Acer outs the ConceptD 3 Ezel Designer Book: pricey Tiger Lake i7-11800H and GeForce RTX 3050 Ti config is poor value against Surface Book 3

Acer recently announced the ConceptD 3 Ezel Designer Book, a convertible laptop aimed at graphic designers and artists on the go. The ConceptD 3 is confirmed for a China launch at RMB10,999 (approximately US$1700).

The magnesium alloy body is appealing, but the ConceptD 3 loses much of its luster up against Microsoft's Surface Book 3. 

For that US$1700 sticker price, the ConceptD 3 Ezel Designer Book offers a 14-in 1080p IPS display with Pantone certification and touch support. In terms of internals, the ConceptD 3 has a previous-gen Tiger Lake Core i7-11800H paired with the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti and 16GB of system RAM.

This is a marginally faster hardware spec than the top-end Surface Book 3, which combines the Ice Lake Core i7-1065G7 with the ageing GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. However, the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti has just 4GB of VRAM. In VRAM-constrained use cases, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti actually performance better. 

At RMB10,999, the ConceptD 3 Ezel Designer Book is actually a bit costlier than a base Surface Book 3 config, and it of course misses out on the Surface 3's remarkable, detachable PixelSense display.

At present, it isn't clear when or if Acer will launch the ConceptD 3 Ezel Designer Book outside China. With current pricing, however, it doesn't look to be a great alternative to the Surface Book 3. 

Check out the Acer ConceptD 3 Ezel CC314 here on Amazon.