Acer 's Shadow Knight series has always been a representative of game notebooks with affordable prices and good configurations, and is deeply loved by students. In addition to its configuration, the student group also has the all-round attributes of learning and gaming, and the price is also very real. IT Home recently received the 2022 high-end version of Shadow Knight Engine, which is equipped with the 12th generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor 12700H and 140W full-blooded RTX3060 graphics card . Let’s follow IT Home to see how it performs.
appearance and design
Acer Shadow Knight・Engine 2022 model has been fully upgraded in appearance this time. Although the overall body lines are still tough, the A red and blue color Cyberpunk style neon painted lines are completely different from the feeling they gave in the past. These lines adopt low saturation color tuning, which will not be tired while decorating and will be more pleasing to the eye. The English logo of the acer on the top of the body is relatively low-key in processing. With the suspended shaft design, the texture of the machine is significantly improved at first glance, the sci-fi style is rich, and the visual aggression is much weakened.
A "spine bone" around the rotating shaft of A surface is printed with a vermilion low saturation NITRO English logo, and there is a slightly glittery coating on the entire shell surface of the A surface, further enhancing the precision of the machine.
In terms of the shaft and back processing connecting surfaces A and C, Acer Shadow Knight 2022 uses hollow irregular openings and silver-white embellishments to highlight the machine's sense of technology, changing the previous style of black and red main tones.
Except for the back, Acer Shadow Knight・Cheng 2022 The lines on the other three sides are relatively regular square, and there is no intention of visual thinning. In terms of measurement, the body is 15.6 inches, the length, width and height are 360.4*271.09*26.75mm respectively, the whole machine weighs 2.5kg, and comes with a 240W power adapter .
opens the B side, Acer Shadow Knight 2022 supports one-hand opening and closing, the rotation axis has a relatively large movement angle, and the maximum support is 175-degree opening and closing angle, which can be more convenient to share the content on the screen with others in some scenarios.
screen is designed with narrow borders such as three sides. There is a high-definition camera on the top, the bottom border is wider, and a highlighted acer logo is printed in the center.
screen parameters, according to the sticker on the bottom of the left, this is an e-sports screen with 2.5K resolution, 165Hz refresh rate, 3ms response time, and the material is a 15.6-inch IPS matte screen, which supports 100% sRGB color gamut and DC dimming. For the positioning of the Shadow Knight series, it is a relatively all-round screen.
is viewed through AIDA64 software. The manufacturer of this screen is BOE, which is BOE, and the model is NE156QHM-NY5. Further search for Panelku.com, this screen also has 188PPI, 16.7 million color display, 1000:1 contrast ratio and 350nit brightness.
We used Aiseli professional color calibration instrument to test its color gamut and color accuracy with DisplayCal software. In fact, it covers 99.6% of the sRGB color gamut, 82.9% of the Adobe RGB color gamut and 98% of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
color average Delta E is 1.18, the maximum Delta E is 1.96, which is relatively versatile, and is basically capable of learning, entertainment and even creative design.
came to the C side, Acer Shadow Knight 2022 stuffed a full-size keyboard into the 15-inch body, with a sunken design, including the numeric keypad area and full-height direction keys, which is rare. The overall design of the keyboard continues several consistent features of the Shadow Knight series, such as the power button placed in the upper right corner to prevent accidentally touching, and key positions such as WASD and arrow keys have been emphasized to improve recognition. The keyboard area comes with a performance mode switching button, which is convenient for players to quickly change the computer's performance scheduling in different usage scenarios.
Its power button also has a very practical small function. When you hold it for a long time, a menu will pop up on the desktop, which contains four options, turning off the monitor, sleep, sleep and shut down, which is more convenient and efficient than going to the start menu.
keycap part adopts a white edge treatment, allowing players to see clearly at night or in dark light environments. It supports four-partition RGB backlight and a variety of light effects, and can adjust more functional options in NitroSense. The keycaps rebound in the typing feel is more appropriate, and the paragraph feels clear and it is not easy to touch by mistake.
Acer Shadow Knight・Engine 2022's trackpad is large in a 15.6-inch machine, with a slightly left position. The trackpad adopts an integrated button design, which feels soft and supports full-domain pressing. It can be triggered with a touch of touch.
There is a hollow slot above the keyboard that has both air inlet and decorative functions. This design helps reduce the temperature of the keyboard surface under high load conditions.
Acer Shadow Knight 2022 is in a normal design on the D side, without too many patterns and elements decorations. There is a set of stereo speaker openings near the left and right sides of the bottom.
Overall, the appearance mold design of the new Acer Shadow Knight 2022 is still very distinctive, giving people a refreshing feeling, especially the cyberpunk style neon painting on the A side and the four-zone backlight of the keyboard. It is very thoughtful and recognizable, and it is also what impresses me the most in appearance.
configuration and performance
Acer Shadow Knight・Engine 2022 adopted a relatively dessert level configuration this year, namely the combination of the 12th-generation Core i7-12700H processor + 140W full-blood version RTX3060. The specific configuration information is shown in the figure above.
Shadow Knights Gaming Pad uses the latest 12th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor 12700H, Alder Lake uses 10nm lithography process, 14 cores and 20 threads, the basic processor frequency is 2.7GHz, and the theoretical maximum single-core turbo frequency is 4.7GHz. It can achieve 90W+ performance release in Shadow Knights NitroSense mode.
