I'm not going to post a super long review, just what I cared about, what this laptop is, and what it isnt.
Pro: Insane performance per dollar. Maxing out stuff like Diablo 3, WoW, Overwatch, DOOM, Various Source engine games (TF2, Halflife 2, black mesa, etc) will be butter smooth. This is a near-desktop replacement device.
Pro: One of the best non mechanical keyboards. Great travel distance and key responsiveness
Pro: Lighter than I expected. It's not an ultra-thin notebook, but very travel friendly.
Pro: Premium Feel
Pro: Gorgeous Display. It's a 144 Hz IPS display. It's gorgeous. There is some lightbleed when displaying almost all black screens, but that's expected. Not going to count that as a con.
Con: It can get warm, to the point of discomfort near the WSAD keys, which I assume the GPU is located internally. I turned on the coolboost feature or whatever its called and this helped.
Con: Bloatware. Took about 5 minutes to remove, but nobody likes bloatware.
Con: Drivers out of box are a joke. My network performance was horrible until several driver installs and windows updates completed. Drivers are extremely out of date (8+ months old) out of box.
Neutral: Design language is typical angsty 14 year old, red and black, stark angles, and angry looking PREDATOR logos. I personally don't care, some people might not like the loud looks.
Neutral: PredatorSense software: It lets you slightly OC the 1060, which I did. It also lets you set fan curves. There's plenty of third party software that does all this already but it's nice of them to try.
Neutral : 2 year limited warranty: I hope I don't need it.
Neutral: NO Mechanical storage hard disk: It only has a 256gig NVME. Not a big deal because I use this exclusively for a handful of games to play while at work, but this might be a turn off for some.
Overall, I am happy with this having spent $1200. I would not pay a cent more, but most laptops in this tier DO cost 1400+. If you want something to play games on the go, are cheap, but demand decent quality, there is your go-to laptop.
Chances are you know a bit about computers if you've made your way through all of the laptop options to this guy. If you are new to buying computers, I will break down some of the specs, what they mean, and what I feel their value is. If not, scroll to the end for my final thoughts.
For the new guys, here's the breakdown:
SCREEN: 144hz IPS 1080p display. 144hz means you get 144 frames per second. Most laptop screens are going to get 60hz or nicer ones get 120hz. 144hz is fast. IPS displays are good for wide viewing angles and color production. I am surprised to see a 144hz IPS display on a gaming laptop because in the past, IPS were only used for graphic design. 1080p is Full HD, and is more than adequate for gaming on a 15 inch screen. 4k is kind of overkill especially for a budget. A 27inch 144hz IPS 1080p display goes for up to $300. I would estimate the value of this laptop's display at ~$150
GRAPHICS: Nvidia gtx1060. I wouldn't buy a laptop without a graphics card, and it has to be NVidia. The 1060 is a great value and is perfectly capable of handling games at 1080p. The 1070 and 1080 are more for 4k gaming and make them kind of overkill and not as budget friendly. The 1060 should be able to connect to a 4k tv and play games in 4k, but they would probably look better in higher settings in 1080p on that same 4k tv. A desktop gtx 1060 still goes for about $300.
CPU: Intel i7-8750h. This is a beast. 6 cores with hyperthreading. It supports ultra HD resolutions without a graphics card. I won't bore you with all of the details about how beastly this is. Bottom line, it is a top of the line CPU. the desktop's i7-8700 goes for just over $300.
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RAM: 16GB of ddr4 should suffice for just about anything. Leave a hundred screens open on your browser and play games while using photoshop. Who cares right?? You could get more but it would be overkill for a budget gaming machine. This much ram for a laptop sells for around $150
Storage: 256gb M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD. A lot of letters right? This is probably the fastest type of drive in the consumer market. Rather than a giant block in your laptop, this is a small card that goes in the motherboard. It is fast!!! No more PTSD every time you restart your computer. 256GB is enough for windows and several large programs like photoshop. I don't recommend this as a storage drive, only as an operating system/large program drive. That's where the problem lies. This is the only drive in the laptop. You can easily install a second drive in the bay on the bottom of the laptop. It takes 3 minutes. I would recommend a hard drive from western digital.
