Acer Predator Helios 300 Review: GTX 1060 gaming laptop for about $1,000

[Julio Franco]

On the surface, the Acer Predator Helios 300 isn't a head-turning gaming laptop. It's a 15" system packing Core i7 and GTX 1060 internals. But what piqued my interest was the price: the Helios is likely the cheapest gaming laptop with these specs on the market, at $1,049 on Amazon, and user reviews have been largely positive.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1508-acer-helios-300/

 

[oldikes]

I dont mind "gamer" designs to an extent on laptops, but this looks terrible.
Specwise its nice though.

 

[kapital98]

Tim,

Did you use the predator sense software? Or any other OC'ing software? It bumps up the performance and blasts the fans. It gets extremely loud and hot (but gets a lot more headroom for performance). If so, that may be a reason why the Helios was a little worse than other systems with the same specs.

I've been using this laptop for about 2 months. It's an absolute steal for the price. The display is by far the worst part but it's still significantly better than a TN panel. I came from a Dell Inspiron with a 4k, IPS display. Side-by-side, the Dell blew this away. But this is still better than some other ultrabook IPS panels I was comparing it too (granted, older ultrabooks). This is a laptop that works fine indoors but shouldn't be used near direct sunlight.

This laptop does everything right but nothing great. I had to put stickers over the obnoxious "PREDATOR" logo on the front (I have clients that would not appreciate that). The gaming design isn't terrible but pretty cliche. The ports are mediocre but okay. Without an fan under the laptop, and using Predator Sense, it will get extremely hot and loud. It will even start to throttle as the CPU starts to get around 100 Celsius (90 for the 1060). A decent laptop cooler will solve this and make it cool , quiet and fast.

An interesting point on the battery life: The Geforce drivers tend to be horrible at switching to onboard graphics. I'll have the computer use the 1060 when idle and the integrated graphics when starting games. If you want smooth performance, you should just keep the 1060 on all the time. But then you only get about 3 hours of battery life. You can get 6-8 hours if you use integrated. It's just one more asterisk around an amazing price.

Overall: It's an amazing value. You're getting essentially the same laptop for $300 less. The design is average, the ports are average, the screen is average, but the hardware is outstanding for this price. I highly recommend it to anyone gaming on a budget.

9/10

P.S. The price of this laptop constantly changes. Some people have gotten it on flash sales for $900. Other times it will go above $1,050. I got mine for $1,050 but it didn't come with the 1tb hdd. It wouldn't be surprising to see this go on sale for Black Friday near that $900 price point.

 

[Reehahs]

Tim,

Did you use the predator sense software? Or any other OC'ing software? It bumps up the performance and blasts the fans. It gets extremely loud and hot (but gets a lot more headroom for performance). If so, that may be a reason why the Helios was a little worse than other systems with the same specs.

I've been using this laptop for about 2 months. It's an absolute steal for the price. The display is by far the worst part but it's still significantly better than a TN panel. I came from a Dell Inspiron with a 4k, IPS display. Side-by-side, the Dell blew this away. But this is still better than some other ultrabook IPS panels I was comparing it too (granted, older ultrabooks). This is a laptop that works fine indoors but shouldn't be used near direct sunlight.

This laptop does everything right but nothing great. I had to put stickers over the obnoxious "PREDATOR" logo on the front (I have clients that would not appreciate that). The gaming design isn't terrible but pretty cliche. The ports are mediocre but okay. Without an fan under the laptop, and using Predator Sense, it will get extremely hot and loud. It will even start to throttle as the CPU starts to get around 100 Celsius (90 for the 1060). A decent laptop cooler will solve this and make it cool , quiet and fast.

An interesting point on the battery life: The Geforce drivers tend to be horrible at switching to onboard graphics. I'll have the computer use the 1060 when idle and the integrated graphics when starting games. If you want smooth performance, you should just keep the 1060 on all the time. But then you only get about 3 hours of battery life. You can get 6-8 hours if you use integrated. It's just one more asterisk around an amazing price.

Overall: It's an amazing value. You're getting essentially the same laptop for $300 less. The design is average, the ports are average, the screen is average, but the hardware is outstanding for this price. I highly recommend it to anyone gaming on a budget.

9/10

P.S. The price of this laptop constantly changes. Some people have gotten it on flash sales for $900. Other times it will go above $1,050. I got mine for $1,050 but it didn't come with the 1tb hdd. It wouldn't be surprising to see this go on sale for Black Friday near that $900 price point.

That is a very well put together summary of your experience.

I would consider this laptop and hook it up to a external monitor. I do agree that there is no need for USB 2.0 ports. The hardware is a steal for the price.

 

[kapital98]

That is a very well put together summary of your experience.

I would consider this laptop and hook it up to a external monitor. I do agree that there is no need for USB 2.0 ports. The hardware is a steal for the price.

Thank you

I use an external monitor when possible. The major problem, and something that I find to be a major weakness, is the HDMI output does not support gsync. I was hoping for 90hz+ refresh at 1080p (allowed by HDMI 2.0). I bought a 165hz IPS gysnc monitor at the same time. No matter what I did, I couldn't get gsync or beyond 60hz refresh to work. I may be missing something but I think it's hardware based. It works fine with my Radeon 7970 and Geforce 1070 cards.

It's a great buy. I think Tim did a great review and his criticism about the panel is largely warranted. I do wish he used Predator Sense because it does considerably boost performance (and Tim can correct me if he did use it).

 

[Scorpus]

Did you use the predator sense software? Or any other OC'ing software? It bumps up the performance and blasts the fans. It gets extremely loud and hot (but gets a lot more headroom for performance). If so, that may be a reason why the Helios was a little worse than other systems with the same specs.

As a general policy I test with default settings across the board with every laptop unless stated otherwise. Unfortunately I was extremely time constrained with this review so I didn't have time to performance benchmark Acer's OC software, but it's a feature that's not really unique to this laptop. There's nothing stopping you from overclocking the GPU on any laptop (bar thermal issues) if you wanted.

But in general I didn't see any issue with the performance, it's basically the same as other GTX 1060 laptops

 

[Bomberspell]

I like it. I don't really care too much on looks - to me - " it's what it can do " type of PC/laptops. this laptop is way better than my current gaming PC.. anyway - double thumbs -up!

 

[flipp3r]

It looks like a re-badged Clevo notebook. Might be why it's cheap...