Now Everybody copy Acer!

[Shahrad]

Thanks to Acer for sponsoring today's video! Check them out at the link below: https://lmg.gg/Next-At-Acer

Acer announced a whole bunch of new laptops at CES 2023, including major refreshes to their Swift series featuring an OLED display, their Predator Helios gaming laptops, and their Nitro line. All of which are powered by Intel’s 13th gen processors.

 

 

 

[Luscious]

Acer were building junk laptops 10 years ago and they are still building junk laptops today. I cannot believe as a laptop reviewer you haven't called out ANY of these Mickey Mouse manufacturers about their terrible keyboard layouts that they have been doing for just as long. A triple column number pad is not a proper number pad, the same way you don't mash together the cursor keys and take away the double-sized zero.

 

But I guess when they're feeding you lunch they can get away with it. So much for "full disclosure" and being critical/unbiased.

 

Worth noting as well that much of what you have shown these last few days isn't even officially part of CES, since these hotel suite setups aren't listed in the official exhibitor guide and are not open to CES attendees. Some better transparency would be appreciated if you are covering these as "media".

[digitalmonk]

Acer is the worst mainstream laptop manufacturer. They build shittiest and cheapest hardware with no intentions of supporting their products. They were bad a decade ago and they are aweful today!

 

I brought their Travelmate P214-53 almost a year back as it looked solid on paper. However, within one year of light use the battery health dropped to ~50% and within 1.2.5 years it's at ~35%. This is the case when it only has ~200 charge cycles! Moreover, their international warranty is dubious. They want to ship you the laptop to them while you're travelling international. Wow! If you think that's the worst part just wait. After the warranty on my machine expired, they won't repair the machine in one of their authorized service centers and they simply ask you to go the local repair shops. And to my surprise, Acer don't have any service centers in Canada(at least to my knowledge)

 

You cannot get any OEM parts from them and in the aftermarket that easily. They have worst documentation when it comes to parts list and service manual. One of the official services center technicians told me even they don't have service manual!

 

What hurts more is Linus promoting this brand without considering the impact it will have on their subscribers. This video was a heavy blow to my trust for LTT and I will be careful what follows in the future.

 

TLDR: Acer makes shittiest laptops one can make. Save you bucks and get Dell if you care about aftersales support.

 

I hope someone can LTT team will read this forum and test Acer laptops with ethos they build LTT upon.

 

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

I can only repeat what the folks above have said. Acer is a terrible brand, their support is non-existent, their devices develop odd bugs, and even the stores that stock it openly state you really should avoid buying it.

[mr moose]

Interesting, Because I have 5 acer laptops, 2 from 2006, 1 from 2010-12 (not sure the exact year) 1 from 2015 and 1 from 2018,  Apart from a corrupt hdd (that acer replaced no issues or questions or costs to me) they all are still working flawlessly.  The one from 2018 cost me $360 Australian kanagroo's and after increasing the RAM to 12G and adding an M.2 SSD taking to total cost to $500 wallabies and a goanna the thing is lightning fast still and is being used as our TV streaming/theater device.

 

It's just a shame I don't have a use for them and they sit in a box collecting dust.

 

 

[powertoys]

On 1/14/2023 at 2:30 AM, digitalmonk said:

This video was a heavy blow to my trust for LTT and I will be careful what follows in the future.

 

TLDR: Acer makes shittiest laptops one can make. Save you bucks and get Dell if you care about aftersales support.

 

I present to you, the Secret Shopper series:

 

 

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That Acer hate is so weird to me. My experiences with them have all been pretty good.

[Middcore]

It's like this is the first time some of you have seen one of LTT's sponsored videos.

 

Look, folks, whenever you see a sponsorship from some dubious brand or product in an LTT video, just remember that the money Linus got from it is necessary to fund the amazing LTT Labs project, which is the part of the company that will someday produce rigorous, in-depth, factual content that's actually useful to consumers. 

[aisle9]

On 1/14/2023 at 12:30 AM, digitalmonk said:

Acer is the worst mainstream laptop manufacturer. They build shittiest and cheapest hardware with no intentions of supporting their products. They were bad a decade ago and they are aweful today!

