Acer Concept Convertible Creator Laptop (Open Box)

UPDATE UPDATE; While waiting for Amazon to approve this review, Brad Cowboy made a youtube video which demonstrates almost the same concerns I had with this laptop. Please watch his review or read this review before purchasing this laptop. TLDR; Buy this laptop if you have no use for the pen. Media and gaming are amazing on this and you won’t regret it. Light note taking is okay but long use will cramp up your hands. You can buy a Wacom pen but no drivers mean no programmable keys or pressure sensitivity and the line jitter will be much much worst. If you want to know fully why the pen is so bad, read the full review. Does this random internet person suggest this laptop? Yes but buy it from amazon for their amazing return policy. Test every aspect of it during return period and make sure everything works. Another user had wifi issues while others had battery issues. There seems to be a lot of returns/exchanges right now so make sure you check if this is right for you as there may possibly be production line issues. Unfortunately, I returned this and will be sticking with the Surface Book 3. The line jitter is bad on the SB3 but not as bad as the CD3e. The SB3 is also much weaker cpu-wise than the CD3e but Microsoft support has been great to me while Acer support has been questionable at best. The laptop has also failed on me randomly with what sounds like a mechanical failure only a few days into ownership (watch video). Please proceed with caution. Real Review; I REALLY wanted to love this laptop.. I hope that gives whoever is reading this a clue as to what this review will be all about. Anyways, I was in the middle of a long writeup that explained everything I LOVED about the laptop and one thing that I absolutely hated about it, but then it broke? It made a strange noise that sounded mechanical and not something that came out of the speakers as I opened the laptop for work. I closed it and took my phone out to record, only to hear the noise yet again. The third time I closed and opened it, it did not make the same noise anymore. I thought nothing of this and kept on my work until I decided to relax and reached to pull forward the screen to start drawing. At this point I noticed the touchscreen stopped working and the pen similarly stopped functioning. Device manager showed the touchscreen and pen as being grayed out and disabled. Reenabling them didn't work, and automatic updates also yielded no results. Acer's website had no such drivers and the drivers they did have were outdated? I tried windows update which also found no updates. Rolling back to a past date did nothing and my last choice was to reset. Upon resetting to factory, device manager ceased to even show the touch screen panel or pen input (lol?) and the computer now says I have no touchscreen and pen input. Acer has a special online support chat dedicated to ConceptD computers which is great, but don't expect much from them. I had three separate interactions with them (more on the other two later) and their response this time basically came down to Acer does not provide drivers for touchscreen and pen, you need to send to us to fix it. .. Yeah, no thanks. I was only 4 days into the purchase. Thank god for Amazon and their return policy. I seriously debated whether I wanted to get a replacement, or a refund and I ultimately chose the latter. Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely a LOT to love about the laptop and while there are cons, those cons may be deal breaking for those who are looking at this for very specific purposes and I happen to be one of them. ======PROS======================================== I'll just elevator pitch most of my pros as most everyone here has listed these same pros in great detail already. Body; I've seen the pictures and videos before and thought that the laptop looked great. Seeing it in person however, looked very strange to me. The white finish was GORGEOUS and felt amazing, but the back of the laptop really screamed "concept." It looks rough and unpolished in a world dominated by flat, thin and clean slabs. The ezel design, while not being the prettiest thing, makes up for it in function and till this day, I still feel is the best functioning design of any 2in1. Clamshells that flipped around that dominates the current market suffers from bad angles to draw on and the potential of scratching your keyboard against the desk. Next best thing is the Surface Book line (if you want a powerful 2in1) but that requires a detach and reattach if you would like to use the screen for drawing or 3d work and still make use of the GPU. This was cumbersome and the ezel fixes all of that. Being able to adjust the screen so easily and have it stay in the position you want is such a treat. That ezel hinge is tough as hell! Screen; The matte finish on the screen is great to draw on and the colors feel very natural and accurate. No adjustment was needed. The ezel design provides for nice viewing at any angle and the anti-glare made sure that you really can use it at any angle. It's brilliant and a testament to the wonder that is the ezel design. The color tuning is great out of the box and looks incredibly accurate. Power; Very strong. Almost the same internals as a Surface Book 3( i7, 16gb, GTX1060, 256GB) but for much much cheaper (1999.99 or 1799.99 w/ student discount VS. 1499.99.) The price alone is a no-brainer but if you need more convincing, the i7-1065g7 housed in the SB3 is much weaker than the i7-10750H housed in the CD3e. I won't go into specs but you can expect about a 40~50% increase in performance for CPU intensive tasks with the CD3e. GPU performance is about the same which is already stellar for the price point and form factor. Expect most older games to run on max and most newer AAA games to run well if not great depending on how willing you are to play around with graphic sliders. I had benchmark pics but ended up PC resetting and losing all the benchmarks due to the touchscreen issue. ======CONS======================================== Unboxing; Not an amazing experience. The whole thing is held up by cardboard with more hard cardboard holding the laptop box (which