Acer Notebook Shadow Knight 4 Review: Powerful graphics card, easy to play three games

A: "You said that gaming laptops are developing so fast now, and there are so many choices. What is a suitable price for playing games?"

B: "Don't talk nonsense, ask me? Free is the best!"

A: "Come on, let's be serious. I'm looking for a gaming laptop with a budget of 5K to 7K. Tell me now!"

B: "Actually, there are not too many choices at this price point, and it all depends on your needs. For example, if you want a laptop with strong performance that can run mainstream 3A games smoothly, you will have to compromise on material, weight, etc. You have touched so many of them, and you know it well. If you really want to get a general idea of ​​the situation, why not try the Acer Predator 4 in the review room recently?"

A: "Acer Shadow Knight..."

To be honest, Acer is also an old brand in the notebook field. The Shadow Knight series has gone through many products since its launch. The overall impression it gives me is: not bad! After all, the price and configuration are there! Moreover, each generation of Shadow Knight, in addition to the performance improvement, will also be adjusted according to the characteristics of new hardware and new technologies! Of course, as usual, as for the new Shadow Knight 4, let's see and talk!

What has been changed is not only the craftsmanship but also the details.

When I got this Acer Predator 4, its changes were quite surprising. The matte black front, the light-carved carbon fiber, and the brushed metal were changed to frosted and sprayed, and the design style suddenly became simple and stylish.

Just looking at the middle of the front, the silver ACER LOGO in the center reflects from time to time under the light. It feels delicate and looks full of texture. Coupled with the bright colors, for a moment I even had the illusion that Shadow Knight switched to metal materials and became a trendy thin and light notebook.

But when your eyes continue to scan the front sides of the body and the front frame of the entire machine, you can still find that in addition to the matte spray process, Acer Predator 4 also uses tough triangular geometric textures in many places. It still has not forgotten the blood called "game" flowing in its body.

The red polygonal hinge also feels very delicate, and the sharp lines add to the tough temperament of Acer Predator 4, and the NITRO series logo is also engraved on it.

The familiar jet-style air outlet slightly below the hinge makes the whole machine look more gaming-cool, which is also very attractive to gamers.

The undulating lines and angles on both sides of the bottom make it look a bit like the base of a spaceship. In addition to the rich lines on the supporting feet on both sides, the heat dissipation grille in the middle is staggered diagonally and vertically, which once again incorporates the tough and sharp lines. In addition, the heat dissipation design of this whole piece is larger than that of previous models, with sufficient air inlet and outlet space, and with the built-in dual fans and COOLBOOST fan boost system, the heat dissipation is undoubtedly faster. It is worth praising that the fine tradition of removable baffles for easy replacement/upgrade of hardware has also been continued.

Large rubber feet are located at the four corners of the bottom of the Acer Predator 4, providing stable support for the notebook. In addition, at the middle and two foot pads, Acer has added a reminder to be careful of the hot air vents.

On the left side of the fuselage, there is a security lock hole, Ethernet port, HDMI port, TYPE-C port, and two USB 3.0 ports.

On the right side are the ventilation and heat dissipation vents, power jack, USB 2.0 port, network connection signal indicator light and 3.5mm headphone jack.

Open the Acer Predator 4, which follows the mainstream ultra-narrow bezel design, coupled with a 15.6-inch full HD 1080P screen and MaxxAudio surround sound, the game special effects screen has a more audiovisual impact.

The wider top provides ample space for the camera and microphone, so when you use it for video calls, the other party can hear every word you say.

Following the screen, the C-side also uses a matte spray-coated process. The island-style chocolate keyboard is very comfortable to type on. The spacing between the keys, the key travel, the specially treated WASD and other keys, and the red backlight are all quite good. The red color shows passion, and the translucent characters allow you and me to play games at night without accidental touches, and to perform stably.

The touchpad without buttons can be operated by pressing and gestures. The touchpad is dry and not greasy. When you move your finger slowly on it, the pointer moves correspondingly on the pixels on the screen. When you slide your finger quickly from left to right, the pointer quickly moves across the entire screen. The feedback is sensitive and there is no problem in daily operation. What is still pleasing to the eye is the atmosphere light of the touchpad, which is not only highly consistent with the keyboard backlight, but also highly consistent with the overall design style of Acer Predator.

