Gaming laptops are bulky at the best of times, with all that meaty hardware weighing your bag down. The last thing you want to do is pack more peripherals, but you’d otherwise be stuck with a trackpad to guide your crosshair. Fortunately, Acer has the solution: a swiper that converts into a controller whenever you need it.
On the surface, Acer Predator Project Dual Play looks like any other gaming laptop on the market with a sleek aluminium design. Under the hood, it hides a bunch of secrets, including pop-out 5W speakers for a supposedly fuller audio experience. However, the highlight is easily the trackpad, which turns into a fully-fledge RGB controller when you detach it from the chassis.
Functionally, it’s pretty easy to remove and get to gaming without missing a beat. As you might expect, the trackpad completely disables when you’ve removed the device from its housing and returns the moment you pop it back in. You can keep it as one full controller or break it down further Switch-style, giving you two independent RGB thumbsticks.
Acer markets it as the best of both worlds, offering keyboard and mouse for FPS and controller for alternative playstyles. This is only half true, if you consider the trackpad a mouse. If there’s one thing I could request, it’d be to make the detached swiper an actual mouse, complete with its own sensor. Bold, I know, but it’d become a true Swiss Army Knife if possible.
There are still some mysteries to the device, such as what lies under the hood and what wireless protocol the controller uses. It could very well be Bluetooth, but more likely 2.4GHz as an integrated solution. I also don’t know exactly what kind of joysticks feature underneath. Here’s hoping for Hall Effect given their drift-thwarting properties.
I’ve seen enough concept designs in my day to know this won’t necessarily make it to market, but I think it’d be a shame given the innovation here. At the very least, it satisfies my insatiable desire for everything wacky, which is what events are all about.