Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop PC, 15.6" FHD IPS w/ 144Hz Refresh, Intel i7-8750H, GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB DDR4, 256GB NVMe SSD, Aeroblade Metal Fans PH315-51-78NP

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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.

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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.

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Based on several reviews I saw, I was hesitant to buy this laptop. I still decided to give this laptop a chance. Big mistake! After a week of using the laptop, the wireless driver randomly stopped working for no reason. Reinstalled the drivers, reinstalled windows, and still wireless drivers wouldnt work. I had no access to a wired connection for days, so eventually plugged it and updates fixed the issue. However, I returned the laptop to avoid such issue happening again. So I got a replacement and guess what? A week after using the replacement laptop, blue screen of death! Error message saying FAULTY_HARDWARE_CORRUPTED_PAGE. Unacceptable that two brand new Acer laptops have issues. The pictures speak for themselves. Though it restarted and seemed to work fine, I was not going to risk having faulty hardware. Acer customer service wanted to send it for repair, which would take 2-3 weeks to receive back. I decided not to deal with them and returned everything back to Amazon. Thankfully, everything happened within the return period and Amazons great customer service accepted with no issues. Instead, I bought the HP Omen 15 and couldnt be happier! Im sure Acer makes some good laptops, but this specific product has lots of issues! If you do end up getting this laptop with no issues, consider yourself lucky. It has great specs for the price. Start up is blazing fast. Upgrading hard drive and RAM is super easy. Screen is great except for that massive screen bleed. Oh and good luck dealing with the terrible thermals and loud fans. Had to reduce the processor power management (advanced settings on Edit Power Plan setting) by like 30-40% to achieve decent thermals. The good thing is Predator Sense software allows full control of fan speed. I apologize for the lengthy review but it had to be said. I suggest to save your money and invest in a better laptop if possible.

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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.

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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.

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So, I bought this last month and will list a few issues Ive had with it, so that anyone in my position knows what they are getting into: 1.I have had trouble setting the 144hz option, though I have followed many guides, it seems it wont stick on the settings of the game itself. 2. The computer gets very hot, people arent exaggerating when they say this thing is an oven, the wasd keys can even get hot enough to where your like, is this thing slightly burning me lol. 3. You can activate coolboost, and turn the fans on max via PredatorSense(program that controls fan speed and gpu overclocking) but it will be very loud, and unless you undervolt your computer(I have yet to do this) it will still overheat. 4. This computer is not really for lap play, I mean, you can pull it off, but after a couple times, it got so hot the gpu stopped working---LETS BE CLEAR--- THIS THING HITS 190 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. 5.When you first get started, it is in your interest to create a back up on a flash drive, HOWEVER, BE WARNED, if you reset your pc via the recovery settings, or from your flash drive, it WILL NOT come with the original drivers, NOR, come with the original programs(if you care)---you have to buy it online from acer. My suggestion is you make a memory drive image or whatever---it was my mistake to think backing everything up would return my laptop to 100% out-of-the-box factory defaults. 6. The shift and up-arrow key are basically hugging/making out, so their is no way not to accidentally hit one or the other by mistake, at least until you get that muscle memory down. 8. Be prepared to by some more storage space for the laptop, after just call of duty, I can probably fit just one more big game. 81/2. Also be prepared to do some color calibrating, because straight out the box the colors are pretty dull. 9. Last and to me the least negative, the speakers are on the bottom of the laptop so the sound isnt that great. POSITIVES: 1. Graphics are pretty darn nice. 2. Fans are nice and quiet when you are just browsing/surfing the web. 3. The keyboard has low key travel or whatever, which I thought I would hate, but I am actually pretty fond of it, not too flat, and give enough of a press to feel comfortable typing fast---could be better, but definitely pretty decent. 4. The back-lit keyboard can be turned on and off, and really helps with visibility at night(duh.) 5. Good size screen, good sized laptop in general, I have big hands and they rest comfortably when typing. 6. Big ol trackpad(mousepad). 7. FAST I mean, FAST, gone are the days of waiting for your laptop to start up, you maybe have enough time to straighten your tie lol. 8. You can run multiple things at the same time, and you will be lucky to see the processor flinch. 9. Feels decently sturdy, seen a video online of some guy whom dropped his and the screen survived(grain of salt, wouldnt test it) BONUS: mine came with call of duty black ops 4, free destiny 2(from battle.net) and believe it or not, Predator, like Arnold Schwarzenneger Predator stickers....sick. SUMMARY: The Acer Predator Helios, is definitely worth the money at this price point, however, although you will get to enjoy nice visuals and blazing fast task management, this laptop comes with a learning curve if you arent already more that just somewhat experienced. My recommendation is that you make a recovery image and then fiddle with what you must... Once again, you might be happier buying something more expensive, but this is the perfect computer if you are okay with having a beast with some breathing issues and onion layers of difficulty, least until you upgrade to your real behemoth(the predator can very well satisfy that need as well). Hope I helped! Cheers!

