As part of its contribution to the launch of Skylake, Acer is updating a heap of its products with the new CPUs, among which are the Aspire V and Aspire V Nitro series notebooks. Today at IFA in Berlin, Acer unveiled the Aspire V 13, the Aspire V Nitro 15, and the Aspire V Nitro 17, with both the V Nitro notebooks also coming in "Black Edition" variants.
What Are Acer's V Nitro Series Packing?
The V Nitro series of notebooks are aimed at the enthusiast media consumer, with the Black Edition variants targeted at gamers who want a bit more power from the same package.
Aside from the difference in screen size, the V Nitro 15 and V Nitro 17 notebooks are very similar. All the notebooks can be configured to carry up to a Core i7 CPU, 32 GB of DDR4 memory, up to 2 TB HDD, or up to a 512 GB SSD. They also all have three screen options: a 1366 x 768 panel, an IPS Full HD panel, or an Ultra HD 3840 x 2160 pixel option. The non-black edition of the V Nitro 15 even has a 10-point multi-touch option, if that's your thing.
All of the notebooks support 802.11ac Wi-Fi and have MU-MIMO support.
"Black Edition" Is Where The Real-Deal Is At
Where the differences really come in is between the standard variants and the "Black Edition" models. All units will have access to the Intel HD Graphics 520 GPU on the CPU die, with discrete graphics accessible through Nvidia Optimus graphics switching tech. The standard variants will be available with 2 GB GTX 945M and 4 GB GTX 950M discrete graphics options, while gamers should be particularly interested in the GTX 960M with which the Black Edition variants will ship. These will come with either a 2 GB or 4 GB frame buffer, depending on which option you've chosen.
Additionally, the Black Edition notebooks come with a super-fast PCI-Express SSD on top of aforementioned storage options. Acer did not specify who would be making the SSD, but they are NVMe capable, and have access to four PCI-Express 3.0 lanes (creating up to 32 Gb/s of bandwidth) – something we don't typically see in the notebook space.
To spice things up further, Acer also packed the Black Edition variants with Intel's Alpine Ridge controller. What this means is that the USB Type-C port on the unit is capable of pushing not only 10 Gb/s of bandwidth in USB SuperSpeed+ mode, but also up to 40 Gb/s (32 Gb/s if you account for encoding overhead) in Thunderbolt 3 mode. You can read more about USB Type-C and USB 3.1 here, in our explainer article.
Additional features that will set the Black Edition models apart is the red LED bar by the hinge, a DustDefender feature, an optional Intel RealSense camera, and 100 percent Adobe RGB color space coverage on certain panel options.
From Black to White, Acer's Aspire V 13
The 13-inch Aspire V 13 is meant to be a simple high-end notebook in an Ultrabook form factor. It packs a full-HD display with 10-point multitouch (with a 1366 x 768 option for the non-touch variant), up to an Intel Core i7 CPU, up to 16 GB of memory, and up to 1 TB of hard drive space or a 256 GB SSD. It weighs in at 1.5 kg (1.6 kg for the variant with a hard drive), and will go up to eight hours on a single charge.
All of the notebooks will be available beginning in October, with prices starting at $699, $899 and $999 for the Aspire V 13, Aspire V Nitro 15 and Aspire V Nitro 17, respectively. Not all variants will be available immediately, with some configurations having availability slated for December.
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