No Thunderbolt 3 for Acer's workstation - The Acer ConceptD 3 Pro CN315-71P in review

The Acer ConceptD 3 Pro CN315-71P is a 15.6-inch workstation, which has an identical construction to its sibling model, the Aspire 7 A715-74G, which we already reviewed in 2019. In regard to the housing of the ConceptD, Acer has opted for a combination of metal and plastic. The laptop is available in black and white - we have a black model with us.

The device is powered by an Intel Core i7-9750H hexa-core processor (Coffee Lake) and a Quadro T1000 graphics core (Turing) from Nvidia. Although the ConceptD is not a gaming laptop, it's able to run all modern computer games smoothly on the matte Full HD IPS display. The latter pleases with good contrast, stable viewing angles, good brightness and - thanks to the Pantone certification - great color reproduction. The sRGB color space has a 100% coverage. The display doesn't shows any PWM flickering either. 

The laptop offers some expansion options.  In this way, in addition to the standard built-in NVMe SSD (M.2 2280), a second M.2 2280 SSD (NVMe/SATA) and a 2.5-inch storage device can be installed. The workstation does not have a maintenance hatch. In order to carry out maintenance/upgrade work, the bottom cover would need to be removed - not a complicated undertaking.

Acer's workstation does not have a Thunderbolt 3 port. This would allow the connection of a more-powerful external GPU or an extensive docking solution. Unfortunately, Acer only provides the computer with a simple USB Type-C port (USB 3.2 Gen 1), which doesn't support the DisplayPort-via-USB-C function.

Much more information and benchmark results can be found in our review of the Acer ConceptD 3 Pro CN315-71P-73W1.