Acer’s New Triton 14 Lets You Draw Straight on the Touchpad

Many mild gaming laptops additionally attempt to invoice themselves as artistic laptops as nicely. Few present any options past a fairly display screen that truly help inventive sorts. Acer’s 14-inch Predator Triton 14 AI has a glassy, haptic touchpad that additionally works with a stylus. This implies the touchpad can act as a digital drawing pad for creatives preferring a PC and don’t need to draw instantly on a touchscreen.

For individuals who haven’t tried a haptic touchpad like that on the Triton 14 AI, it’s a barely totally different expertise than a standard mechanical pad. It makes use of pressure suggestions in your clicks, however the profit past appears is uniform pressure suggestions alongside a wider floor space. Regardless of this, few units have thought to reap the benefits of a flat floor with full stylus help. Not like Dell’s XPS 13 design from final yr, the Triton 14 AI breaks up the flat palm relaxation with plastic brackets when your finger or pen is attempting to attract exterior the strains.

The scale of the Triton AI’s trackpad received’t stand as much as a full drawing pad or a high quality creative-minded pill like an iPad Pro M4, however stylus help with out protecting up a laptop computer display screen could possibly be helpful in a pinch. I had the prospect to check out the Triton 14 AI, however Acer wasn’t about to let me put the laptop computer by way of its paces. Similar to each different laptop computer model, Acer has a slate of latest gaming laptops sporting Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs, however it’s nonetheless laborious to get excited for many of them. After which the corporate dropped the Predator Triton 14 AI on my lap, and I used to be instantly intrigued. It appears Acer took a web page from the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 from final yr—nonetheless one of many best-feeling gaming laptops you should buy for this measurement. The shell has a really sturdy body primarily based on my brief time with it. Save for its massive Predator brand on the again, the Triton can move as a non-gaming machine if you happen to decide to not showcase the per-key RGB.

Different units just like the Microsoft Surface Pro or Asus ProArt PZ13 may match the invoice as Home windows machines for artists, however the Triton AI has one factor these units don’t—a discrete GPU. The system sports activities an Intel Core Extremely 9 288V CPU, the top-end Lunar Lake processor from final yr that solely now appears to be featured in in the present day’s cell units. As for graphics, configurations high out with an Nvidia RTX 5070 laptop computer GPU. The system additionally helps as much as 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM and as much as 2TB of SSD storage. That’s about what we anticipate from a tool of this measurement, and we are able to anticipate with that GPU it ought to be sufficient for 1440p gaming in most intensive titles.

The laptop computer isn’t too heavy both at 3.5 kilos. As is important for a contemporary creator’s laptop computer, the Triton 14 AI homes an OLED show with a 120Hz, 2,880 x 1,800 decision panel and a acknowledged peak brightness of 340 nits. Which may not be sufficient for working in vibrant daylight, however a minimum of it is best to be capable of maintain onto it with out burning your fingers. Acer packed a graphene thermal interface materials on the CPU, which it claims is much better at transferring warmth than conventional thermal grease or paste.

The touchpad works with Acer’s Lively stylus which comes bundled with the laptop computer. The one lacking piece is a magnetic attachment level for customers to maintain their pen shut throughout use. At the very least, the Lively pen contains stress sensitivity and tilt response, plus it has built-in haptics for pressure suggestions when urgent down on the tip. It helps AES 2.0, USI 2.0, and MPP 2.5 protocols, which embody nearly all of digital pens that work throughout capacitive touchscreens and pads.

Acer didn’t reveal pricing for the Triton 14 AI or once we can anticipate it to hit retailer cabinets. The corporate was one of many early few that explicitly raised costs on its units, citing Trump tariffs. The Zephyrus began at $1,600 however the RTX 4070 mannequin with extra RAM price nearer to $2,000. If the Triton 14 AI prices greater than that, it could be a tough machine to justify, even if you wish to observe your penmanship in your laptop computer.