The installed 256gb m.2 drive goes for $120.
However, adding another drive adds $100, upping the price of the laptop to $1300 (its currently at $1200)
Bells and whistles:
1 USB 3.1(type c), 1 USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0, 1 HDMI 2.0, SD Card reader. (no thundercat port)
HIgher end laptops have more bells and whistles like extra ports and fun other things. This comes with the basics, and most people won't need more than that.
Keyboard: red backlight, side numpad. Can't change the colors. Kind of basic keyboard. This saves on overall cost of the laptop and its a bell or whistle I can live without.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Adding up the assumed monetary value of the Display ($150), GPU($300), CPU($300), RAM($150), and Storage($120), We have a base value of $1020. I can't easily estimate the motherboard, battery, laptop shell, power cord, and other small parts, but assuming all those other parts add up to ~$300, that makes the value of this laptop around $1300. It sells for $1200 so it is a good value.
Biggest selling point in price range: Other similarly priced laptops offer similar specs, but not many can boast of having that 144hz IPS display. Some competitors are at 120hz which isn't anything to scoff at. The M.2 NVMe is a must if you are considering other competitors. Other than that, most laptops in this pool offer the same general specs (CPU, GPU, RAM)
CONCERNS:
Audio: Audio kind of sucks. If you hold the speakers towards you, they sound fine, but they aren't even close to ear level so all the sound is getting muffled by your lap. I usually use my headphones, but there are also a lot of bluetooth speaker options nowadays.
Materials: The case is solid. Parts of it are metal and other parts are plastic. Oils from your fingers show up very well all over the laptop. Wear vinyl gloves when playing games (jk don't). You may have to clean it often.
Overheating: All gaming laptops will get hot. In fact most other laptops I considered buying were criticized heavily for getting too darn hot. The ones that weren't criticized for that were criticized for breaking at the hinges. I purchased this one because it was reviewed as being sturdy and cooler than other gaming laptops.
I haven't had any specific problems with this laptop, but others have suggested boosting the fan if in a hardcore gaming session. Invest in a cooling pad. It should be very hard to overheat this laptop to the point of failure.
I was in the market for purchasing a laptop. I travel to conventions, LAN parties, and for work, so I'd like to have a really mobile gaming PC.
I was narrowing my scope to the following:
1. Playing games at higher than 60 FPS at medium to ultra settings, depending on the game and my preferences. This laptop does that.
2. Having a mobile VR machine, that way instead of hauling a beefy PC and all the VR equipment, I just have the laptop and go. This laptop does that very well (I have enjoyed Beat Saber with this laptop)
3. Being able to lightly content create via streaming and locally recording. I haven't tried streaming yet.
On paper, the laptop hits all 3. Having a hexa-core CPU and a full 1060 6GB, this hits all the bells. Now, to the problems I've had:
I'll share my experience so far: my first laptop purchase came in an Amazon box that look like it had a shotgun blast it, and the actual Amazon box was unsealed. While the actual laptop box looked fine, I was very skeptical. I immediately requested a replacement due to what I experienced, added on to the following:
1. If you wear a watch with a magnetic clasp on your left hand, you may have a bad time. The laptop thinks the monitor lid is closed by my guess, since if I wear my watch band contact a certain area of the left side of the laptop, the monitor will shut down without fail. It'll immediately resume (like opening/closing the lid), but it's annoying (this happened on both laptops).
2. If you decide to use a headset with this, the software used may be confusing. The laptop has a beam formed microphone, and when you connect a headset, it deceptively tells you that the beam microphone is still on, instead of your actual headset mic. I troubleshot for a long time, it's just something to keep in mind (this happened on both laptops).
