Easily a solid 5-star hardcore gaming notebook for its performance, quality, amazing fast & color rich display, feature set, and it’s elegant industrial design with a minimalist feel, without an obnoxious large logo, AND the design include a slight gaming accent. The overall look turned heads on the first day that I used it. HOWEVER, I did really really really want to give it a one star thanks to THE friendly but “less” experienced post-Covid sales that seems to be at a lower caliber in terms of knowledge (maybe he was a new hire?).
I come from 2 Asus Zephyrus G14 (2020 & 2022) in the recent past for work, and I mainly play on my desktop 2080. I love Asus. These G14 are great for what they are (Clean understated look, thin, good quality, and the 2020 model was very affordable). I did have regrets buying the 2022 Zephyrus G14 model, as my 2022 G14’s skin and KB temp is very uncomfortable. These G14 form factor wasn’t designed for performance, but I accepted that when I bought them. Life changes though.
Here comes this Helios 300, full power with 150W of MGP, a real PCIe Gen 4 SSD, with Crystal Diskmark seq read speed that runs close to TWICE the Speed as my 2022 Zephyrus G14 (To the Best Buy Sales Staff that tried to sell us the Sword to my friend, please don’t just regurgitate the fact tag, you almost misled my friend into buying a “RTX3060” Sword over the Helios 300 w/ RTX3060, AND you couldn’t tell the differences between perf/MGP, DDR4 vs 5, refresh rates, and AO/DDS vs MUX vs none. To Acer, you probably should try to tell the world what you packed into the system. I like to see you stick around. But, for now, I feel lucky that I found you. Yes, I was happy with the MUX that Asus gave me, but thank you for DDS. See, with manual MUX, if you forget to switch and reboot, your battery life is not going to be good. And this stupidity only happens when you are out on important meeting, and you forget to bring your brick. Oh, and yes, I felt stupid.
This particular Predator is a hidden gem (3070Ti and 3060). My friend’s Helios 3060 from Best Buy easily outperformed some of the lower wattage RTX3070 that you get from Amazon (I have friends that want cheap). If you are not a hardcore gamer AND have never tried this Predator, you would not have known all the performance, features, and quality that this guy packed. Maybe because of the number of professional reviews on this 2022 Predator is very scarce. But, for sure, I’m super pleased with the performance that I got from this notebook, thank you Best Buy.
Note: Mine has Per Key RGB, and my friends 3060 only has Zone RGB, and the display is different. Although both has G-Sync for its internal display (better than FreeSync that supports a wider fluctuation of frame rates), my 3070 Ti has 240Hz. My friends 3060 supports 140W MGP, which is 10 watts higher than the max 2021 RTX3060. The sleeve is nice with a good feel and leans towards form fitting (you have your own preference). The audio port, like most gaming notebooks, is on the right location, which is on the left. I’m very pleased with the abundant IO ports, and happy to see that the RJ45 is also on the left, and key IO ports is on the rear (I’m a righty). There’s a RGB strip on the front for mood light which is programable, and a nice touch. Turbo Key can be loud (fan). Suggest that you use the Predator sense key and use the “Extreme” or “Default” mode instead of Turbo for regular work hours, and Quiet Mode for meetings. I have an open back Sennheiser. I recommend close back headset, not for the fan noise when I Turbo, but mainly to avoid hearing my wife complaining about me playing games 5 in the morning. All joking aside, I have no issues with the fan sound. Lastly, the rear vent color is far more subtle than what's shown online. It's color shifting which is mesmerizing. I love it. It's there if you see it, but majority of time, it just blends right in as it's mostly hidden. Really cool.