Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop, 15.6" FHD IPS w/ 144Hz Refresh Rate, Intel 6-Core i7-8750H, Aeroblade Metal Fans PH315-51-78NP with Microsoft Office Home and Student 2019 | 1 device

Im 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. Its not an ultra-thin notebook, but very travel friendly. Pro: Premium Feel Pro: Gorgeous Display. Its a 144 Hz IPS display. Its gorgeous. There is some lightbleed when displaying almost all black screens, but thats 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 Drivers are extremely out of date (8+ months old) out of box.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 dont 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. Theres plenty of third party software that does all this already but its nice of them to try. Neutral : 2 year limited warranty: I hope I dont 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.

Show more

Chances are you know a bit about computers if youve 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, heres 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 laptops display at ~$150 GRAPHICS: Nvidia gtx1060. I wouldnt 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 wont bore you with all of the details about how beastly this is. Bottom line, it is a top of the line CPU. the desktops i7-8700 goes for just over $300. a 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 dont recommend this as a storage drive, only as an operating system/large program drive. Thats 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 wont need more than that. Keyboard: red backlight, side numpad. Cant 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 cant 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 isnt 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 arent 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 dont). 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 werent 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 havent 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.

Show more

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 its 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 its probably not necessary. On top of the actual performance of the laptop its 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 cant address is the battery life, and its definitely a problem. Dont expect more than 2-3 hours at best even just doing simple tasks like browsing the web. I honestly wouldnt even bother trying to game on it without being plugged in. If thats not a major problem for you then I would highly recommend this laptop. Its raw performance rivals laptops that are in the 2k+ range and destroys everything else thats priced similarly. Ive only had this laptop for a week so Ill update if anything changes, but I am extremely pleased and expect this thing to last me several years.

Show more

I was very skeptical on getting this machine at first as I havent had any Acer "gaming" laptop before and saw many people complaining on Acer gaming machine but I couldnt 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 Im very much happy with this purchase BUT I wouldnt recommend this laptop for people who doesnt 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 wont 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 Im used to the sharpness of my Alienware M15x 1080p and XPS 15 550 4K displays but surprisingly I still dont feel any less sharpness when using this laptop... Just to make myself clear, Im not saying theres no difference between the glossy panels and this anti-glare one. Its just that the difference is very minimal that it doesnt 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 theres any (thoughI havent check in a dark room yet) as I havent 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 Im 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 whos looking to buy one.

Show more

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, dont 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.

Show more

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 didnt 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 its not at all. *Incredibly fast. Both for gaming and for general web surfing. The 8th i7 is amazing. *The screen. Im honestly scared that I would get so used to it that I wont ever have another laptop o monitor without 144hz refresh rate. Its simply beautiful. Gray zone: *The red accent on the whole design. Some people dont like it because they feel that it scream "GAMER" everywhere. I actually dont care much. *The keyboard and backlight. Some people dont like the keyboard or dont like that the backlight is only red. Im not the person that dies for RBG peripherals so Im okay with the backlight. The same goes for the keyboard, I really like it. Its comfortable and good to use. *The storage. Some people dont care about it some others care A LOT. As I work with design and also love to game Ill 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. Its safe unless you undervolt too much. The last option could be repasting which I wont try because Im clumsy and I dont want to break my new laptop. In general, to me, this is the best laptop you can find at $1200 and I didnt think much about buying it. I love it and I hope I can have it for a least 3-4 years or more.

Show more

This is a very powerful laptop. This being the 2018 version, they include the hard drive tray and screws which usually werent 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 300s Overclockable GPU, it can pull higher frame rates than the Rog Strix. -Cooling is very good, it didnt 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 didnt occur so far. -8th gen i7 8750h does not bottleneck gpu as much as 7700hq Some cons: -No display port: wont 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.

Show more

So full disclosure... I use This laptop for running software for my CNC and for this purpose is more than sufficient. Im not a gamer but the video memory and processing is needed for my purposes and this thing is legit. Some reviews mention it running hot. Admittedly when I first powered up and installing updates I had it sitting flat on the desk and it got warm... No overheating or anything but noticeably warm and checking temps with predatorsense confirmed this. However, I put it on the cooler mat with no fans and it immediately came down so... There you have it. I always use the cooler mat anyway so crisis averted. I first went through and trimmed the fat... All the bloatware, which wasnt too bad really as compared to other computers. You want speed? This has got it. Before you can think, blink, or turn on the lights... Shes up and running. The SSD helps with boot and read times. It boots in about 5 seconds from full off. Only a 256gb SSD you say? Theres an open HD slot. I installed a 500gb SSD robbed from my old laptop and but have more than enough memory for what I need. If youre storing thousands of pictures maybe youll want more room. 6gb of video memory on the gtx1060.. Handles 3d rendering like a champ. I like the aluminum construction although its not all aluminum. There is some plastic. The keyboard feels nice And is responsive, track pad doesnt disappoint. Back-lit keys are spiffy. Honestly my biggest complaint is that the bezel around the screen is rather large when youre used to all the new slim stuff. Overall this thing is legit. Battery life might be crappy but... Gaming laptops usually are bad in this area. Very impressed with this laptop especially at this price point.

Show more