3. This laptop only has a HDMI out - remember my desire for a mobile VR rig? It's impossible to output to your VR headset and to an external display like a TV or projector with what's built into the laptop. I'm still researching a solution, since I'd like for others to watch VR. It'll also only output to only certain monitors at high refresh rates via HDMI port (there's a thread on Acer's forums). Newer monitors can do 120+hz refresh rates over HDMI, but most monitors can't. Keep that in mind if you're intending on using this laptop with an external monitor. Also, be weary of a 15.6 inch screen, it's small and if you have to look down at a 45 degree angle at your screen for long times, it'll suck.
4. Ultimately, the most important, is that this laptop throttles and overheats. Playing a game with nothing else in the background (PUBG, World of Warcraft, etc) will often cause your CPU to reach 100 degrees Celsius, causing it to throttle, FPS spikes, and stuttering until the temp comes back down to the realm. I've troubleshot a bunch, and what is currently working is using aftermarket and Intel tweaking software to undervolt the CPU. Seriously not ideal, but I'm now at a better 80-85 degrees with auto fan control. I also to installed Throttlestop to disable some of the laptop power management features to prevent it from downclocking, even at appropriate temperatures. After some significant software tweaks, I can say I'm "happy" with it. I will probably pursue a warranty repair, because Acer's community forums stated that the three options are to undervolt, request a warranty repair, or to replace the thermal paste & pads yourself.
With the exception of the overheating, the rest of the caveats are minor at best. For a kick ass gaming experience at 1080p (hell, this thing has a 144hz refresh rate screen too!), it's hard to beat this.
This is an extremely high performance laptop with a few of the expected cons of being in this price range (battery life, limited storage out of the box, can get quite hot). Overall the pros far outweigh the cons and I feel great about the purchase. It runs newer games extremely well on high settings without any kinds of performance issues. If you want to get full use of the beautiful 144 hz screen you might need to turn a few graphical settings but it's well worth it. I should point out that I did initially have some heat issues with this laptop where temperatures would consistently be above 90c on demanding games which caused throttling and massive frame drops. I fixed this by undervolting the CPU by 100 MV using throttlestop and running the fans at max speed during gameplay. This has completely solved the issue for me. If you wanted to you could also apply a quality thermal paste or buy a cooling pad but it's probably not necessary.
On top of the actual performance of the laptop it's a pleasure to use. The keyboard is very good and feels great to type on. The screen is excellent which makes consuming all kinds of content on this thing very enjoyable. I mentioned the lack of storage out of the box but you can easily add an SSD / HDD to solve that. The only real con for this laptop that you can't address is the battery life, and it's definitely a problem. Don't expect more than 2-3 hours at best even just doing simple tasks like browsing the web. I honestly wouldn't even bother trying to game on it without being plugged in. If that's not a major problem for you then I would highly recommend this laptop. It's raw performance rivals laptops that are in the 2k+ range and destroys everything else that's priced similarly.
I've only had this laptop for a week so I'll update if anything changes, but I am extremely pleased and expect this thing to last me several years.
I was very skeptical on getting this machine at first as I haven't had any Acer "gaming" laptop before and saw many people complaining on Acer gaming machine but I couldn't find any other laptop that offer more bang for your buck than this so I gave it a try and... yes I have zero regret for choosing this over the rest. Actually I'm very much happy with this purchase BUT I wouldn't recommend this laptop for people who doesn't like to tinker with their brand new laptop or have no idea how to improve the cooling efficiency because this laptop gets HOT at stock when playing game at very high graphics settings.
You won't be able to comfortably play Fortnite with maxed out settings as the temp will hit 94C (CPU) and 90C (GPU) at stock setup even on max fan setting at 23C room temp.
