The Acer DualPlay has a touchpad that turns into a controller, and I want it to be real

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Key findings

  • The Acer DualPlay has a touchpad that turns into a controller
  • The controller actually functions as two independent controllers
  • When removing the controller, the speakers can be pulled out.



In an industry that tends to repeat itself so quickly, it's always exciting when a laptop comes along that tries something new. And Acer has definitely brought something interesting to the table this year, even if it's just a concept. The Acer DualPlay is a gaming laptop that looks like any other at first glance, but hides a genius secret: the touchpad can be removed, becoming a gaming controller.

These are the kinds of ideas I love to see in the laptop market. They are so imaginative and feel like they could be implemented in a real product.

A touchpad that is also a controller

Listen to me, it actually works


Just hearing that a touchpad can also become a controller will no doubt confuse many, but it's actually pretty ingenious. The touchpad looks pretty normal, although you can definitely make out an outline around the touchpad and its surroundings. And therein lies part of the secret. The touchpad on its own would be too small to serve as a comfortable controller, so it's actually a bit larger.

Press the two touch-sensitive areas below the display and the touchpad separates from the rest of the chassis, allowing you to lift it up. Flip it over and suddenly you have a full-fledged controller in your hand. All the buttons are on the “back” of this small module, so you'd never know they were there just by looking at the laptop.


Is it the most comfortable controller ever? Of course not, but it's usable and it's just a concept, so that's not a bad thing. It's perfectly usable and the buttons and analog sticks feel good.

There are actually two controllers

Classic bait and (Nintendo) Switch

The separate left and right controllers next to the base and the Acer DualPlay laptop

But there's another aspect to this controller. In fact, it's not just one controller. It's two. Much like the Nintendo Switch (and more recently), each half of the controller can be used independently, and you can simply pull them off the base (where the touchpad is) to use them for multiplayer gaming.


The controller in this concept isn't really designed for it, and isn't as well thought out as the Switch, where the flat, unified design means the experience is still pretty usable even when the controllers are split and used horizontally. But it still works perfectly fine.

On the demo devices Acer had at the show, the right half of the controller was empty, so I actually had to play a fight 8 I only used half of the controller on the side and was actually able to win. The CPU difficulty must have been on the lowest level because I'm pretty bad at fighting games, but hey, at least the controller works well enough for me.


I hope this will be a real product

It's not as crazy as you think

Close-up of the speakers of the Acer DualPlay concept laptop

I'm also told that the speakers actually slide out of the chassis when you remove the touchpad to use it as a controller. I assume this is to improve the sound experience when sitting further away from the laptop. This is a part of the concept that I think is unnecessary, but interesting nonetheless.


Other than that, though, this laptop feels shockingly normal considering what it hides. Of course, it's a bit thicker to fit the controller, and in practice I imagine the battery will be a big sacrifice to cram such a large piece of hardware into the chassis. But battery life is always secondary in a laptop, so does it really matter?

I'm not saying this concept would sell millions of units, but it doesn't significantly affect the user experience and provides an additional feature that probably doesn't increase the price of the laptop that much (relative to how expensive it probably is anyway). So, the way I see it, why not make it a product that people can buy? I'm sure at least a few people out there would be interested in it. Acer tells me that could “maybe” be a real product one day, and considering the company had the nerve to make a 21-inch curved-screen laptop a few years ago, I think it's doable. Hopefully we'll see it at some point.


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