Below the numeric keyboard that makes input more convenient, a sticker further explains the invisible advantages of the Acer Predator 4 gaming laptop. The screen not only has a narrow bezel and full HD, but also uses IPS material with a wide angle and better color performance. In addition, it has a killer network card that ensures stable network speed and a COOLBOOST system that can keep you cool even during intense games.

The processor and graphics card are really awesome and the hard disk can be upgraded

We can use Master Lu to see more invisible hardware, including Intel's latest ninth-generation Core processor i5-9300H , 8GB Hynix DDR4 2666MHz running memory, 256GSSD as the main disk, Seagate 1TB mechanical hard drive as the storage disk (Master Lu's test shows incomplete), and GTX1660Ti graphics card with 6GB video memory.

The computer's comprehensive performance score of 326528 points can run large-scale games and various high-end entertainment smoothly, defeating 92% of users nationwide. With such a configuration, this score can be said to be reasonable, but whether the game can really run, we have to try it later!

We used CrystalDiskMark to test a 1G file on the main disk, and the sequential read and write speeds were as high as 1696MB/s and 1417MB/s, while the 4K random read and write performances reached 37.96MB/s and 103.8MB/s. It is really surprising to have such outstanding results.

As for the screen, it was tested by Red Spider 5, with 95% sRGB, 69% NTSC, and 74% AdobeRGB. The mainstream thin and light notebooks used in high-end designs are no more than 72% NTSC, so the design is naturally out of the question, but the richness of color performance such as 69% NTSC can still well display the color difference and shadow effects of high-definition game pictures.

In terms of processor, Intel's 9th-generation Core i5-9300H adopts the Coffee Lake architecture, which has significantly improved performance compared to the previous generation. It has a main frequency of 2.4GHz, a turbo frequency of 4.1GHz, 4 cores and 8 threads, 8MB of L3 cache, and a TDP of 45W.

The CPU-Z single-core test result was 476.1 points, and the multi-core multi-threaded test result was 2101.2 points.

Running a chess game, the score of 14737 thousand steps per second further confirms the strong computing power of the i5-9300H. Running a chess game, the score of 14737 thousand steps per second further confirms the strong computing power of the i5-9300H.

The processor was tested for multi-core and single-core performance using CINEBENCHR15, and the final results were: multi-core 751cb, single-core 176cb. The multi-core performance is comparable to the desktop-level Core i7-7700K. In other words, the computing power of this processor is more than enough to handle mainstream 3A game masterpieces.

As for the graphics card, Master Lu has shown that it is GTX1660Ti. As usual, we go to GPU-Z to check the frequency. The core frequency is 1455MHz, which can be said to be average.

Use 3DMARK to test the graphics card performance, the scores of FireStrikeUltra (4K resolution), FireStrikeExtreme (2K resolution), and FireStrike (1080 resolution) are 3022, 6286, and 12112 respectively. That is to say, in large-scale games, the GTX1660Ti mobile version has approximately the following frame rate performance: 4K resolution games, the lag is so severe that you doubt your life; 2K resolution games, the lag is so severe that you will get used to it; and 1080 resolution games, run smoothly without any problems.

Since the processor computing power and graphics card frequency performance are both fine, there are other factors that hinder the smooth running of the game: core temperature. We also used AIDA? 64 and FurMark to perform CPU and GPU dual-stress tests on Acer Shadow Knight 4. Under 100% high load, the core temperature of the processor can be controlled at around 90℃, and the graphics card temperature reached a maximum of 80℃. During the whole process, the processor and graphics card ran stably for a long time. Such a result is not easy for a gaming notebook that emphasizes performance.

During the stress test, we also used an infrared thermometer to test the Acer Predator 4. At room temperature of 25.8°C, the high temperature area was mainly concentrated in the middle and upper part of the keyboard, with the highest temperature reaching 50.9°C. During actual use, you will feel a warm feeling, but you will not feel uncomfortable.

On the back of the machine, where the heat dissipation vents are concentrated, the highest temperature is near the hinge: 49.6°C. Compared with previous models, the front has dropped by 4°C and the back has dropped by 10°C. In an environment with a room temperature of 27.3°C, such heat dissipation performance can be said to have been greatly improved.