After performing the below mentioned, my max temp on Fortnite (epic settings) is 80C (CPU) and 73C (GPU) at 22C room temp. **avg. 80+fps**
Repaste - Grizzly Aeronaut
Repad - (optional)
Undervolt - ThrottleStop
Remove the bloatwares (I reinstalled the OS instead)
Raise the laptop (about 40MM high)
Max fan speed
Display:
I was too worried with the anti-glare feature that I might not like the not so sharp display as I'm used to the sharpness of my Alienware M15x 1080p and XPS 15 550 4K displays but surprisingly I still don't feel any less sharpness when using this laptop... Just to make myself clear, I'm not saying there's no difference between the glossy panels and this anti-glare one. Its just that the difference is very minimal that it doesn't bother me at all despite my obsession with the screen sharpness of the glossy panels. (my scaling is at 100% vs 125% default)
Light bleed is very minimal if there's any (thoughI haven't check in a dark room yet) as I haven't notice any unusual color on any part of the screen while using the laptop normally unlike my 9550 which I immediately noticed when I first boot the laptop.
Keyboard:
Much better than my 9550. I can type comfortably just like on M15x though I'm typing on my mech keyboard more often since I got the laptop.
Speakers:
Mediocre it is (but the volume is not that low like how they say)
Hope this could help someone who's looking to buy one.
Feature Product
- 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8750H 6-Core Processor (Up to 4.1GHz) with Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Overclockable Graphics with 6 GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM
- 15.6" Full HD (1920 x 1080) widescreen LED-backlit IPS display (144Hz Refresh Rate, 300nit Brightness & 72% NTSC )
- 16GB DDR4 2666MHz DRAM Memory & 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD | Extra empty accessible slot for 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD
- Gigabit Wi-Fi |Backlit Keyboard | USB 3.1 (Type C) | Dual All-Metal AeroBlade 3D Fan Cooling | Metal Chassis.Battery Capacity:3320 mAh
- Up to 7-hours of battery life
Description
Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-51-78NP Gaming Laptop comes with these high level specs: 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8750H Processor 2.2GHz with Turbo Boost Technology up to 4.1GHz (9MB Smart cache), Windows 10 Home, 15.6" Full HD (1920 x 1080) widescreen LED-backlit IPS display, 144Hz Refresh Rate, 300nit Brightness, 16:9 aspect ratio, 72% NTSC, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Overclockable Graphics with 6 GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM, 16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory, 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD, Secure Digital (SD) card reader, Optimized Dolby Audio Premium sound enhancement, Acer True Harmony Plus Technology, Two Built-in Stereo Speakers, Intel Wireless-AC 9560 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi which can deliver up to 1.73Gbps throughput when using 160Mhz channels (Dual-Band 2.4GHz and 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.0, HD Webcam (1280 x 720) supporting Super High Dynamic Range (SHDR), 1 - USB 3.1 (Type-C) port (Gen 1 up to 5 Gbps), 1 - USB 3.0 port (featuring power-off charging), 2 - USB 2.0 ports, 1 - HDMI 2.0 with HDCP support, 4-cell Li-Ion Battery (3220 mAh), Up to 7-hours Battery Life, 5.51 lbs. | 2.5 kg (system unit only) (NH.Q3FAA.001).
I purchased this laptop to be my gaming device while I'm travelling. So far I have tested Battle Field 1 and Guild Wars 2 and was able to play at Ultra/Highest settings on both games at 60+ FPS (BF1 - Averaged 75 FPS, GW2 - Averaged 70 FPS). All of this was done without using the available overclocking that is configurable with Acer's PredatorSense software. I purchased a 1 TB Samsung 860 EVO SSD to install in the 2.5" bay. After installation I found that the SATA+Power connector had a broken PCB (circuit board). I contacted Acer's support and within 30 minutes they had put in an order to ship me out a new SATA+Power cable. I would like to note for those less technically inclined, they did offer for me to return the laptop and receive a completely new one. Since I know my way around a motherboard I chose to just replace the cable myself. So far I'm very pleased with this laptop, for those who complained about the keyboard getting hot, this is a common issue on all gaming laptops. It can simply be fixed by setting the fan speed to max when playing video games. I just finished a 2 hour session of Battle Field 1 multiplayer and my keyboard is just slightly above room temperature. I have listed what I liked about the machine and what I didn't below as well as a summary of my review.
