Acer Predator Helios 300 (2018, 15-Inch) Review

Don't want to—or can't afford to—shell out kilobucks on a gaming laptop? Today's midrange GeForce-based models fill that void.

Among them: Acer's Predator Helios 300 (starting at $1,099.99; $1,299.99 as tested, in its 15-inch version), built around muscular Intel "Coffee Lake" eighth-generation CPUs.

It's designed for speed, whether for casual rounds of Fortnite or pushing your machine to its limit by tethering it to a virtual reality (VR) headset.

With its GeForce GTX 1060 graphics, the Helios 300 will run most any game you throw at it with agility.

The catch: Some competing models will, too, for around the same money, and many have better battery life.

So the Helios 300's advantage centers on whether you prefer its keyboard layout, color scheme, and build quality.

(We're fans, for the most part.)

What's Black and Red and Gray All Over?

Acer offers the Predator Helios 300 in versions with 15-inch and 17-inch screens; the model for review here is the former.

In appearance, the Helios 300 isn't too much of a departure from the Asus TUF Gaming FX504G($868.50 at Amazon) I reviewed just before it.

It's a midrange, mostly black gaming laptop that's been embellished with red accents.

The lid, for instance, bears two crimson streaks etched on either side of a gray-metal Predator logo.

The rear exhaust, too, is bordered in red plastic.

Likewise, the WASD keys and the touchpad are outlined in red for the sake of visibility.

The chassis measures 1.1 by 15.4 by 10.4 inches (HWD), and it weighs 5.95 pounds.

While the underside of the system and the bezels around the display are plastic, the outer lid and the deck that surrounds the keyboard are all-metal, giving off a cooler, more premium feel than the rest of the machine.

Also adding flair is the shiny metal edging around the keyboard.

The design theme carries over to the lid, which is decorated with a series of textured black triangles at the forward edge.

Tastes vary, but I'm not a big fan of the red-and-black color scheme.

It has become so common among gaming laptops these days as to border on cliche.

(Your mileage may vary, of course; I see far more gaming laptops than most people.) Seeing how much thought went into the curves and edges of the Predator Helios 300's design, I would have liked a more original, or at least a different, palette.

The Predator Helios 300 has a standard chiclet-style keyboard layout.

The keys have more bounce than other gaming-laptop keyboards I've tried, such as the one on the Asus TUF Gaming FX504G.

The touchpad, meanwhile, is plastic-surfaced.

It feels better than most gaming-laptop touchpads, due to the slight bounce you get when you press it all the way down, but it does not have the physical left and right clickers that some new machines, such as the Lenovo Legion Y530($749.99 at Lenovo), do.

That's fine, though, because if you're gaming on a laptop, you're more than likely going to pair it with a gaming mouse, anyway.

Esports fiends and competitive gamers wouldn't give any touchpad the time of day in a proper match.

Solid Sound System and Screen

The speakers on the Acer Predator Helios 300 sound decent, but the fact that they're down-firing doesn't do them credit under some circumstances.

Many laptop designs feature speaker grilles positioned forward of their keyboards and in front of their displays.

That's not the case here.

The speakers are to the left and right of two rubber anti-skid pads on the underside of the laptop.

With the laptop pressed into your lap, these speakers will naturally sound muffled.

On a proper desk or other hard surface, however, they sound about the same as an upward-facing speaker grille, because of the way the laptop is elevated off the desk by the rubber pads.

(Reflecting the sound off the hard surface amplifies the perceived volume level.) All in all, the sound is crisp enough for a laptop at this price point.

The 15.6-inch in-plane-switching (IPS) screen on the Acer Predator Helios 300 has a native resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels.

The screen has a matte finish, so, even in bright lighting conditions, you won't get a lot of glare from the surface.

It's also viewable even when you're not looking at the laptop straight-on.

This is a typical trait of IPS panels and matters especially if you game in a group and tend to have spectators peering over your shoulder.

Impressive for this price range (the most expensive 15-inch model of the Helios 300 caps out at $1,399.99) is the Helios 300's 144Hz high refresh rate display.

60Hz is the standard for most machines, and anything higher is generally exclusive to more expensive laptops or displays.

At 144Hz, the Helios 300 can display many more frames per second, at least in instances when the hardware is capable of pushing that high (usually dependent on the game being played).

If it were trying to display at a higher resolution, going above (or even hitting) 60fps with a GTX 1060 would be a stretch, but at 1080p, the laptop's GTX 1060 can make use of the higher refresh rate in less graphics-intensive titles.

Speaking of the internal components, the Acer Predator Helios 300 wields a 2.3GHz, quad-core Core i5-8300H in the entry-level configuration.

The model I'm reviewing here has a 2.2GHz, six-core Intel Core i7-8750H.

Configurations start at 8GB of RAM and go up to the 16GB I tested.

(The machine is upgradable to a maximum of 32GB.) Our review unit also shipped with 256GB of solid-state storage and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics with 6GB of dedicated video memory.

Acer also offers a 17.3-inch version of the Acer Predator Helios 300 that comes outfitted in three configurations, topping out with the same Core i7-8750H processor and GeForce GTX 1060 graphics.