 

I brought their Travelmate P214-53 almost a year back as it looked solid on paper. However, within one year of light use the battery health dropped to ~50% and within 1.2.5 years it's at ~35%. This is the case when it only has ~200 charge cycles! Moreover, their international warranty is dubious. They want to ship you the laptop to them while you're travelling international. Wow! If you think that's the worst part just wait. After the warranty on my machine expired, they won't repair the machine in one of their authorized service centers and they simply ask you to go the local repair shops. And to my surprise, Acer don't have any service centers in Canada(at least to my knowledge)

 

You cannot get any OEM parts from them and in the aftermarket that easily. They have worst documentation when it comes to parts list and service manual. One of the official services center technicians told me even they don't have service manual!

 

What hurts more is Linus promoting this brand without considering the impact it will have on their subscribers. This video was a heavy blow to my trust for LTT and I will be careful what follows in the future.

 

TLDR: Acer makes shittiest laptops one can make. Save you bucks and get Dell if you care about aftersales support.

 

I hope someone can LTT team will read this forum and test Acer laptops with ethos they build LTT upon.

 

Ok, where do I begin?

 

Back in my PC flipping days, I probably went through 50 Acers and over 100 Dells (edit: laptops. If I had a nickel for every Optiplex I've had the true, non-sarcastic joy of upgrading...). Quick breakdown of each below...

 

Dell:

• Their Precision series is gold. It just is. Some of the best laptops out there, and also some of the hardest to find in local listings because everyone who owns one bought it intending to use it forever.
• The Latitude 6000 series is also gold right up until about the 6X30 lineup (Ivy Bridge). After that, things get sketchier in terms of reliability. Those mid-grade Latitudes are solid clear back into the Core 2 generations. I might have had to replace a keyboard, a screen or a battery sometimes, but parts were so cheap and readily available that I could buy one for $30 locally, pick up a $20 keyboard, a $10 power brick and a $15 battery from eBay, then flip the thing for $150. If the cost of fixing it was going to be too high for it to be worth repairing, it would be worth its weight in spare parts for future projects no matter what.
• Now let's talk about those lesser lines, the Inspiron in particular. I've bought three Dell Inspirons brand new in my life. That's three too many. All went back, one after wiping out almost an entire semester of college course work (in 2003, so backup drives weren't really a thing for broke college students yet), the other after having a defective hard drive (2016-ish), and the third being an Inspiron gaming laptop that, despite having great specs on paper, had faulty power delivery. The second one was an in-store return, so easy-peasy. The other two required me to rely on Dell support, so not easy-peasy. Dell support is as useful as a bucket of gasoline when your kitchen's on fire. I'll still buy a used Dell Inspiron if the price is very right, it doesn't have any issues and the bathtub curve is at the bottom, but I won't waste my time on a new one again.

Acer:

• Build quality on their consumer models really isn't too different from Dell. If you're going to compare an Acer Swift to a Dell Precison, sure, point and laugh. If you're going to compare a Swift to a consumer-grade Inspiron, the Acer's going to be better. If you're going to compare the low-end Inspirons to the low-end stuff, it's the same laptop, but a lot less expensive most of the time.
• Longevity? I owned an Acer Switch 11 2-in-1 for years. I loved it. I hate myself for selling it. Are there bad Acers out there? Yeah, for sure. A lot of their mid-2000s Core 2 stuff was an absolute dumpster fire of build quality and longevity, but Dell Inspirons have never been that much better, and even on the secondhand market today, an identically specced Inspiron will almost always cost more than an Acer in the same configuration.

And to be fair to the LTT group, not something I always enjoy being, most of the laptops they check out in the puff pieces they do from CES and the other big conferences are made with the OEM's reps are very fast, very superficial spec reviews and little else. Alex even alluded to that when he said they were kicked out of the Acer booth for taking too long. When the exact same laptops eventually make their way to LTT's studios for real testing, they're much more thorough and critical. Alex tends to be pretty blunt if he sees something he doesn't like in the more in-depth testing, and I'm pretty sure I've seen him call out an OEM or two for making detrimental changes to the system they were shown at the big shows without lowering the price (maybe that was Anthony?).

 

Watch a hundred of these CES, Computex, whatever videos from any channel you want. Even videos from the GN Steves of the world are going to be basically the same thing: we're here in OEM X's booth, here's this new laptop, look how shiny it is, i7 with a 3080, 4K OLED, the mouse is RGB, lather rinse repeat two more times aaaaaaaaaand get out Jay's waiting outside to word vomit all over our i9/4080 system with an 18" 4K OLED and an RGB power brick.