There's no mistaking the Predator Helios 300 for anything but a gaming laptop, with its all-black chassis, angled lid corners, aggro rear cooling vents, and turquoise-backlit Predator logo on the lid.
PREDATOR HELIOS PORTABLE
(Besides, the base model has twice the storage.) If you'd prefer something more portable with better battery life, Acer's 14-inch Predator Triton 300 SE is a top choice, but this year's Predator Helios 300 once again nabs an Editors' Choice award among midrange 15.6-inch gaming rigs. Everything we liked about the previous Predator Helios 300 applies to this one, as does our recommendation to stick with the base model: Its features and price make more sense at $1,349, and its RTX 3060 will perform almost as well as our test unit's RTX 3070.
PREDATOR HELIOS UPGRADE
The only difference is an upgrade to Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30 Series "Ampere" graphics, but that's an important change since it markedly improves gaming performance. Acer's 15.6-inch Predator Helios 300-at $1,699 as seen here, has gone up $200 from last year's model. What really makes for a worthwhile spend here is the 1440p panel topping a beefy config, with the rest just serving as the icing on the cake.Buying a gaming laptop in 2021 is more expensive than it was in 2020. Basically, I won't be recommending it for you US folks, sorry, but if you're in the market for a decent gaming laptop in the UK, this machine is killer.
PREDATOR HELIOS 1080P
The closest config I could find in the US only comes with a 144Hz 1080p screen and half the SSD storage, and generally it's selling for around $1,800, which I can't wrap my head around. Although that does bring me to one of the major downsides: US availability. Having spent a lot of time checking out press samples of US keyboards and laptops, it's also nice for me to use a lappy with a UK keyboard layout.
PREDATOR HELIOS FULL
I'm not a massive fan of the keyboard's feel, but at least it's full size. A quality webcam on a gaming laptop that isn't pointing up my nose, for once. I'm really happy with both the high positioning of the included 2.1MP camera, and the fact it runs at 60Hz. The metallic blue is nice and subtle, although the edges are a little sharp for sitting on my actual lap, it's still a nifty and still very portable machine.Īs for the peripherals and ports, the addition of Thunderbolt 4 is great, along with the couple of USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports you get, though a few more wouldn't have gone amiss. The only issue with using it at work is an issue the Razer blade suffers with too: the fact it has a dumb gamery logo (sorry Acer) slapped onto the back of an otherwise gorgeous chassis.
With a little backpack upgrade, I would happily carry it to and from work. The thickness can make it a little awkward, and it's not as svelte as say the Razer Blade, but that little extra thickness helps afford this machine great thermals. It's easy enough for me to lift one-handed but fitting it into a backpack was a bit of a stretch, that's due to the 17.3-inch screen.
It's a relatively chunky machine, but not to the point of taking over your desk.
It's great for that panic moment when you realise you've been covering the exhausts and need to rectify the heat that's accumulated. It'll suddenly whir up to somewhere between 68–75 decibels, but lay your hand on the bottom for half a minute and you'll physically feel the chassis cool off. That's not at all bad, compared to the other laptops in that price range, and you can always slap the turbo button on the top left of the keyboard if you feel it getting a bit too hot. We're looking at a maximum CPU temperature of 85☌ and max GPU temps of less than 80☌. What is impressive, however, is that power doesn't translate into topping out on thermals. Sadly, the Core i7 12700H isn't the most efficient mobile CPU of Intel's 12th Gen lineup, and coupled with the 140W RTX 3060 it's left the battery life in a pretty terrible position-74 minutes is hardly enough time to get a round of gaming in unplugged, but that's the tradeoff we've grown to expect for a machine that ticks both the gaming and productivity boxes.
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