Acer predator helios 300

Off-Topic Games, Gaming and Hardware
1

What do you guys think of the 2019 version of the Acer Predator Helios 300? It has a new design than the 2018 one, making it slimmer and more compact.

I am liking the smaller dimensions and it is good to see gaming laptops being be more compact.

I am going to wait a couple of months until this machine goes on sale.

The specs:

  • 9th Generation Intel Core i7-9750H 6-Core Processor (Up to 4.5GHz) with Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Graphics with 6GB of dedicated GDDR6 VRAM
  • 15.6" Full HD (1920 x 1080) Widescreen LED-backlit IPS Display (144Hz Refresh Rate, 3ms Overdrive Response Time, 300nit Brightness & 72% NTSC)
  • 16GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory, 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD (2 x PCIe M.2 Slots | 1 Slot Open for Easy Upgrades) & 1 - Available Hard Drive Bay
  • Backlit Keyboard | LAN: Killer Ethernet E2500 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN | Wireless: Killer DoubleShot Pro Wireless-AC 1550 802. 11ac | 4th Gen All-Metal AeroBlade 3D Fan
2

As long as the cooling system can handle the thermals this looks like a nice setup.

3

I have the I7 7th gen version with the 1060 - it was a budget laptop, however. I don’t know what they’re selling this one for, but hopefully it has less issues than mine has had.

It runs hot - before I undervolted it manually, set it to power-saver, Draenor baked it. It hurt my fingers to touch the keyboard to play.

After undervolting it and set it to power-saving, it is exactly where it should’ve been before. WoW rarely even turns the fans up, once I turned anti-aliasing and the like off, though every other game naturally does.

Oh also, battery life is… abysmal. You can’t really game for more than maybe an hour with it unplugged, and the power brick is an actual brick with a big ol’ fat plug. It aint portable.

I had to reformat it to clean up a bunch of issues, too, that randomly scooted up. It would blue-screen consistently, at least once a week. The fans also recently started vibrating and making noise at lower speeds that should be silent.

If you’re going to get this version, get a terabyte ssd too for good measure. WoW doesn’t like being put on an HDD and the 256 gigabyte SSD will be taken up by Windows 10 and WoW, leaving… 60 gigabytes or so.

I bought this laptop for 1300 dollars and had to put an extra 250 dollars into it, so far, to update the HDD that feels out of place and not very useful and to fix the faulty fan assembly. The one you’re eyeballing could be better, but it might also not.

4

How was the build quality of the laptop? Do you carry it around with you a lot?

1 Like
5

I do, yes. I take it to and from work with me daily and it has held up very well.

Despite the massive list of complaints and issues I’ve had with the laptop, for 1300 dollars, (it’s 800 now iirc), I would definitely recommend it for gaming. It’s a very competent gaming laptop.

Linus Tech Tips did a very good review of it, if you’d like to give it a watch.