Acer Predator Helios 500 Review – A gaming beast that matches the price

With dimensions of 400 x 319.2 x 35.30 mm, it is one of the largest 17-inch laptops on the market. It is wider and deeper than Gigabyte AORUS 17X, and compared to Dell Alienware X17, each dimension is larger. Although this may not sound attractive, the benefit seems to be cooling. There are large intake fans on the base of the laptop, and then exhaust air from the vents on the back and sides. Although I usually prefer a smaller and lighter laptop, once you reach this style and size, the overall size and weight become a bit redundant because you rarely move it.

The thick design and high price means you can get all the ports you need. 5 different USB ports, HDMI, 2.5GbE and Thunderbolt 4. This will easily connect to all your peripherals and 2^nd Monitor and become a complete work/combat station.

In addition to the RGB keyboard, there are many RGB elements around the chassis of this laptop and a luminous Predator logo.

Maintenance/upgrade

I usually don’t like to wander around inside review samples worth £4,000, but there are some 2.5-inch drive mounting accessories in the package, so I think it’s necessary to see how easy the upgrade is.

The laptop has a two-part rear panel. You need to remove the smaller panel before you can remove the entire rear panel. Even after removing the smaller panel and extra screws, I still felt more resistance than when I tried to remove the entire rear panel, so I decided to leave it. This seems to give you access to the cooling and main components of the laptop, which you don’t need to access unless something goes wrong.

The smaller part provides access to 2.5-inch trays, batteries, WiFi modules, RAM, and M.2 NVMe drives.

exhibit

My sample has a UHD 120Hz miniLED panel, which is the top option for this laptop. It’s a bit special, maybe one of the things that helps justify the price. There are very few laptops with 4K 120Hz.

I don’t have a proper colorimeter to test the performance, but the display is very bright, color accuracy and black look great.

Overall, this monitor is one of the best monitors I have used on a laptop, but it is undeniable that I am not a serious enough gamer to appreciate the 300Hz refresh rate on other laptops.

Keyboard and trackpad

Since this is a huge and expensive gaming laptop, the keyboard and trackpad are much better than ordinary laptops.

The keyboard is backlit, with bright RGB LEDs and key controls. The lights are very bright, so if you are an RGB fan, you will be impressed. More importantly, the typing experience is good, the stroke of the keys is also good, and it feels more like typing on a suitable keyboard.

You can also replace the WASD keys with the two sets included in the box. Using alternate keys, you can set up Predator Sense to provide some analog control for your keys, and light taps provide different functions than full taps. You need to manually enter Predator Sense and switch keyboard settings. This is a weird feature, I don’t have strong feelings, but I can understand that some people may find it useful.

The trackpad works well, it has proper left and right mouse buttons, which I prefer.

Performance and fan noise

At first, I didn’t realize that there were two power bricks. A laptop can work well with one, but only when I press the turbo button did I realize that you need a second power supply to use this feature.

One thing I immediately noticed about this laptop is that it runs relatively quietly. When I use it, I usually turn on the TV in the background, I can almost hear the fan under light load, and during the benchmark test, the fan does not spin loudly. The sound configuration of the fan is also relatively pleasant, more like a low-end swish than the irritating noise from a small laptop.

This laptop does not have a MUX switch, so the integrated graphics cannot be disabled. This will have a negative impact on performance, but I cannot compare it with a MUX-enabled laptop of similar specifications.

In terms of performance, this can easily handle everything you invest in. All benchmark tests were run at 4K resolution at the highest setting.

• Time spy: 10156 (graphics: 10572, CPU: 8308)
• Port Royal: 6506
• Fire strike: 17791 (Graphics: 21432, Physics: 19718, Comprehensive: 7350)
• 3DMark CPU profile: Maximum number of threads 7413
• PCMark 10: 6475 (Essentials: 9066, Productivity: 8498, Digital Content Creation: 9562)
• Far Cry 6: Average 46 FPS, lowest 39 FPS, highest 50 FPS
• FFinal Fantasy XV benchmark: 10911
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Average 52 FPS, lowest 19 FPS, highest 96 FPS
• Crystal plate: 12038 MB/s read, 9854 MB/s write

After unlocking the CPU, you can also choose to adjust the performance of the CPU. Most people will stick to Predator Sense, but the more adventurous can try the BIOS settings.

Battery

The 74Wh in this laptop will certainly not let you spend a whole day of work, even with light use. Acer claims that it can be used for 4 hours, but I think this is very optimistic.

Notebooks of this caliber have never been designed to use batteries primarily.

The power bricks are large, each providing 330W. As far as I know, 330W should be enough to run it without problems. However, once you start playing overclocking, it might help.

software

The out-of-the-box Acer Predator Triton 900 runs Windows 10, but during the setup process, you are now told that you can upgrade to Windows 11. I keep it on Windows 10 for my review.

As usual, one of my biggest annoyances is Acer Jumpstart, which has a large pop-up window to play some random games that I am not interested in. Advertising on laptops is bad enough, but on the Big Four laptops.

Of course, you can disable the alarm and delete Acer Jumpstart, it shouldn’t exist in the first place.