However, the biggest highlight of this 12th generation Core processor™ is the new heterogeneous design. Large cores and high frequency can be responsible for handling complex games or work tasks, while small cores have higher energy efficiency ratios and can handle simple tasks. CPU can dynamically allocate work cores according to specific tasks, just like killing a cow with a knives, and killing a chicken with a chicken with a chicken knife, making the notebook work more efficiently.
and GPU, the 140W full-blooded version of RTX3060 can maximize the performance of this graphics card, and can achieve a very excellent gaming experience with real-time ray tracing technology and DLSS2.0 technology. The processor and graphics card configuration are in place, so what is the specific performance? Let's look at the test.
First, let’s explain the test environment , room temperature 26 degrees without air conditioning, turn on the independent graphics direct connection and performance mode, select the best performance, upgrade the graphics card driver to the latest 522.25, and the system is Window 11.
In the running score test of CPU-Z, the i7-12700H of Acer Shadow Knight 2022 won the single-core 747 and multi-core 6930, beating the previous generation of desktop-level i9-11900K processor.
In the performance test of CinBench R20, the single-core score of i7-12700H has reached 684, and the multi-core score has reached 4880, which is a good level.
When using CineBench R23 for performance testing, this Shadow Knight Engine gave a single core 1674 and multi-core 14009 points, which was also very excellent.We used
graphics card part to test with
. In Fire Strike Extreme representing DX11 performance, Acer Shadow Knights 2022's comprehensive score is 10315 points and GPU score is 10610 points;
, then, put it in the actual gaming experience, 140W Can the full-blooded version of power consumption cope with competitive online games and mainstream 3A? Since the screen resolution of Acer Shadow Knight 2022 is 2560x1440, which is 2K, we will conduct the game testing based on the 2K resolution. This time, IT Home found a total of 5 games for testing.
is the first of all the competitive online game Overwatch 2: Return, Acer Shadow Knight 2022 Under extremely high 2K picture quality, the average frame rate is 219 frames, and FPS-like competitive online games are stressless for it.
performs well in the picture and supports ray tracing effect. In the cold of the PC game, we use the highest 2K picture quality, ray tracing is turned on by default, and the DLSS level is selected for balance. Through the included performance benchmark test, Acer Shadow Knight・Engine finally got an average frame number of 63.4 frames in 2022. In actual games, the frame count can reach 80-90 frames.
Below are two 3A games with better optimization. In Tomb Raider: Shadow, 2K has the highest image quality. Without ray tracing and DLSS, the average frame number is 78 frames; then select the ray tracing level high, DLSS choose balance, and at this time the average frame number is frames.
In Forza Horizon: Horizon 5, choose 2K ultra-high picture quality, and the default ray tracing level is high. Acer Shadow Knight・Engine 2022 got a score of 78 frames in the included benchmark performance test;
Finally, Cyberpunk 2077, with the highest picture quality in 2K. Run the included performance benchmark test when ray tracing is not turned on, with an average frame number of 79.43 frames. This result is quite good.
If you want to experience ray tracing, you can change the resolution to 1080P, adjust the image quality to medium ray tracing, and then select the balanced level in DLSS. At this time, the average frame rate can also reach more than 60 frames. Acer Shadow Knight 2022 basically conquered mainstream 3A games at 2K resolution. Even if you want to experience ray tracing, you can play at a level of 60+ frames by appropriately reducing the resolution, turning on DLSS, etc., which has a good actual gaming experience.
storage and battery life
Next, look at the performance of storage. As mentioned earlier, Acer Shadow Knight 2022 uses two Hynix DDR4 3200MHz memory, and runs scores through AIDA64. The final read and write speed has reached more than 50,000MB/s. Moreover, since the DDR4 memory is very mature, the delay control is OK.
hard disk part, Acer Shadow Knight 2022 uses the 512GB Micron 3400, with sequential reading and writing scores of 6500MB/s and 3927MB/s respectively, which is basically consistent with the official claimed theoretical reading and writing performance.
Finally, let’s take a look at the battery life. Acer Shadow Knight・Engine 2022 has a battery capacity of 57.5Wh, which is not very large. We evaluated through the modern office benchmark test of PC Mark 10. The test conditions are 50% screen brightness , turn off Bluetooth , select the best energy efficiency of the battery strategy, and turn off the independent display direct connection in the NitroSense settings, and the final battery life is 4 hours and 28 minutes. This result is a bit unexpected, after all, the actual office work should be able to last longer than the theoretical result.
summary
This year's Intel 12th generation Core processor is very strong. Through a brand new heterogeneous design, the processor's cores are able to find the most suitable tasks for processing. While greatly improving performance, it also has a higher energy consumption ratio. In addition, the direct connection of the independent graphics card has almost become the standard configuration of the mainstream gaming laptop this year. The previous shortcomings of the Acer Shadow Knights and Ying series have been filled, and consumers have received a real experience upgrade.
After experiencing Acer Shadow Knight 2022, it gave me the feeling that it was both surprising and reserved. The surprise is that at affordable prices, it gives dessert-level mainstream configuration and a good 2K gaming experience, and the upgrade of the mold makes it more attractive. The reservation refers to the fact that some hardware has not been upgraded to the latest generation specifications. If you want to buy a cheap and easy-to-use notebook that can learn games, then Acer Shadow Knight 2022 is a good choice this year.
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