was also cardboard) in place. Don't expect Apple or Microsoft surface levels of unboxing experiences. See pictures for examples. This is a very minor complaint and not something I cared too much about because ultimately, it's about the laptop and not the boxes. I just expected a bit more at this price point so felt it was worth a mention, but it BY NO MEANS SHOULD CHANGE ANYONES MIND. Keyboard; The keyboard is...Okay. The keyboard has a weird extra set of keys on the right (see pictures) and takes some time to get used to. Once you get used to it though the keyboard isn't bad to type on. It may not feel the best and at times feel too mushy but is still an acceptable typing experience. Pen; Okay so, this is my main gripe with this laptop/2in1. The laptop is aimed at creatives and the hinge/screen absolutely nails it, but the pen input, which was supposed to be geared towards artists and sculptors, is among one of the worst I've seen. Acer advertises this as an AES 1.0 pen display. Historically, AES displays had good lines, but bad palm rejection. I had no issue with palm rejection but my god, you will NOT be able to draw a diagonal straight line even if your life depended on it (see pictures.) You can semi remedy this with line smoothing but that is unacceptable as you’d have to have it on most of the time. The Surface product line which is known for its horrible jitters didn't require the level of smoothing that this "creative" laptop required. I wanted to record it as well but was unable to due to the touchscreen and pen failing but you can literally look no further than Acer's own adverts. One of the adverts here on Amazon even shows the jittery diagonal lines that the artist is drawing. In the introduction video, at around -1:43 you can clearly see him trying to draw diagonal lines and the pen jittering away. Trust me, that’s not him purposefully trying to draw jagged. I experienced this exact same thing. The initial advert that Acer released with @pypahs_art shows her drawing with major levels of pen smoothing on to remedy this issue (you can see how delayed the line comes out after she draw a quick line.) This caused major speculation among the community as to what tech the CD3e was using as it was clear that there would be line jitter. Dave2D also reported that his surface pen worked with it which means it wasn't Wacom tech. Strangely enough, on my own testing, my latest surface pen did not work with it. I was determined to make this a non-issue and tried for 2 days to make the pen draw a damn straight line. I first tried different programs. Paint, OneNote, Photoshop and Clip studio paint (my go-to), all of them failed to produce anything manageable. Clip Studio and Photoshop at least had pen smoothing available but had to be turned up to the max to function okay. I thought it was a pen issue, so I decided to try different pens. You will want to buy different pens as well as Acer doesn't sell these pullout pens on their site and matte screens are notorious for wearing down pen tips. Not to mention the pen is uncomfortable for long use as it is very thin and small... As mentioned earlier, my surface pen didn't work so I went and bought a Bamboo Ink Plus. This pen has two modes, AES 1.0/2.0 and MPP and strangely enough... both protocols worked? The jitter was even WORST than the original pen though. There are also no Wacom drivers available for this laptop so you will not be able to remap this pen. Next up I tried the Dell active pen but while waiting for that to arrive, the touchscreen and pen died lol. There is also apparently an issue with the pen pressure. No Wacom drivers means you won’t be able to reassign the buttons or adjust sensitivity natively and need to rely on the software you’re using. The issue I was having is where the line would start great and pressure would slowly taper into the highest pressure but then that’s it. This issue applies to all pens I’ve tried on this laptop including the default one. You aren’t able to ever get to the lowest pressure again until you pull the pen off the screen completely. During research, I saw that this is a common problem in a LOT of Acer laptops and is not a ConceptD issue. Unfortunately, I am unable to provide links as it is against amazon policy, but you can do a quick google search of the quote to get the source. Quote from user “thesqsniper” of Wacom forums: “the behavior is strange, when I initially put down the stroke, the start of the stroke is all good, but then afterwards I cannot reduce the pressure any more than 1/2 of the width of the line no matter how far I draw. This means I always create a stroke that tapers at the start nicely, but then never goes back to zero pressure ever again until the stroke is released. “ During all this testing, I figured I would make use of Acer's priority customer service for ConceptD and chat with them to see if they could help. I will summarize their answers as I don't want to post names and long conversations. These are worded differently, but ultimately the responses I got. First encounter; Topic: Pen compatibility Agent: Don't know if Bamboo ink will work. We can only ensure that our pen works. Oh, you want to use a diff pen than the one provided? Our compatibility chart says our own active pen doesn't work but "Wacom NC.23811.08G" works but lol there’s no way for you to buy that. Just buy the Bamboo ink and report it on our forum so our users can know if it works or not. Second encounter; Topic: Line jitter and Wacom Drivers Agent: It's not the screen or the pen's fault, trust me I'm an artist so I know. Jitter is usually user error or not knowing how to calibrate or the program's fault, not the laptops. I can't tell you why Wacom drivers don't work, contact Wacom not me. Oh, you want to know exactly what digitizer your screen is? Whether it's mpp, or aes? Lol I don't know, and my system is down so I can't look up the spec sheet. (?????) Third encounter; Topic: Pen/Touch drivers and touchscreen no longer work Agent: Check for updates. Acer don't have pen/touch drivers for you to download lol send to us we fix. Like.. Seriously. You can never really expect much of customer service but man. Thank god for Amazon's return policy.