ConceptD 7 Ezel: review of a professional laptop for designers
Contents:
• You won’t surprise anyone with a quality laptop for work today – every manufacturer produces lines of devices for business, which essentially differ only in details: they all cost similar money and offer similar characteristics. But what if you need a computer not to send files and communicate by e-mail, but, for example, to edit video and work with graphics?
Until recently, creative people could only rely on large and powerful stationary machines, or they used heavy and often uncomfortable gaming laptops. Times change, technology doesn't stand still Today we tested ConceptD 7 Ezel from Acer: The manufacturer claims that this powerful laptop will suit people of creative professions and they will not feel limited due to the form factor and "notebook" characteristics. Let's find out if this is the case.
Appearance and equipment
When we open the box, we see a lid with a laconic ConceptD lettering applied to ivory-colored aluminum. It looks unusual, but interesting. The kit itself did not present any surprises: a laptop, charger, documents. The only interesting feature in the kit is the Wacom pen, but we'll talk about it later.
• We take out a laptop – and the color, which we called “interesting” a couple of sentences ago out of politeness, turns out to be really pleasing to the eye. The question immediately arose of how practical this coloring is, but according to the results of a two-week test, we did not find any marks, stains or streaks on the lid – as it turned out, Acer uses a special coating for the laptop that preserves the original color of the case.
The first impression when you take the ConceptD 7 Ezel in your hands is that it is quite heavy. It would be strange if it were different: the laptop has powerful hardware, but it cannot weigh a little. The eye immediately clings to the massive mechanisms on the back cover – professional costs that cannot be avoided: the mechanisms are responsible for the transformation of the display, its tilt, fixation and rotation.
• A transformer screen is needed not for show and not for conventions like “presenting your ideas in a convenient format” – it has a very specific purpose: in order to comfortably work with a pen, it should be possible to rotate the screen to any degree and fix it – designers and illustrators know how important it is.
Pen Wacom EMR
Let's talk a little about the Wacom EMR pen, which we touched on above – the pen is quite sensitive, up to 4096 degrees. It will be indispensable when working in Photoshop or another graphic editor: removing or adding small details, hiding a dead pixel – with a finger or even a touchpad, this is much more difficult to do. However, the pen can also be used for more basic tasks, like making notes in a notebook or writing down an important detail.
• The big benefit is that the Wacom EMR doesn't need to be charged separately: it's powered by a niche below the screen where you plug it in after use.
Screen ConceptD 7 Ezel
Despite the standard 15.6-inch display diagonal, it is the screen that is the main feature of the model: smart factory calibration and native 4K resolution make it the highlight of the device. The benefits don't stop there: excellent color reproduction (Pantone certified), full Adobe RGB coverage. The factory calibration is set so that the color perception coefficient is no more than two. There are no complaints about the viewing angles – thanks to the high-quality IPS-matrix.
The screen itself is obviously touch-sensitive, with an anti-glare coating for easy fingertip operation. Sensitivity is in order: no flaws were noticed during the two weeks of the test. It is better to work with your finger in Explorer and other familiar interfaces, for smaller icons it is more convenient to use a pen.
Notebook performance
Performance is another strong point of the ConceptD 7 Ezel: a 7th Gen Core i2080 (sorry, red rock lovers), a powerful mobile GeForce RTX™ 3080 (GeForce RTX™ 32 coming later), 4GB of RAM, and a 7TB SSD seem to this is enough to cope with any task at all, whether it is rendering or creating layouts. Fast processing of XNUMXK video with a browser and other applications running at the same time, a bunch of layers in Photoshop – neither friezes nor lags have ever broken our working idyll with the ConceptD XNUMX Ezel.
• The laptop was not tested in games – after all, it is designed for other tasks, but, judging by the characteristics, the power reserve is enough to run popular titles at high settings.
sontrols
The touchpad and keyboard are on the level: the first supports multi-touch and is quite sensitive, but is small. The keyboard has a good profile and clear clicks. The main taste drawback is the orange backlight: subjectively, it is not very friendly with the light shades of the case. However, this is solved in a couple of clicks – all two weeks the editors used the laptop with the keyboard backlight turned off.
Battery life
We did not expect miracles from the autonomy of the ConceptD 7 Ezel, given its powerful filling. With a low load (browser, a couple of undemanding programs), the device lasted 7-8 hours. When working in Photoshop – half as much. You can’t count on a full-time working day in a graphic editor, but in mixed mode, the laptop’s capabilities are enough for comfortable long-term work.
• You can charge the device both through a standard cable and through the Thunderbolt connector – a trifle, but nice.
ConceptD 7 Ezel review summary
The ConceptD 7 Ezel is a good option for professional workloads, and it's definitely capable of everything you'd expect from a laptop. Only the ambiguous color of the keyboard backlight and not the largest touchpad can confuse. However, only you can decide what is more in a laptop – advantages or disadvantages. And according to the editors, the ConceptD 7 Ezel is one of the best professional laptops on the market in 2021.
• In addition, an updated ConceptD line with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2021 video cards was presented at the international electronics exhibition CES 3080 in May., a new generation of transformer laptops will go on sale in October.
