The next Nvidia Max-Q laptop, the Acer Predator Triton 700, launches worldwide in October.
Nvidia Max-Q is the marketing spiel for an unusually thin and light laptop, packed to the gills with desktop-grade hardware. Usually that includes a quad-core, eight-thread, HQ-designated Intel Core i7 processor, large gobs of high-speed RAM, and of course, a big old graphics card.
How big, you ask? How about a GTX 1080 with 8GB of GDDR5X memory? Sounds good!
In order to cram all that hardware in – and keep it relatively thin and light – some clever design tricks, and compromises, are required. That means lots of heat pipes to wick the heat away from those hot components, with precisely-placed intakes, exhausts, and those all important fans. And, for some reason, it also means really weird trackpad and keyboard positioning.
In order to eke out an extra degree of thinness and leave room for those crucial cooling components, you often don’t get a wrist rest on these laptops – the keyboards are moved to the front edge, leaving a gap between the keyboard and the screen hinge.
In the Asus ROG units, that means a keyboard taking up 75% of the width on the left, with a trackpad taking up the remaining 25% on the right. And here, on the new Acer Predator Triton 700, the keyboard takes up the full width of the front edge, while the trackpad sits above it, between the keyboard and the hinge.
Yep, that’s right: the trackpad is above the keyboard. Twenty years of laptop design tells us that’s wrong, but it’s a clever solution here, with a Gorilla Glass panel acting as both a viewing window into the laptop’s internals – this is a gaming laptop, after all – and doubling up as an extra large touchpad mouse.
Not that you’ll be wanting to use it on the Acer Predator Triton 700, though. It’s decked out with a high-end mechanical keyboard, with low profile switches and individual backlighting per key, so if you’re playing games on it you’ll want to pair it with a high-end gaming mouse (like the very grown up wireless Razer Atheris).
Here’s the salient details of the Acer Predator Triton 700 specs:
- Operating System – Windows 10 Home
- Processor – Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ processor Quad-core 2.80 GHz
- Screen – 39.6 cm (15.6″) Full HD (1920 x 1080) 16:9 IPS panel (with Nvidia G-Sync)
- Graphics – NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 with 8 GB Dedicated Memory
- Memory – 16 GB, DDR4 SDRAM
- Storage – 1 TB SSD
- Battery – 4670 mAh 3-cell battery for approx. 5 hours
- Dimensions – 393mm wide x 266mm high x 18.9mm thick
- Weight – 2.4kg
The Acer Predator Triton 700 launches in October, with a GTX 1060 model expected to cost around £2,300 ($3,100 US / €2,600*) and the top of the range somewhere around £3,000 ($4,000 US / €3,400*).
*US / EU prices based on current exchange rates, not official pricing.
