Acer Next livestream now: How to watch, start time and what we know – CNET [CNET]

Every spring, around the same time as Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Acer holds its Next@Acer global press conference where it unveils its latest products for PC gaming and content creation, as well as stuff for everyone else who uses a computer. This year’s livestream took place Thursday, and the company served up the usual mix of a few notable products sprinkled among a sea of rote upgrades. In this case, that means buffing up laptops and desktops for 2021 with the latest 11th-gen CPUs from Intel or AMD, the latest Nvidia GeForce and A series (the line formerly known as Quadro) GPUs and the newest screens.

If you missed it, don’t despair — you can always watch the replay on YouTube or Acer’s event site. But we’re here to hit the highlights for you.

Gaming

The two new Predator laptops — the Triton 500 SE and Helios 500 — are most notable for their pumped-up screens. The 16-inch Triton 500 SE looks like the smaller Triton 300 SE, which earned the title “Special Edition” from its incorporation of a rather ho-hum Intel Core i7-11375H low-power processor. But in this case the specialness seems to be thanks to two of its screen choices, a 165Hz, 2,560×1,600 (16:10 aspect ratio) mini-LED backlit screen. It’s capable of 512-zone local dimming and 1,250 nits peak brightness, sadly with only a 100% sRGB color gamut, which makes it only partly HDR. Or you can opt for a 240Hz screen of the same resolution but 100% P3 gamut coverage and InnoLux’s PolarBlack technology for deeper blacks than you typically get from IPS. It also takes advantage of Nvidia’s Advanced Optimus for better power management, and can come equipped with the 35-watt Core i7 or i9 11th-gen processors announced this month and up to a GeForce RTX 3080. It’s shipping now starting at $1,750.