Pro(s):
Performance - This laptop has, at the time of this writing, the latest Intel Core i7 processor. Paired with the GTX 1060, this machine can easily run the latest games on Ultra/Highest settings at 60+ FPS at a resolution of 1080P.
Display - The display is leaps and bounds better than many laptops in this price range. Many people complained about the display from last years model. Acer responded by putting a far superior display on this years model.
Keyboard - The keyboard has great feedback and travel distance for a laptop keyboard.
Customer Service - My laptop unfortunately had a broken SATA/HDD cable. After I discovered the problem, I called Acer's customer support. After explaining the issue they without hesitation shipped me another cable. I'll update the post once I have installed and tested it.
Con(s):
Heavy - Even for a gaming laptop, this machine is heavy. It's a full pound heavier than some of it's competition.
Battery Life - I will never dock a star for poor battery life out of a gaming laptop. Battery life is always a trade off with every gaming laptop, there are no exceptions. If you plan on gaming with this laptop on the go, ensure you are near a power outlet.
Modern Ports - If you are expecting a ThunderBolt 3 port, keep looking. This laptop does include a USB Type C port; however, it is not a ThunderBolt 3 port.
Summary:
If you are looking for a laptop that can run modern titles at 60+ FPS at a resolution of 1080P look no further this is the best machine for the money.
If you are looking for a laptop to do general business with some light gaming I wouldn't recommend this laptop. You would be far better served with a GTX 1050/1050 Ti an 8GB of RAM. This laptop would be overkill and you wouldn't be pleased with the battery life.
I do not know what to say about this.Can a laptop get any better than this one with this price range? NO! Absolutely not.
For all those thinking if they should go ahead with buying this, don't think. Just Buy this. I am telling you, you will not regret. High Performance, Light Weight, Sexy design lines and whatnot, this beast of a machine delivers more than perfectly and I am extremely proud of myself for buying this one.
Hello Everyone,
This review is a little long but I hope that after reading this you will surely know whether this is a laptop for you or you may want to skip it.
I got this laptop in Cyber Monday for $999 + Tax – Great Deal. Laptop arrived on time, packaging was top notch from Acer, nice and sealed. But after a week I noticed some overheating of the system and Amazon offered to replace it and match the price. The new laptop came fast, the old one I had was returned. Later on I discovered that this overheating was not a problem, but the way the laptop is designed.
Pros:
1) Great Build Quality. I had Acer VX15 before this, which served me very well, but it got old so I wanted to replace it. The build quality is completely different. The Acer Helios 300 is built from a mix of hard plastic and metal. The metal on the lid gets cold so it is a pleasure to pick it up (if you know what I mean). There is almost no flex to the screen, no flex on the keyboard. The interior around the keyboard and touch pad is also metal and is very nice for touch, however I keep taking off my bracelets/watch because I am scared to scratch it.
2) Track Pad – one word – AWESOME. I read and saw so many reviews about this laptop before buying it and people keep saying that the track pad is medium quality. For me it is perfect. I do not want to say that it is large (larger is always better), but the size is very good which allows for a proper tracking and moving items with a double click around the screen. The surface of the Touch Pad is glass and it is using Windows Precision Drivers out of the box which is a bonus. Gestures work very well and are customizable in the control panel. The buttons are a little bit stiff, but it does not cause any discomfort when using it, although I would prefer physical buttons any day. Using track pad with 2 fingers simultaneously is a breeze as well.
3) Keyboard – It is a good keyboard. Just like any other Acer Gaming Product that I’ve used. The keys light up in Red color, which is a little bit outdated in the end of 2018, wish they had at least 4 zoned RGB lightning available on this machine for a more muted look when needed, but I guess you get what you pay for. You can turn off the backlight if you wish with the function button on top of the keyboard. WASD keys are highlighted with a red accent – again, not something exciting except if you use the laptop only for games. If you use this laptop in a business meeting setup it kind of screams that it is gaming by its WASD red bold keys and exhaust vents. Otherwise great keys, still nothing close to the best typing experience, but good for a gaming laptop.
