Features:

  • 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8750H 6-Core Processor (Up to 4.1GHz) with Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Overclockable Graphics with 6 GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM
  • 15.6" Full HD (1920 x 1080) widescreen LED-backlit IPS display (144Hz Refresh Rate, 300nit Brightness & 72% NTSC )
  • 16GB DDR4 2666MHz DRAM Memory & 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD | Extra empty accessible slot for 2.5 inch hard drive or SSD
  • Gigabit Wi-Fi |Backlit Keyboard | USB 3.1 (Type C) | Dual All-Metal AeroBlade 3D Fan Cooling | Metal Chassis.Battery Capacity:3320 mAh
  • Up to 7-hours of battery life
144hz, 1060 gtx & i7-8750h version

I don't often even write reviews, i have to be compelled by a superior experience, or an abysmal experience. anything that falls in the middle isn't worth the white noise. I am very satisfied with the performance for dollar. I made sure to test drive it for over a month before i wrote a review. runs the games i am most interested in (heavily modded Fallout 4, Mad Max, Witcher 3, Borderlands 2) excellent and super smooth on very high or ultra settings. Heat was a lot better for me than some have reported, especially with previous versions of this series. I never had temp above 63 degrees except when i put Mad Max on ultra and let it try to run at 144 fps to match monitor and even then the fans kept it well below limits. I have had zero issues with the 8750H throttling as it is prone to do in many new laptops. mine is usually running as fast as it wants to with nowhere near worrisome temps. With a load it stays at 3.9 to 4.1Ghz. Performance: A+ Temps: A- (better than most) (keyboard area and mousepad area do not heat up at all) Build Quality: A+ Battery: B (runs for a reasonably long time browsing web, watching youtube, etc, gone in a blink when gaming, but what do you expect running demanding games on max or near max settings.) Screen: A+ (beautiful, bright and smooth.) Noise: A- (a bit noisy at max, fortunately max is not needed. ) extra hard drive slot was a wonderful addition, had a 240 solid state 2.5mm drive left over i threw in and it made the storage size bearable for now (fallout 4 +mods is over 100GB haha) Size/Weight: A ive had "dual gpu" type laptops before, i remember this tech to be painful in earlier versions. I had a laptop one time that you had to shut completely down and flip a switch on the side to reboot in desired GPU. I ran fallout 4 for first time (and first game on this after unboxing) and it decided i had an Intel GMA and did not choose a preset. I manually chose ultra and launched. 1060 kicked in and ran flawless. Every game after has found the 1060 on the first launch and set preset to ultra. I don't know if it was a fallout 4 thing or if it was simply that the 1060 had never turned on before, but it was not a big deal as it still worked out easy for fallout 4 and worked flawlessly on everything since. Going from Intel to 1060 is instant and invisible. No reboot, no manual selection, no lag/stutter/stall/etc. Just works. Very little bloatware. Don't know what Acer did, but from complete shutdown this thing boots into windows faster than anything Ive ever owned. Its borderline ridiculous. faster than other gaming computers Ive had could come out of standby. I searched and fretted and lamented for a couple months trying to find a laptop that met ALL my criteria. This is it. i got the CPU, GPU, screen and temps I wanted, didn't have to compromise anywhere. Also, Acer made it super easy to register for the warranty. Instead of having to fill something out and mail it in, there is an app that you can open, type a few things into and boom, registered and warranty validated (then uninstall). The predator sense software to choose fan speed and GPU OC settings is easy and a great option. Most laptops wont let you do anything with fan speeds or clock settings. I did, at first, thing is was hinky garbage, then i realized the changes i made had a delay. If you set 'Max fan' it will kick in instantly, but choosing custom settings has a few seconds or more delay, but then it works. I used Throttlestop to drop CPU core voltage and drop a few more degrees, but it wasn't necessary as temps were already good. 5 weeks in I am super satisfied with EVERY aspect of this purchase and have no regrets. I believe this most recent (2018) version of this laptop has some good improvements over the older versions concerning performance and heat, so be careful you know which one a review is talking about as Amazon lumps them all together for some reason. here are reviews in this section for 60hz screen versions, 7700hq CPU versions, 1050Ti versions, etc. and that does not accurately reflect this exact product, especially since this has the metal blade aero fans that most older versions do not. future plans: swap CPU and GPU thermal paste for Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut, upgrade both SSDs to 1TB size. Anyway, highly satisfied and would recommend to anyone for a great gaming laptop at a great price.

For the price you can't get any better than this

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

The best gaming laptop you can find at this rate

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

Definitely Worth Your Money As Long As You Can Bring The Temp Lower

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

Good Gaming laptop for a Budget

Chances are you know a bit about computers if you've 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, here's 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 laptop's display at ~$150 GRAPHICS: Nvidia gtx1060. I wouldn't 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 won't bore you with all of the details about how beastly this is. Bottom line, it is a top of the line CPU. the desktop's 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 don't recommend this as a storage drive, only as an operating system/large program drive. That's 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 won't need more than that. Keyboard: red backlight, side numpad. Can't 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 can't 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 isn't 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 aren't 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 don't). 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 weren't 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 haven't 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.

Not just for gamers

What attracted me to this laptop was the processing power and speed. I need a new laptop for work and this one checked off everything on my wish list (with the added HDD). I read all the reviews and heeded the warning about overheating so I got a matching laptop fan and this laptop is so fast, the resolution is awesome, the back lit keys (only come on when plugged in) look so cool. We are still getting to know each other but I have the highest hopes for the Predator. Admittedly it has been a while since I bought a new laptop I am a little starry eyed. I installed the HDD with help of a YouTube video - NOTE: inside the box with your power cord is a tiny bag of 4 screws this is for the HDD installation. I highly recommend.

Faster than diarrhea!

So full disclosure... I use This laptop for running software for my CNC and for this purpose is more than sufficient. I'm 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 wasn't 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... She's 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? There's 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 you're storing thousands of pictures maybe you'll want more room. 6gb of video memory on the gtx1060.. Handles 3d rendering like a champ. I like the aluminum construction although it's not all aluminum. There is some plastic. The keyboard feels nice And is responsive, track pad doesn't disappoint. Back-lit keys are spiffy. Honestly my biggest complaint is that the bezel around the screen is rather large when you're 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.

Powerful pc for good price

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

An unreasonably fast laptop for a reasonable price.

I'm 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. It's not an ultra-thin notebook, but very travel friendly. Pro: Premium Feel Pro: Gorgeous Display. It's a 144 Hz IPS display. It's gorgeous. There is some lightbleed when displaying almost all black screens, but that's 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 don't 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. There's plenty of third party software that does all this already but it's nice of them to try. Neutral : 2 year limited warranty: I hope I don't 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.

Best thing I bought this year!

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, don't 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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