54 PCWorld MARCH 2021REVIEWS PORSCHE DESIGN ACER BOOK RS
Rated at 340 nits, the touchscreen easily tops
our low-water mark of 250 nits when it comes
to indoor brightness, even if it can’t hold a
candle to the brightest gaming laptops. The
display also boasts wide viewing angles
thanks to its IPS (in-plane switching) panel.
The display falls a bit behind the times in
one key area: its shape. The 16:9 aspect ratio
is going out of style as vendors go back to a
taller, narrower 4:3 ratio, which is better
suited for productivity mavens working with
long documents or spreadsheets. Of course,
mobile content creators might prefer the
more video-friendly 16:9 aspect ratio, so your
opinion will depend on your particular use
case.
At any rate, the Book RS’s display does
benefit from a 100-percent sRGB gamut (take
note, content creators), while the screen’s
slim side bezels (they’re a tad chunkier on the
top and bottom) give the laptop a generous
90 percent screen-to-body ratio.KEYBOARD, TOUCHPAD,
SPEAKERS, WEBCAM
The Porsche Design Acer Book RS’s backlit
keyboard delivers a pleasant typing
experience, combining solid travel distance
with satisfying feedback while keeping your
keystrokes reasonably quiet.
There aren’t any dedicated media
playback keys, nor is there an Airplane mode
key, but you do get function-level hotkeys for
sleep, display brightness, display project,screen on/off, keyboard backlighting (there’s
only one backlighting step, unfortunately),
and volume.
My main complaint focuses on the page
up/down keys, which I frequently hit by
accident because they reside directly above
the left/right arrow keys. I’d normally be
nervous about the location of the power
button right above the backspace key, but this
one was designed to be dummy proof. You
must press it and hold it for several seconds to
shut down the laptop, and even then you
have to swipe down on the display to confirm
your choice.
The Book RS’s touchpad has a glass
coating that makes it feel soft to the touch,
and it was generally responsive. The cursor
did occasionally jump across the screen when
my palms brushed against the trackpad by
accident. I’ve experienced much worse
examples of this issue, but still, there were a
few instances when I found myself suddenly
typing in the wrong paragraph because of
false input on the trackpad.
While its down-firing stereo speakers are
augmented by DTS processing and Acer’s
TrueHarmony audio technology, the Porsche
Design Acer Book RS’s sound quality was
decidedly wan. Streaming Bruce
Springsteen’s The Rising from my Plex media
server, “Lonesome Day” sounded clean but
almost entirely free of bass, while Led
Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks”
sounded mushy and empty. Now, we usually