ACER PREDATOR HELIOS 300

 CONTENTS

1. OVERVIEW

2. DESIGN/BUILD QUALITY

3. KEYBOARD/TRACKPAD

4. COOLING

5. PREDATOR SENSE SOFTWARE-

6. PORTS AND BUTTONS

7. FEATURES

8. SPECIFICATIONS

9. DISPLAY/SPEAKERS

10. BATTERY

11. WEBCAM

12. PERFORMANCE

13. GAME TEST

14. CONCLUSION (DON'T MISS)

1. OVERVIEW

The laptop comes in a well packed foam cover and a separate box inside the main box, a huge 280-watt power adapter, a power cord, and a few documentations.

2. DESIGN/BUILD QUALITY

The entire top lid is metal built. Generally, in Predator series top lid flex is quite evident and this one is no different. At the center you get a big logo of Predator which glows with a blue light and of course becomes an attention seeker.

Talking about the interior, the hinge is not that sturdy compared to other premium segment gaming laptops and thus screen wobbling issue is evident. Keyboard flex is in evident. Overall, the entire interior and exterior design language is changed giving it a fresh and better look. At the bottom vents are now more open and an open-air circulation design is given. On all three sides a thin RGB strip is given which of course gives a beautiful appeal when kept on a table.

Talking about the weight, it is near to 2.6 kgs, so fairly on the heavier side in terms of a professional gaming laptop. So overall the design and build quality is much better and refreshed than the previous generations.

3. KEYBOARD/TRACKPAD

You get a full size RGB keyboard in this device. The RGB colours and effects can be customized using the Predator sense software. Different lighting effects are given like Breathing, Neon, Star, Wave etc. You can also change the speed, directions of the RGB effect. Even the RGB strip below can be customized. 

Talking about the trackpad, the size is big enough. It's a fully clickable trackpad with a silver lining all around the edges giving a premium look. The trackpad feedback is really good however gamers don't use a trackpad while gaming so let's not talk more about this.

4. COOLING

This laptop is equipped with the fifth-generation arrow blade fans which is capable to spin above 7000RPM. To enhance the cooling effect to the next level, liquid metal is provided which made its cooling much better than the previous generation. Now this is amazing. The cooling effect will definitely be tested in the gaming portion. So, stay tuned.

5. PREDATOR SENSE SOFTWARE

In the Home Tab you get to see detailed information regarding your CPU, GPU temperatures.

Then you get the Lighting options which I have already discussed. Then you get the different Modes (Default, Extreme, Turbo).

Turbo and Extreme modes can only be activated when the laptop is connected with the charger and at least 40% battery health is there. Then you get your Fan Controls which you can set to low while doing regular tasks to get more battery life.

 Also, you get Game Sync and App Centre mainly for application management in your PC.

6. PORTS AND BUTTONS

On the left you get Kensington Lock, RJ45 LAN port, a USB 3.2 GEN1 port and a headphone, MIC combo and speaker grills. On the right you get two USB 3.2 GEN2 ports.

At the back there is the power input port, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a HDMI 2.1 port and a mini display port. In terms of ports this, machine is fantastic. I mean you can 3 display outputs in total (laptop, HDMI, Mini display port).

7. FEATURES

You get MUX Switch in this laptop. This feature is used to switch between the integrated and dedicated GPU of your PC. This feature is mainly used to increase the battery backup of your PC when you are not gaming. In order to turn on the MUX switch, switch F2 button to access the BIOS, then in the Advanced options on pressing control S, you get the display modes- Optimus and Auto-Select.

You get a dedicated Turbo Button in the Keyboard to increase the fan speed to its maximum to achieve greater thermals during intense gaming. The sound of the fans at its maximum (7,500+ RPM) might be the loudest of all gaming PC.

8. SPECIFICATIONS

This laptop comes with Intel Core i7 12700H (14C, 20T) CPU and RTX 3070ti ( 8GB VRAM, 150watt TGP) GPU. It has a dual channel 16GB DDR5 RAM

clocked at 4800MHz. For storage this laptop gets a big 1TB PCIE GEN.4 SSD. For connection this laptop gets Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 support.

9. DISPLAY/SPEAKERS

This laptop gets an IPS anti-glare 2k display with 165Hz refresh rate and 300 nits' brightness. This is a 100% sRGB display which supports NVIDIA G-Sync with 3 m/s of response time. Its aspect ratio is 16:9.

Seriously, the display is great, really matches up with the competition. You can take it for all purposes like multimedia consumption, content creation. The contrast ratio, colour output and viewing angles are really good. 

You get down firing speakers with this laptop which are fairly loud. At the time I am writing this blog, I don't know it's wattage but for a clear reference, these speakers are quite identical to the current generation Acer Nitro series.

10. BATTERY

You get a 90-watt hour battery with this device. With 50% screen brightness, RGB and keyboard backlit off and doing normal tasks, this battery will give you a backup od around 3-4 hours. However, tasks like video editing, gaming, I always recommend you plug in your PC with charger.

11. WEBCAM

For the first time Acer has provided internal webcam of 1080p 60FPS in its Predator series. And seriously the webcam's quality is really good. I mean most of the other brands at this price also provides the old school 720p webcam. So, at that point of view this one is way better. Additionally, you get two microphones.

12. PERFORMANCE

The performance of this beast is just next level. Whether you talk about Cine bench R23, Geek bench, 3d mark, PCMARK 10 or CROSSMARK, all are just outstanding. In simple words the CPU scores are way better than any other i7 laptops mainly because of the thermals in this price range. GPU scores are nearly matchable to other PCs. In terms of tasks, you can easily do 4k video editing/rendering, coding, 3-D rendering, Graphics designing, architectural works etc.

13. GAME TEST

           1. VALORANT (high setting, 1400p)- 190 - 200+ FPS

           2. WARZONE (high settings, DLSS balanced, 1440p)- 100+ FPS

           3. RDR2   ultra-settings, DLSS balanced, 1440p)- 80+ FPS

           4. FORZA HORIZON 5 (extreme, 1440p)- 70+

           5. GTA 5   (very high, 1440p)- 120+ FPS

           6. FAR CRY 6 (ultra-preset, fidelity FX on, 1440p)- 70+ fps

           7. SPIDER MAN (very high setting, DLSS balanced, 1440p)- 100+ - 120+ FPS

14. CONCLUSION

Look first of all this laptop is not yet launched in India, but its i9 variant is available in Amazon for Rs. 1,39,990. As you know there is not a huge performance difference between i7 and i9 you can surely go for that one or can wait for some more time for its arrival in India. In terms of performance, it's a great product to consider and of course the money you pay. Its thermals are it's USP which I don't think got to see in any other machine. Now if you compare this one with ROG STRIX SCAR 15, that one is a more premium option with more price, with better looks and build quality. But that one comes with 32GB RAM out of the box, and if you upgrade this Acer Predator with 32GB RAM, then performance will be almost same in both the cases. And yes, please don't compare this one with older generation laptops because they provide a more value for money package but the current generation laptop charges more price and of course better performance. So that's entirely up to your choice. So yes, if you are a professional gamer, content creator, you can surely go for this one. 

Thankyou.