In January 1888, while living in Paris, the artist Vincent Van Gogh painted his famous Self-Portrait in Front of the Easel. Throughout his artistic career, Van Gogh painted 35 personal paintings of himself, but this painting in front of the easel is his most famous painting, because many of Van Gogh’s paintings he painted for himself depicted different aspects of his life and his psychological state, but it was not usual for the artist to paint himself during practice His profession, as he sits and paints his paintings on the easel.
An easel, in English, is a wooden structure made mostly for the purpose of holding the artist’s brushstroke canvases, and also for displaying finished artwork to an audience.
This invention may date back to before 77 AD, but the need for a plate holder increased in the thirteenth century when canvas paintings became more common. With the decline in demand for frescoes, easel and painting art spread more and more everywhere. As the Renaissance progressed, this easel became fundamentally at the heart of the artistic community.
A moment please, what does this technical history lesson have to do with a review of the Acer ConceptD 3 Ezel Pro laptop?
Well, the relationship simply lies in the name Acer chose for its device, the name of this model Ezel is a reference to the word Easel, which means artist palette, because this device is aimed at the category of artists and visual content makers, whether you are a professional photographer and need to edit photos, or a digital artist, Or a product designer, or an interior designer.
Artists and content makers, even design engineers, who are looking for powerful laptops that convert between laptop and tablet, or as they are known as 2-in-1s, have all kinds of options in today’s market, unlike a few years ago, for example. But Acer’s ConceptD 3 Ezel can fold and transform into 6 different shapes.
There is not just one hinge, but two hinges attached to the monitor, the first being a traditional scalloped hinge, while the other is in the middle of the monitor housing which allows it to rotate outward. With the two hinges together, you can position the monitor in any position you like, and to suit the nature of your artwork. This unique configuration in the ConceptD 3 Ezel Pro makes it unlike any other laptop on the market in this class. But that’s not all, because we’ll get to know in a little more detail the design, capabilities, and performance of the device during our review.
Design
The ConceptD 3 Ezel Pro laptop comes in white, perhaps as a reminder of the old days when white computers were the primary devices for designers, because Apple’s iMacs and MacBooks were white, but they are no longer, of course, but a white exterior in 2021 gives a device ConceptD 3 Ezel Pro looks funky with today’s hardware. But at the same time, it is not a cheap structure, as it comes from aluminum, and the white color has a ceramic layer.
The EZEL name comes from the second hinge in the display, which differs from the flip-and-fold design on most 2-in-1 laptops. Unlike that conventional design, the ConceptD 3 Ezel Pro’s display lid doesn’t open more than 180 degrees so you can place it in the famous tent shape of those devices. But instead, the screen itself is moving away from the bottom half of the cover. You can simply slide the bottom edge of the monitor forward to resemble an Easel stand, hiding the keyboard and leaving you where to rest your hands and mouse pad, which Acer calls the Float Mode, in which you can position the monitor as you like and use the stylus to draw 2D or 3D sketches. But this is not the only position of the monitor, there are five other positions in which you can position the monitor to suit your work.
Firstly, the laptop mode, which is the default mode, secondly, the tablet mode, thirdly, the standing mode, which is when the screen is attracted to you and puts it on the body to cover the keyboard, and you can then draw and edit using the pen, fourthly, the sharing mode when the screen is up, and fifth, the display mode when the screen is rotated to the opposite side of you. In case you want to show what, you are working on to someone sitting in front of you.
We started using the device in the laptop mode by virtue of our work and our need for the keyboard, but the Float mode was suitable to bring the screen closer to me, because it is a bit far in the default mode due to the size of the surface of the device and the large keyboard.
The fact that these different modes are useful, of course, does not mean that most people need them, besides that most 2-in-1 laptops offer such modes except perhaps the floating mode. The ConceptD 3 Ezel Pro laptop’s design is really aimed at people who will use funky modes a lot. The device has two main benefits to them: The first is that moving and rotating the screen is completely smooth, you don’t even have to use both hands to rotate the whole device, as you need to do with other devices. The second is that the joint is strong and durable enough that you can draw in various positions on the screen without moving under pressure. Of course, this durability comes with a problem, which is that the weight of the device is heavy (2.2 kilograms), it is heavier than most 2-in-1 laptops, whose main goal is lightness and ease of portability.
keyboard and mouse
The keyboard is distinctive, with a depth of 1.55 mm, as mentioned by Acer, typing on it is fast and very comfortable, and it also comes with an orange backlight that gives an aesthetic shape with white color, you cannot control its degree, but there is a dedicated key to turn it on or off.
The keyboard also provides three keys for important shortcuts for designers and content creators, the first is the screenshot key, a key to choose colors, and a key to switch between applications that run at the same time instead of pressing ALT + TAB each time.