The Predator Helios 300's port selection is sufficient for its class.

On the left edge is a Gigabit Ethernet port joined by an HDMI port, a single USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port, a USB 3.0 port, and an SD card slot...

On the right are two USB 2.0 ports, a headphone jack, and the connection point for the AC adapter...

On the wireless connectivity front, the Acer Predator Helios 300 incorporates 802.11ac Wi-Fi and support for Bluetooth 5.

Like all Acer Predator laptops, the Helios 300 comes with a two-year warranty standard.

Six Cores of Oomph

In the performance trials I ran, the Predator Helios 300 conducted itself well against competing laptops that PC Labs has reviewed in its price range.

Much of that is down to the inclusion of the six-core/12-thread Intel Core i7-8750H processor and the GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, a very potent combination for gaming at 1080p and no slouch for media-crunching and productivity tasks.

The machines I'll be comparing it to here use lower-power Core i5 or last-generation Core i7 processors (all with fewer cores and threads at their disposal), combined with GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti GPUs.

Looking at the numbers, that explains why the Predator Helios 300 came out ahead in every test except for battery life, where the Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming 7000($749.99 at Dell)led the competitive set you see in the chart with its 11-hour-and-1-minute (11:01) runtime off the charger.

The Helios 300, on the other hand, lasted just 3:58 looping PC Labs' test video file before running out of juice.

Looking at these charts, the Predator Helios 300 stacks up best against the configuration of the Lenovo Legion Y520($1,271.99 at Amazon) we reviewed last year.

However, at both companies' suggested retail prices, the Helios 300 is $60 more for superior performance.

In our producivity testing, the Helios 300 showed off the strength of Intel's eighth-generation Coffee Lake processors with a PCMark 8 score of 3,945, whereas the Lenovo Legion Y520 scored 3,484 points.

The six cores and 12 threads of the Coffee Lake CPU also spearheaded decisive victories in the Cinebench and Handbrake tests, which are highly sensitive to multi-threaded performance.

See How We Test Laptops

Smooth 1080p Gaming

In the GPU-intensive 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme benchmark test, the Predator Helios 300 scored 5,547 points, compared with the 3,617 points the Lenovo Legion Y520 attained, a graphics-performance boost in the Helios 300's favor of more than 50 percent.

It's a big leap in performance from a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti to a GTX 1060, especially a full-power GTX 1060 like in the Helios 300.

I also ran this laptop through bench tests in a couple of popular AAA games at its native 1080p resolution.

The Predator Helios 300 tallied an average of 74 frames per second (fps) in the 2018 title Far Cry 5 at Normal settings, and 63fps at the more demanding Ultra preset.

In the game Rise of the Tomb Raider, it garnered 82fps at Medium settings, and 68fps at Very High.

In both cases, that means smooth frame rates.

Indeed, for AAA gaming with the onboard 1080p display, the Predator Helios 300 proves itself to be a robust mobile gaming companion.

These numbers are par for the course for a laptop featuring a GeForce GTX 1060.

If your gaming tastes are more elevated and demand resolutions higher than 1080p (while maintaining frame rates of 60fps or better), then you're going to have to shell out more bucks for a laptop with a GeForce GTX 1070, along with a higher-resolution screen.

An alternative is another machine with a high-refresh-rate 1080p panel.

The 2018 version of the Razer Blade($1,999.11 at Amazon) immediately comes to mind as a candidate, though you could spend less by opting for an Alienware 15 configuration toting a GTX 1070, an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1080p/60Hz display for about $1,650 from Dell.

(That said, a GTX 1070 is likely overkill, or at best, extravagant future-proofing, in that Alienware configuration with its standard screen.) Otherwise, in this price range, you can bank on a lot of GTX 1060- and GTX 1050 Ti-based machines, both of which are suited for robust mainstream gaming—just not in conjunction with screen resolutions higher than 1080p, if you like to keep detail levels boosted.

A Build-Quality Ace for the Bucks

At $1,299.99 as tested, the Acer Predator Helios 300 is a decent value.

Above all else, you're paying for the Intel Core i7 Coffee Lake processor and GeForce GTX 1060 graphics chip.

As a bonus, you're netting a gaming laptop with a build quality that outdoes much of the competition in its price range.

The Helios 300 doesn't shift the market-pricing landscape, but it doesn't have to.

Instead, it gives you exactly what you paid for: a basic gaming laptop that adheres to what most buyers would anticipate paying for such a machine.

It's a step up from the all-plastic, entry-level gaming laptops that run a couple hundred dollars less.

If it's AAA titles and VR gaming that you're after, the Predator Helios 300 is a rock-solid choice that sets the pace in its price range, even if it doesn't wow on value, battery life, or unique features.

However, if your goal is to spend less to play your favorite MOBAs or esports titles, the Asus TUF Gaming FX504G is a more budget-conscious pick with the same color scheme and a step-down GTX 1050 Ti on board.

The Editors' Choice-winning Lenovo Legion Y530 is another option worth looking at, with a simpler, cleaner look (though, in our test unit, just a GTX 1050).

This is a market packed with well-executed alternatives.

But the Helios 300, in most aspects, brings the fight with the best of them.