Acer’s most interesting announcements this week were its serviceable laptop and the DualPlay Mini concept. These were two very different reveals for IFA: one a more sustainable approach to the laptop upgrade cycle, the other a dreamy/crazy hybrid of a portable gaming PC and a mini-laptop, using the same eight-inch screen.
The premise of Acer’s Project DualPlay Mini concept is the ability to “switch seamlessly between gaming and productivity” according to the company, but let’s be honest, this is a gaming machine. No one is going to exclusively tackle spreadsheets on this topic, although it does support external displays.
While an eight-inch screen is perfect for portable gaming, it’s a difficult way to navigate Windows 11 in a more conventional way. This is probably the main reason why this product will never be available in stores. The two prototypes shown at Acer’s booth appeared to share the same gaming accounts, so attendees could only play one at a time. It’s a logistical problem, but it reduced my time playing on the prototype. Honestly, I was more attracted to the flip-and-swivel mechanism, which allows you to pull the screen up, rotate it on the horizontal axis, and snap it into place. That’s how it was then satisfying.
The design of the controller is very Xbox, with the same metal circle of the D-pad and the same Xbox controllers now immortalized in IKEA furniture. It’s comfortable enough for a quick spin Forza (I especially liked the squishy collar buttons), but I quickly noticed the weight of the DualPlay Mini (what a world this mini is in), which makes sense given that everything that powers the device has dual-fan cooling, as we’ve seen in the Acer gaming handhelds that have been released.
Another drawback, arguably, is the lack of any type of trackpad. Acer’s own promotional video shows users controlling the device with a mouse in its laptop configuration. But where do I expect Acer to put the damn thing? Despite all this, I am not completely push back. It could be the nifty transforming mechanism, which unlocks and rotates between the gaming console and laptop. Maybe that’s how it reminded me of my Kohjinsha mini laptop from the 2010s.
An Acer spokesperson who helped get the DualPlay Mini working Forza Horizon 5 repeatedly said he couldn’t tell me much about it, other than the fact that it was running on a GPU already on the market, which made the whole thing even more mysterious. Even if it never lands in our hands, I’d love to see this display flipping mechanic in something. Nothing.
