Although marketing departments and writers may love to champion ‘wars’ between formats and platforms, those with enough money and/or sense know that different tools have advantages in different situations. Modern computing, however, is about versatility, allowing you as an example to boot OS X on your PC, and stream games from your console. That’s what Acer is championing with its new Windows 10 devices: multiple-use systems.
For starters, its new Acer Aspire Z3-700 is an all-in-one, combining display and internal hardware in a sleek-looking package. It’s built entirely around a 17.5-inch 1080p touch screen, but comes with a desktop keyboard and mouse, so you can use it as a desktop, laptop, or a tablet, depending on your needs at the time.
Those latter two uses can even be entirely portable thanks to a five-hour battery that Acer has included with the system. The internal hardware has been selected with this in mind, and while there is no option for a high-powered Core series of Skylake CPU, there are new Pentium and Celeron options, as much as 8GB of DDR3 and SSD or HDD storage options up to 500GB, depending on user needs.
No U.S. availability has yet been announced, but it will be available in the EU by the end of the year starting at 800 euros. ($908).
Related: Acer Aspire Switch 10 E review
The other switchable, versatile piece of hardware announced by Acer was its new Aspire R14 laptop. It comes packing much more powerful hardware, including an Intel 6th-generation Core CPU from the i7 or i5 range, up to 8GB of DDR3 and a similar 500GB of storage space – in SSD or HDD form.
However, the feature that is designed to make this piece of kit particularly adaptable is its 360 degree dual hinge, which lets it rotate to act as a stand, laptop, or tent, or even fold flat like a tablet. To facilitate that latter mode, it has also been made very thin and light.
Set to go on sale in the U.S. at the end of October, buyers who aspire to own the Aspire R14 will be asked to pay $700 for it.