Acer Predator Helios 500 review: Super powerful,

It's the Acer Predator Helios 500 17 amd amd sees Acer pull the Crocodile Dundee' "You call that a gaming laptop? This is a gaming laptop". You'll know what we're talking about if you're a lover of 80s films If not I'm sorry.

Acer does not take into account the latest fashions in design as well. This Predator Helios 500 is not even close to being thin. It weighs over a ton (not literally, but thankfully) It also has no gimmicky secondary displays, that are usually unnecessary in the end.

The Predator Helios 500 is a laptop that is 100% concentrated on one thing that is gaming. It's quite impressive at what it does. Its performance is top-notch and the keyboard is superb and thermal control is excellent and the display is as sophisticated as laptop displays can get, even though you're able to get much more refresh rates for less than the price.

However, cost will be the main obstacle for many. The Helios 500 with this configuration costs around 4 dollars. Yah ha. It's a lot of money that we'll need to completely forget the expense for the majority of this review , or else we'd end up talking about it in every single sentence.

Our quick take

It's the Acer Helios Predator 500 is an extremely heavy-duty laptop in many ways. It's massive and heavy, comes with just about the top specifications you can find in laptops, and is priced at quite a lot.

It's a bit too expensive for the majority of gamers but not because we believe that everyone should be playing games in Full HD at 30 frames per second. A laptop such as Lenovo Legion 7 Lenovo Legion 7 will give you the same performance at less than half the price that's kind of insane.

Its Helios 500 is probably the most suitable choice for those who want to try out overclocking the graphics processor on their laptop from the performance in the thermal department here, there's definitely room for it. It's quite an beast.

Design

Dimensions: 400 x 319.2 x 35.30mm / Weight: 3.90 kg

Abyss Black colour scheme

It is the Predator Helios 500 is a gaming laptop designed for transportation between rooms. It weighs in at least 4kg and has a thickness of 35mm. Moving it around isn't much an enjoyable experience.

But, it is important to keep in mind that this isn't just an exercise in flexing on Acer's part. The more heavy and bulkier laptops are the more powerful a cooling system it is able to put in place.

There's some flexibility happening elsewhere however. In the past year, we've seen a majority of gaming laptops begin to reduce RGB highlights as well as the classic "gamer" design elements however, this Acer Helios 500 is full of these things.

The lid sports a striking illuminated Predator logo. The heating outlet at the back appears to be that's been ripped from a fancy sports car There are more illuminated parts than are essential. The keyboard comes with an RGB backlight that's an expected feature and there's an LED strip that shines brightly on one of the edges, an illuminated circle around the touchpad and LED strips that are also along the sides and the back.

It's like taking a mini fairground ride. We're more interested in experience gaming laptops provide when they use and their performance, but the fact is that - thanks to Acer for this - the RGB elements look great for those who are interested in this sort of thing. There's no bleeding, there's no apparent inconsistency regarding the light level and the colors are vivid.

Its Predator Sense app also lets you customize their behavior in a comprehensive way. Five different kinds of controls and five zones, and you can pick a very wild-looking style for, say the front and side sections, or a more sensible static profile that is for your keyboard. You can make it as tasteless depending on what you prefer.

The basic principles of the Acer Helios 500's construction are well-known. Its lid is made of aluminum The rest is made of tough plastic which allows Acer greater control over where heat generated by the internals ends up, since plastic is less conductive to heat than aluminium.

Screen

17.3-inch Mini LED IPS panel

770 nits maximum brightness

3840 x 2160 resolution

The laptop's design is based on common gaming laptop features and amps them up a little. The screen is a dazzling piece of technology, and it's among the very first Mini LED laptops that we've tried.

You might recognize this technology from Apple's high-end iPad Pro tablets. These panels have many smaller backlight LEDs that are divided into zones. Acer claims there are 512 within Helios 500. Helios 500.

Each zone is in charge over the power of its backlight which means that the brightest portion of the image isn't required to decide on the black levels of the whole display. It's a great feature that significantly increases your high-dynamic range (HDR) capabilities of gaming laptops, which to now was virtually null.

We tried our Acer Helios 500 with a couple of videos that show bright objects floating on the screen. The screen is black and unlike the most recent expensive Samsung TVs the effect of the 'halo' is evident. This is because the backlight area is a amount larger than the brighter area that the display has to render, creating an illuminating effect around areas of high-contrast. However, it's not an enormous issue for gamers and let's be aware that we're working with the latest technology here.

TVs have had FALD – which is a full-array local dimming for decades, however laptops don't. Therefore, if you're a fan of black levels and you're looking for an OLED display instead.

Peak brightness is the primary advantage from the Helios 500's tiny LED panel. It's about twice as brighter than the typical high-end gaming laptop, achieving 670 nits or 770nits when you enable the Windows HDR mode (as as measured in our tests). It's so bright that the screen could be unnerving to stare at in dimly lit rooms.

In addition, you get the benefit of incredible color coverage (almost 100% DCI P3) and the clarity of a panel with a resolution of 4K and you'll have one of the most impressive gaming laptop displays ever in your hands.

However, it's not ideal. The screen on the Predator Helios 500 is built around IPS LCD technology. So, even with Mini LED's backlight zones on the other the other hand, the black color isn't the most deep. If you're playing in a dark space or in a dark room, it is possible that an OLED laptop will appear better.

Additionally, it has a lower refresh rate than many gaming laptops at 120Hz. If you compare it with the Acer Helios 500 side-by-side with the 165Hz HP Omen 16 for some motion tests The HP clearly handles speedy motion more effectively. This isn't solely on the refresh rate as what speed pixels change state is equally crucial. Acer claims that it can be 3ms but this screen doesn't appear to have the most responsive pixels available.

There are certain areas that are likely to see improvement as the technology behind them improves. For now, it's still one of the top laptop gaming screens you can find.

Keyboard and touchpad

3.1mm key travel

Key caps that can be interchanged WSAD key caps

Touchpad made of plastic with separate mouse buttons

It is a great laptop. Predator Helios 500 has a fantastic keyboard. As with the top large laptops, it has plenty of travel (for the size of a laptop) to provide a good feedback when you type. At the very least, tap your WSAD keys.

It's quiet. The RGB lighting gives you control per key and looks stunning as you observe, it has a full Numpad. Additionally, you get aluminum caps for the Arrow and WSAD keys, to give a different appearance and feel.

Is it the most powerful laptop keyboard? It could be Alienware's keyboard with a mechanical mechanism, which is found in a few Alienware M17X-based models. However, we won't complain about the one made by Acer.

The touchpad on the Helios 500 is less basic, but even though there's an area of RGB lighting that runs around its edges. It's a small rubber pad and is, frankly, a bit odd that Acer hasn't used the glass option in an expensive laptop.

It's still a great feeling and the mouse buttons beneath the pad provide excellent semi-clicky feedback. Like most gaming laptops, this is designed with the assumption that you'll be using an additional mouse the majority times.

Performance

Intel Core i9-11980HK processor, 32GB DDR4 RAM

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 16GB GPU

2x 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSDs, RAID 0 array

Acer has sent us the exact specifications you'll see in well-known UK retailers for an amazing price of PS3999 (which is about $5,400 as of the date that we're writing this). It comes with one of the processors from Intel, an Intel Core I9-11980HK with 32GB of RAM as well as two 1TB SSDs, arranged in an RAID 0 array meaning that when you check their read speeds, you'll see a ridiculous results of 13GB per second.

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