Acer unveils several impressive machines at its Next@Acer event

Acer announced several new notebooks, Chromebooks and gaming machines at its annual Next@Acer event in New York yesterday. The company refreshed some of its existing products, like the Aspire and Spin ranges, and unveiled some more headline-grabbing kit.

Today we’ve got a roundup of the best of the really cool stuff the veteran PC maker announced. Think monster gaming towers, a sliding keyboard on a Predator, and a graphic designer’s dream tablet/laptop combo.

Predator Helios 700 Notebook

Acer actually unveiled two new Predator Helios gaming notebooks at its global press conference. The Predator Helios 700 and the 300. The Helios 700 caught our attention immediately. Because it features a frickin’ sliding keyboard.

The Predator Helios 700 has a HyperDrift keyboard fitted that slides forward. It is ideal for increased airflow on the important components, while making the notebook ergonomically more comfortable to play long sessions on. On the inside, players will be able to grab up to a 9th-gen Intel Core i9 processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 or 2070 GPU, and up to 64GB of DDR4 memory. The display is a 17in 144Hz FHD IPS panel with 3ms response time and Nvidia’s G-SYNC tech.

Predator Orion 5000 desktop PC

Backing up the brutal look of this tower is Intel’s latest Z390 chipset, a 9th-gen Intel Core i9-9900K processor, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU. In addition, Acer has launched a massive 43in Predator monitor to accompany the machine. We don’t even want to know what that’s going to cost (except, you know, we really do want to know. No word yet).

The tower isn’t just an aggressively-pretty face, with some cool design-features under the hood ensuring things run smoothly, too. It’s fitted with a Cooler Master CPU Liquid Cooler that regulates the temperature and maximises processing power. Some smartly-fitted intake and exhaust fans are built in, as well as a removable dust filter. So you can keep the components cool and clean all day, e’rrday.

ConceptD 9 Laptop/Tablet combo

Acer seems to be on a mission to target creatives as well as gamers… So if you’d rather create digital art (memes count as art, right?) than spend a weekend wasting hours of your life in Apex Legends (no judgment), then the ConceptD 9 is likely right up your alley.

This notebook is fitted with an Ezel Aero hinge that draws inspiration from the Acer Aspire R7 and the Predator Triton 900. It’s not skimping on specs, either. It features a 9th-gen Intel Core i9 processor, up to 32GB of RAM, an RTX 2080 GPU, and either 512GB or 1TB of NVMe SSD storage. All that while it features the same fancy 3D Aeroblade fans as the gaming lineup. Maybe you can game your weekend away, then, after all?

To see the whole range of exciting (and er… less exciting) gadgets and machines Acer announced this week, check out the YouTube video that followed the event live stream. Once we have local pricing on the products we mentioned above we’ll give you the deets.