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I’ll preface this review with saying that I am returning the first one of these laptops that I purchased. What does that mean? The laptop isnt perfect! Id give it a 3.5 as of now. The Bad! Ok, so what went wrong? First laptop the “B” key is sticking. Every 5 or 8 taps and it sticks down. Not happy about that on a $1300 laptop, but moving past that. Overheating. Well, everyone has read the reviews. Yes this laptop can run hot. Too hot to the touch in certain areas. This is the main reason for my first return. Also saw frame drops where every 15-30 minutes things would slow down a bit. Acer really needs to address this as its really the only weak point. Build quality could be a little better. I would prefer a more robust design. At the very least less plastic and more aluminum or something. Maybe Acer could offer a Heavy Duty line that is more durable and offers better cooling. Maybe im one of the few who wouldnt mind a heavier, thicker laptop as long as it performed well and was built like a tank. Battery life sucks. Get over it, its a gaming laptop, but its bad. I was watching Netflix with the brightness turned all the way down, powering my little cool pad and speakers and I had about 2-2.5 hours of battery life. Maybe 3. Memory is something youll want to upgrade. After installing GTA 5 and a few small games Ive run out of room. Not a big deal though when you take into account that this is simply an area where Acer saved money and passed the savings to the consumer in final price. The Good Picture quality is brilliant. I am very happy and impressed with the picture. Note that I am not very experienced with HD picture, but this is the best computer picture Ive ever seen. Speed. This laptop is fast, startup in 7-8 seconds, surfing the web, downloads, streaming videos, gaming, its remarkable. Im blown away Sound, its a laptop, I wont even comment, get some external speakers. Quality. Pretty happy with the overall quality. The back lit keyboard is very nice, the keys feel great. Touch pad feels high quality. Screens flexes a good it though, and the laptop doesnt feel indestructible but it ought to hold up for daily use. Gaming is great on here. I play GTA 5 with mods, high graphics, and it just runs great. Only exception being the overheating and every 15-30 min frame drops. Hopefully the Second model doesnt have any issues, will update if it does. Second model has issues! Seeing some very noticeable backlight bleed around the bottom border of the screen. In addition to that I see two stuck or dead pixels in the middle of the screen. The quality control on these laptops is really terrible. Ive given up.

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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.

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Is been a week that am trying to solve it out, about the promotion code for black ops 4 without anyone takes the responsibility. Amazon marketing was always pointing that the manufacturer has the responsibility and from the other side, Acer pointing that Amazon Marketing is managing the promo code. Acer send me the following email that; "Amazon is bundling a free game code for Call of Duty 4 with selected Amazon SKUs. This offer is provided and fulfilled by Amazon and is not exclusive to Acer brand computers. Customers who have met the requirements for the offer will receive an email from Amazon within 7 to 10 business days from the purchase with instructions on how to claim the offer. Customers who claim they did not receive the code must contact Amazon support for assistance with this promotion." and Amazon still not taking any responsibility at all. That was my worst customer experience ever.

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First of all, this laptop is a beast with i7 8th Gen and GTX 1060 (not Max-Q). it handled new games (2018) flawlessly in High/Ultra settings. The biggest problem like others have been experiencing is heating issue. Even with the cooling pad (Slopehill, 5 fans), it still produced around low 80s Celsius during game sessions. Therefore, FPS (frame per second) are dropping like crazy. It was making me feel like the CPU and GPU were giving up. I was hyped up when I got this but then was disappointed. It was a big let down when performance dropping because of heating problem. Other than that, 15.6" IPS 144hz is awesome. This laptop not too bulky for travel at all. With lowest contrast on balanced power, it gave me 5 hours of watching Netflix without any issue. I dont know how that happens when its battery is supposed to last 3-4 hours max. This is a great build for the price at this moment. It makes sense when Acer saved $$$ on material quality along with high end hardware that come with this laptop. I would recommend this laptop for stationary use with cooling pad and vacuum air exhaust installed all the time to combat the heating problem to avoid performance drop. It is a good buy for the money right now but I had to return it due to the issues above.

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