Much of what Acer announced during its annual global media event[1] in New York City this week was a natural next step in some of its core product lines: New Chromebook laptops for education and the enterprise and new gaming laptops in its Nitro and Predator lines. The latter, though, served as a springboard for the company's newest product line expansion in some time. Citing research that half of gaming notebook buyers use their high-powered laptops for non-gaming applications and that 15% of such buyers use thee high-powered laptops for tasks excluding games, Acer introduced four new PCs in a new Concept D line aimed at creative applications.
The new brand includes three laptops and a desktop. Two of these are variants of PCs from Acer's gaming line that have seen their aggressive design toned down to be more office-friendly. The most interesting and powerful of the trio, though, the D9, puts an unusual spin (literally) on the 2-in-1 by placing the display on a vertically center-mounted axis. The advantage versus the more typical Yoga[2]-style 360-degree hinge is that this allows the display to come closer to the user for stylus-driven work a la Microsoft's Surface Studio all-in-one desktop[3].
Acer experimented with this kind of functionality (albeit with a different kind of hinge) five years ago with its odd Acer Aspire R7[4], which placed the trackpad behind the keyboard. With the new D9, though, Acer has moved the trackpad to the right side of the keyboard where a numeric keypad would typically be.