The touchpad of the mouse is also distinguished, made of Gorilla Glass on the surface, which makes you feel smooth when using, in addition to its large size as well, you can use it for all different tasks with more than one finger.
The fingerprint comes in the power key on the left side, but it did not respond to us more than once when we turned on the device, so we needed to press it after turning on to read the fingerprint.
Ports
The device contains all the important ports that any user may need, which are as follows:
- 3.5 mm headphone jack
- SD Memory Card Reader 7.0
- Type A USB 3.2
- Lan RJ45
- HDMI port
- USB 3.2 Type-C Thunderbolt3 port
- Mini Display Port
Screen and pen
We come here to the second important part for visual content makers and designers, which is the part of the screen and colors as well as the pen of the device. The screen is here on the ConceptD 3 Ezel Pro laptop with a 15.6-inch FHD IPS panel.
As Acer states, the monitor panel covers 100% of the sRGB color spectrum and has a DeltaE value of less than 2 for differentiation between colors, and these features you’ll find in any high-quality monitor a designer or content creator needs. Screen colors are rich and well saturated, with brightness up to 400 nits.
The screen is anti-reflective and has Corning Gorilla Glass 5, which reduces reflections and distractions when working, reduces fingerprint visibility, and enhances contrast so you can see the screen clearly anywhere. At the same time, it helps in improving the touch experience on the screen.
The device comes with a pen with AES technology, which makes you feel like using a pen on real paper. The digital pen comes as the company mentions with about 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity. When trying it, we found that it responds to all movements on the screen easily and quickly, so we decided to use it in drawing, of course the result was terrifying, for drawing because we do not understand anything about it, but the important thing is the feeling when using the pen on the screen. This pen houses a small battery, but it recharges automatically when placed in its dedicated slot on the side of the device.
Performance and Tests
First let’s see the capabilities of the ConceptD 3 Ezel Pro:
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-10750H
- RAM: 16 GB DDR4 Memory
- Storage: 1024GB PCIe NVMe SSD
- Graphics Processor: 4GB NVIDIA® Quadro™ T1000
Looking at the capabilities of the device, you will see that it is a powerful laptop that targets performance, especially in the design and content industry part. The version we are reviewing was released from the middle of 2020, so the processor is from the tenth generation of Intel processors that precede the current one from the eleventh generation in laptops. If we overlook this point, the device is really powerful, especially since most of the devices that were issued are gaming laptops.
The 6-core, 12-core Intel H Series processor is the kind of mobile processor you want for extended periods of stress, especially when rendering 3D projects or constantly running design applications.
It also comes with the NVIDIA Quadro T1000 MAX-Q graphics card, NVIDIA’s lineup of CAD professionals, with performance intended for industry applications rather than games. Don’t expect performance to really suit the pros as the Quadro T1000 isn’t that high-end graphics card.
As for the cooling, you will hear the strong fans sound during heavy work on the processing unit, such as running various Benchmarks tests, but when we follow the temperatures, we stayed between 82 and 84 degrees Celsius, which we saw a lot on most laptops, so the cooling works well especially with cooling vents scattered in the body of the device, on the sides and the back. Also, the “Vortex Flow” design kept the device’s body temperature low during normal daily use but we did feel hot on the bottom at times especially with demanding applications such as design applications.
The results of tests were as follows:
- Cinebench 20: 2136
- Cinebench R15: openGL 137.99 fps, CPU 996
- 3DMark: 3180
- Geekbench 5: CPU Multi-core 3551
- Geekbench 5: OpenCL 33078
As for the sound, there was nothing remarkable, the internal speakers work well, but they are not that strong as one would expect from a device aimed at content creators. The webcam is as you would expect from any other laptop.
As for the battery, given the thickness and weight of the heavy device, it does not seem that the 56-watt-hour battery gives anything special, the battery life is average at best, with daily usual use, about 40% of the lighting, without even heavy tasks, the battery completed about 5 to 6 hours max.
Rating
In the end, we can say that the Acer ConceptD 3 Ezel Pro is intended for designers, visual content makers and artists, and what really distinguishes it is the Easel design that enables you to use the screen in 6 different modes to be able to draw and design in the mode that suits you. In addition to the distinctive screen and pen that give you the feeling of drawing on paper.
But despite the powerful capabilities, do not expect professional performance from the graphics card, and the processor is relatively old for current laptops destined for this class, and the weight of the device is heavy compared to most 2-in-1 devices.
The All Tech Guru rating
Design: 9
screen: 8
Performance: 7
Weight: 7
Positives
- Innovative design
- Multiple ports
- Colorful screen
- Stylish and powerful pen
Negatives
- The weight is heavy for a device in this class
- 10th generation processor
- Screen FHD
