doesn’t quite rank with our Editors’ Choice award picks for premium convertibles (the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1) or light mobile workstations (the HP ZBook Firefly).
A Different Kind of 2-in-1 Design Unfolds
The Ezel is named for its cantilevered screen hinge, which differs from the flip-and-fold design of Lenovo Yogas and most other 2-in-1 laptops. Unlike theirs, the Acer’s lid won’t open more than 180 degrees for propping up the machine in kiosk or tent modes. Instead, the screen pivots away from the lower half of the lid. You can move the bottom edge of the display forward to form an easel, hiding the keyboard and leaving just the palm rest and touchpad, or all the way forward, face up and flat to form a tablet.
It’s a striking, futuristic design, enhanced by the white ceramic coating over the magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis. (The white keyboard’s amber-orange backlighting, however, takes some getting used to.) The styling does make the ConceptD thicker than its competitors—it measures 0.94 by 12.9 by 9 inches, versus 0.6 by 12.6 by 8.5 inches for the Lenovo Yoga 9i—and at 3.81 pounds, it’s between a half and a full pound overweight for a 14-inch convertible.
Cooling vents decorate both sides and the rear of the laptop. On the left edge, you’ll find a security lock slot, the AC adapter connector, a Thunderbolt 3/USB-C port, HDMI and mini DisplayPort video outputs, and a power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello sign-ins. (There’s another power button at top right of the keyboard.) The right side holds two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, an SD card reader, and an audio jack. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 6 handle wireless communications.
Our $1,499.99 test unit (model CC314-72G-72SX) combines a 2.6GHz (5.0GHz turbo) Core i7-10750H processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB PCIe solid-state drive, a 4GB GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q GPU, and the 1080p matte touch screen with a Gorilla Glass 5 overcoat. Acer backs the Windows 10 Home system with a one-year warranty.
A Screen to Be Seen
Acer says the Ezel’s IPS display covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut and has a DeltaE value of less than 2, as a high-quality monitor should. Its colors are rich and well saturated, with ample brightness (rated 400 nits) and high contrast. Viewing angles are broad, and details are as sharp as on any 14-inch 1080p screen I’ve encountered.
The swizzle-stick stylus stashes and charges in a hole on the front edge of the laptop. Offering 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, it kept up with my fastest swipes and scribbles, with good palm rejection as I rested my hand on the glass in tablet mode.
At first glance, I thought the ConceptD keyboard had proper Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys instead of making you team the Fn key and cursor arrows as many laptops do. Turns out you do need to use the Fn key: The keys, bizarrely, default to media control (play/pause, stop, next/previous track) instead of navigation.
Three special keys offer shortcuts to screen capture, a color picker, and an alternative to Alt+Tab for switching among apps. The typing feel is snappy and responsive. The large, buttonless touchpad taps and glides smoothly.
The system’s speakers produce slightly flat, not very loud sound. There’s no bass to speak of, but you can distinguish overlapping tracks. DTS:X Ultra software lets you tinker with music, movie, voice, and gaming presets and an equalizer. The 720p webcam captured colorful images even in low light conditions, though I did note some static or noise from time to time. Preinstalled utilities range from Acer Care Center (tuneup, update, and recovery) to a ConceptD Palette menu of system-monitoring, color-adjustment, and split-screen window-arrangement functions.
Testing the ConceptD 3 Ezel: A Productivity and Creativity Ace
For our benchmark comparisons, I pitted the ConceptD 3 Ezel against two high-end convertibles using late-model 11th Generation “Tiger Lake” CPUs: the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1, and the 14-inch Lenovo Yoga 9i. Since most of the other hybrids we’ve reviewed lately have been cheaper consumer models, I filled the other two slots with upscale 14-inch clamshells: the Asus ExpertBook B9450, and the MSI Prestige 14. You can see the contenders’ basic specs in the table below.
Productivity and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system’s boot drive. Both yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better. (See more about how we test laptops.)
All except the Asus cleared the 4,000-point hurdle that indicates excellent productivity in PCMark 10, with the Acer edging the MSI for the win. PCMark 8’s storage exercise was cake for the laptops’ speedy solid-state drives, which all scored about the same.
Next is Maxon’s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing benchmark, in which we put a stopwatch on systems as they transcode a brief movie from 4K resolution down to 1080p. It, too, is a tough test for multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs; lower times are better.
The Ezel’s Core i7-10750H has plenty of push for everyday multimedia tasks. The ExpertBook’s quad-core processor is relatively underpowered in this group.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and add up the total (lower times are better). The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters.
The Dell and Lenovo tied for the gold medal in this event, with the Acer not far behind. If you can settle for 1080p rather than 4K resolution, you’ll find the ConceptD a capable platform for managing a photo collection.
Graphics Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and lets high-end PCs and gaming rigs strut their stuff.
The only machines here with discrete rather than integrated graphics, the Acer and MSI easily led the way. Their GeForce GTX 1650 Max-Q is pretty far from the top of Nvidia’s current gaming silicon, but still suitable for light or casual gameplay.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene, this one rendered in the eponymous Unigine engine for a second opinion on the machine’s graphical prowess. We present two Superposition results, run at the 720p Low and 1080p High presets and reported in frames per second (fps), indicating how smooth the scene looks in motion. For lower-end systems, maintaining at least 30fps is the realistic target, while more powerful computers should ideally attain at least 60fps at the test resolution.
Gamers look for 60fps rather than 30fps at full HD resolution nowadays, but the Ezel can play even demanding titles in a pinch. While Intel’s 11th Generation Iris Xe integrated graphics are the company’s best yet, they’re still no substitute for a dedicated GPU like the GTX 1650 Ti, as you can see.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the Blender Foundation short film Tears of SteelTears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system quits.
All five laptops did well, and the ExpertBook did incredibly well. Getting through a full workday plus an evening’s streaming entertainment without the AC adapter will be no problem.
A Different Tilt at a Creator’s Laptop
The ConceptD 3 Ezel is a solid performer and a good-looking design. Its offbeat pivoting hinge is a slightly clunkier alternative to the arrangement of most 2-in-1 laptops, and its giving priority to music playback keys is just weird. But if screen and color quality is paramount for you, and you’d prefer a 14-inch convertible to one of the many superb (and admittedly more expensive) 15.6-inch clamshell laptops for creative pros, it could be right up your alley.