4) Screen – one word – BEAUTIFUL. It is a Full HD 144HZ panel. Believe me, 144HZ vs. 60HZ DOES make a huge difference not only when playing games, but also when browsing web – scrolling is much smoother. I would never want to go back to 60HZ panel again. Colors are great, you can calibrate those I believe in the Intel Control Panel, but I did not see a need for that as the screen is bright, color accurate and overall great quality. Acer really impressed me on this here.
5) Port Selection – Nowadays it is rare to find lots of laptops that are still rocking the Ethernet port & SD Card reader. Not that I use them a lot, but it is nice to know that I have them.
6) LED Status Lights – Those are located on the right side close to the charging port, which is great because the light does not disturb you while gaming or using the laptop in the dark environment.
7) Speeds – This laptop is very fast. No problem with anything that I threw at it for the past few weeks. I am running any game with ease. On Ultra Settings CS GO I am getting 144FPS, COD: WWII 80-95FPS, GTAV 75-90FPS.
8) Wi-Fi Card – This machine comes with Intel Wireless Card which is the best – fast, reliable and has the drivers pre-installed.
9) Drivers – The machine comes with all the latest system drivers pre-installed including the GeForce Experience Software for future driver updates. You can get the drivers from the Acer’s Official Website.
10) Hard Drive Speeds – Mine came with no HDD, just the Intel’s 256GB M.2 SSD. While it is fast, I wanted to go even further with speeds. I got 2 drives – Samsung 970 EVO m.2 500GB SSD + Samsung 960 Evo 1TB SSD. So now the machine is based fully on SSD Drives! And the speeds are amazing. Attached you may see the speeds from the CrystalDiskMark.
Cons:
1) OVERHEATING - Acer decided to place both fans on the right side of the laptop this is why the left side gets HOT. In general CPU temperatures can reach to up to 92 º Celsius. To avoid this, I re-pasted your laptop. DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OUTCOME OF REPASTING YOUR LAPTOP, THEREFORE DO IT AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Once I re-pasted my laptop, my temperatures dropped 5-6 degrees lower.
I have also under-volted my CPU to have better thermal performance. But once again, do any of the above at your own risk as those can lead to the crash of the system leaving you with a complete brick. I have attached the screenshots of stress tests in AIDA. I purchased the separate cooler for it.
2) Battery Life – expect nothing more than 2.5-3 hours while using it for productivity.
3) No Thunderbolt Support – like really Acer? It is end of 2018 and there is no Thunderbolt? This is very upsetting. But you can still use USB C for data transfers which are faster than the regular USB type A.
4) Ports Selection – I previously mentioned that it is nice to have Ethernet Port & Memory Card Reader, but the rest of the ports selection is not the desired one. Helios 300 has only 3 USB A ports, 2 out of which are USB 2.0. WHY? Why do we need to have USB 2.0 in 2018? Only one USB 3.0. Charging port is located in the nice location though, and does not clutter your using experience should you use an external mouse.
5) Hard Drive Speeds – Mine came with no HDD, just the Intel’s 256GB M.2 SSD. While it is fast, I wanted to go even further with speeds. I got 2 drives – Samsung 970 EVO m.2 500GB SSD + Samsung 960 EVO 1TB SSD. So now the machine is based fully on SSD Drives! And the speeds are amazing. Attached you may see the speeds from the CrystalDiskMark.
6) Getting inside – super hard unless you are upgrading RAM (Max 32GB) or HDD – those have easily accessible 1 screw doors on the back of the machine. The m.2 SSD is located under the hood – easy to replace but it takes patience to open up the whole back panel. As there is a metal outline across the chassis, it is super easy to scratch the laptop while getting inside, so use the PLASTIC pry tool only and take your time, do not rush the process not to scratch your brand new laptop.
