AMD’s latest CPUs have been a huge success, gaining market share in the desktop world day by day, but it doesn’t necessarily have to end there. Albeit the company hasn’t put too much focus on gaming hardware for mobile platforms, the chip maker still has some good products in its portfolio, such as the AMD Ryzen 5 2500U. This CPU particularly is what has been chosen by Acer to power their AMD variant of the Acer Shadow Knight 3 gaming laptop.
AMD’s Ryzen 5 2500U mobile processor is based on the revolutionary “Zen” core architecture design, bringing 4 cores and 8 threads into laptops. Compared to previous generations, the new chips deliver up to 2.75 times more CPU performance and up to 2.3 times more GPU performance, all of that while reducing power consumption by 58%.
In the graphics department, the Acer Shadow Knight 3 Ryzen Edition does instead equip Radeon RX 560X high-performance discrete graphics with 4GB of GDDR5 memory, which should be enough to run most mainstream games smoothly at 1080P resolution.
CPU and GPU aside, the Acer Shadow Knight 3 also packs 8GB of DDR4 RAM, a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. The screen is 15.6-inch with Full HD resolution and thankfully uses IPS technology.
As far as cooling technology goes, the laptop is equipped with two large-size fans, which optimize the flow of the air through the duct and evenly dissipates heat. There’s then Acer CoolBoost fan boost technology that effectively increases fan speeds and Acer NitroSense control sensing system that keeps track of the laptop’s status and improves heat dissipation when needed.
In terms of design, the Acer Shadow Knight 3 comes with a carbon fiber texture body which gives it a strong gaming look, so no office laptop material here. The commonly used WASD buttons also have a special red ring, differentiating them from all the other buttons on the keyboard. Meanwhile the available ports are: 2 x USB2.0; 1 x USB3.0, 3.5mm audio jack, HDMI port, USB-C (USB3.1) port and a RJ45 port.
Now, let’s get to the best part: it’s pricing! The Acer Shadow Knight 3 Ryzen Edition has been officially launched at 5499 yuan, around $800 (although Chinese people can get it for as low as $720), which makes it a very interesting alternative to the previously launched GTX 1050Ti / Intel model that goes for 6000 yuan, about $880.