7) Fan Noise – Just like any other gaming laptop it is indeed loud. Use headphones while gaming.
8) Surface – super easy to scratch as it is all metal, so be careful. My suggestion to get a skin from Amazon.
9) Dimensions – while this laptop is 15.6 inch just as many others, keep in mind it is larger than majority of others, therefore when picking a carrying case/bag for it make sure it fits Acer Helios 300.
My overall Thoughts:
Acer Helios 300 is an excellent laptop for people who would like to game from time to time utilizing the power of full sized GTX1060 and seeing an amazing frame rates without compromising on the quality of graphics. It is also great for creators to video edit, photo edit and for any 3D work (haven’t tried myself, but it surely should work fine considering the specs inside). The screen is gorgeous. Using it for productivity is great as well.
The weight is on a higher side and a power brick is not small as well, so carrying it around constantly may not be much fun, but if you don’t need an extreme portability, this machine is the way to go.
I would however mention that if you do have another $700 to spare, get yourself Acer Helios 500 which is on sale on Amazon right now for $1,699 + Tax. It is bigger, but much nicer.
Anyways, this is it for my review, I hope you guys found it useful, and Acer, if you are reading this, I would like to thank you guys for producing such a high quality gaming products for a reasonable prices. You guys rock and I will be your customer for a long time.
I recently purchased a gaming laptop that I had to return due to problems to the motherboard so when I started to search for a new one found the Helios 300 model which at the beginning I didn't care much until Acer launched the Helios 300 2018 model which was an instabuy to me.
Some of the pros to me are:
*Lightweight. Much than expected for a gaming laptop. I thought it would be bulkier and heavy and it's not at all.
*Incredibly fast. Both for gaming and for general web surfing. The 8th i7 is amazing.
*The screen. I'm honestly scared that I would get so used to it that I won't ever have another laptop o monitor without 144hz refresh rate. It's simply beautiful.
Gray zone:
*The red accent on the whole design. Some people don't like it because they feel that it scream "GAMER" everywhere. I actually don't care much.
*The keyboard and backlight. Some people don't like the keyboard or don't like that the backlight is only red. I'm not the person that dies for RBG peripherals so I'm okay with the backlight. The same goes for the keyboard, I really like it. It's comfortable and good to use.
*The storage. Some people don't care about it some others care A LOT. As I work with design and also love to game I'll need to get soon another SSD.
Cons:
*The heat. It has been discussed in other reviews. This laptop gets hot. HOWEVER, there are ways to make it cooler like activating the cooler boost option in the Predator Sense program or making the fans run faster. Another option (which I tried) is undervolting de CPU. It's safe unless you undervolt too much. The last option could be repasting which I won't try because I'm clumsy and I don't want to break my new laptop.
In general, to me, this is the best laptop you can find at $1200 and I didn't think much about buying it. I love it and I hope I can have it for a least 3-4 years or more.
This is a very powerful laptop. This being the 2018 version, they include the hard drive tray and screws which usually weren't included in recent versions. Upgraded it with a second 500gb 2.5" Sata SSD.
Owned an asus Rog Strix gl703vm before this one, but it had a sudden voltage problem and died; had to return it.
Pros:
Thanks to Helios 300's Overclockable GPU, it can pull higher frame rates than the Rog Strix.
-Cooling is very good, it didn't exceed 80c under load and max fans.
-Silent (more silent than rog strix)
-144hz refresh rate is great and this version has a much better screen than the previous gen. Screen tearing didn't occur so far.
-8th gen i7 8750h does not bottleneck gpu as much as 7700hq
Some cons:
-No display port: won't project over 60fps on external monitor.
-No independent buttons to increase/decrease volume and access to PredatorSense.
-had bunch of junkware installed but easily removable.
-200gb available to go on primary ssd when booted.
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