Acer - Predator Helios 18" 250Hz Gaming Laptop HDR–1000 nits mini-led Intel i9-13900HX with 32GB Memory–GeForce RTX 4080–1TB SSD

Peter_Brosdahl

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Hey folks, I'm well aware of my own insanity when it comes to things like this but for anyone looking for what might be one of the best laptops of the RTX 40 gen then you might want to check this one out. It sold out almost immediately at launch and me, along with a lot of others have been hunting for it since. It's was a BB exclusive and it just went back to being in stock today. It's not cheap but about $1K lower cost than anything else with the same specs.

$2499.99 - BB link


Edit: It originally was a BB exclusive but just checked and Acer now has it available on its site as well.
 
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Well, I don't know who they had to run off the road getting it here but it arrived yesterday. I was in such shock because the eta was Dec 8th so I really thought BB got the wrong item but they did good.

I only had a little over an hour to unpack and get it going last night but so far I'm impressed. No buyer's remorse here despite $2700 (tax included) plus the $200 for the 4TB gen4 NVMe so basically $2900 for all.

Bright is the word and I'm now forced into W11 (I might be able to install W10 but not gonna bother as I have to move on at some point anyway). Per what I saw and witnessed, you pretty much have to run W11 HDR calibrator to tune it in but once that's done things really start to shine. If I had to compare it to anything I'd say the display is like Samsung QLED and LG OLED got together and made a laptop display. I know the panel is made by AU or AO (I saw it in a thread somewhere) but it reminds me of their technology.

I had to do a ton of updates out of the box. Probably the most I've seen for a laptop so far and that took around 20-30 minutes alone. Love the keyboard but have to get used to using the software to configure and even though it has per key RGB I'll likely leave it either static blue or 255 it all. Sound is okay but at least better than either of my MSI laptops but still not as good as my old Toshiba Qosmio.

Only had enough time to bench one game so I installed CP2077. Using high settings, quality DLSS with path tracing and reconstruction, high settings and post junk off, it averaged 50-60 FPS in the canned bench. I used the out-of-box fan settings and they did not crank up to full blast and were more than acceptable but I only ran the bench about 3 to 4 times so it was not a long test session.

NVMe is arriving today and I'm going to pickup a portable SSD from BB so I can copy a bunch of games over instead of re-downloading them. Even though I'm getting around gigabit internet speeds that still won't compare to fast USB 3.2 speeds with a decent portable drive.

Back to the display. Wow. I can't say it enough. Text is super clear and the perspective with 2560x1600 16:10 18" isn't something I was expecting even though I do have an 18.4" 16:9 1080p. The PPI seems perfect and the 4080 is a good match. I did notice some tearing during the CP2077 testing which is odd since it is G-Sync. I went into NV control panel, set the GPU selection from auto to the 4080 and noticed it was defaulting to 60hz. Once I switched it to 250Hz that cured the tearing as expected. Both Windows and NVIDIA report the panel as being 10-bit, G-Sync and I forget where but more than a few places in the system reported it as TrueHDR1000.

That's as much as I was able to do last night but looking forward to much more in the coming days and I finally feel like I'm set for a good long while with this one. Oh, also impressed by the overall build quality. Doesn't feel like a gaming laptop. More like a work station, that is once the RGB is configured.
 
Grimlakin said:
Is it a monster to tote around?
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Yeah, it's got some weight to it. Including the brick about 10+ lbs. Still lighter than my MSI GT80 Titan 2QE though. That was almost 20lbs w/ the brick.

It is, however, surprisingly thin. I don't really have a need for flight travel (I remember you mentioning that in another thread) so it won't be much of an issue but I could see the weight being an issue if I had to deal with flights. Otherwise, I'm really looking forward to enjoying it on the patio when the weather warms up again. The screen is perfect for productivity as well.
 
Ok cool.. just a little off with the size otherwise I like what you're sharing a lot. :)
 
You got it. Bloatware seems to be at a minimum but I haven't fully dug in yet. It came with Mcaffee, which I'll be uninstalling tonight and replacing with Malware Bytes. Other than it's inhouse system control app, which also has its own button by the numpad I haven't noticed anything else yet.

There are a few reviews out there for it but here's one that's fairly positive about it.


and one where the guy seems to like it but isn't afraid to point out some failings as well. However, I feel this guy is gaga over the Strix Scar (which I love too but starts at around $3500-3700) and a couple of other that cost at least $1200 more and is complaining about how this one doesn't exactly match up. However, the other thing I didn't like about it is that while he talks about this specific model it's actually another with a different display but otherwise the hardware is mostly the same.


There's a few others out there as well but I liked these two the most for their contrast to each other. I've still got tons of testing to do but it's off to a good start. I also saw some reviews that mentioned you can find a GaN power supply for it that weighs less but I haven't really looked into it. The laptop itself weights around 7lbs with the brick adding about another 3lbs.
 
Just a little update. Mostly finished transferring games to it and spent a little time watching a few of my 4K rips on it. VLC couldn't seem to trigger its HDR properly, I'll have to look more into it later, but W11 had some options for that, and wow things look crisp on it.

Did this testing while sitting on the couch with it actually on my lap, and wow that thing gets hot, even when just doing simple browsing or watching a flick. I didn't even try testing any games with it. So lesson learned is that I'll need a lap table for those scenarios. An update on the build quality is that I noticed the bottom plastic had some flex/pop. The keyboard and screen covers are metal but the bottom is plastic so some flex can happen if it's not on a solid surface. I guess that's the downside of the thinness I mentioned.

Otherwise, so far it's been a great experience but still much, much, more testing to be done.
 
I've been looking for an excuse to move on from my Asus RTX 3050 laptop and this might be it.
 
Overall pretty happy with it. A few more cons. Numpad keys are smaller than the others. Not too small but kind of weird. I do like the keyboard itself though and I'm glad to at least have a num pad. This is the first personal laptop I've had with a flexible ethernet port where the bottom of the port folds/expands to sit flat when not in use. I noticed last night while holding the laptop that the cable doesn't fully lock into the port and it can bend and lose contact. I guess the design is intended for it to rest on a desktop where it wouldn't change angles. I was a little bummed about that.

One last thing is that the NVIDIA mux switch, or whatever it's called that switches between the Intel iGPU and NVIDIA dGPU will basically, temporarily freeze/crash some tabs while switching back after closing a game. It's a minor annoyance but can take 5-10 seconds to clear itself.

I will advise anyone who might get this, or the 16" model, is that the rear RGB strip, behind the display panel, is held on by the plastic bottom cover. It does have its own 'snaps' but for those wanting to install a 2nd NVMe drive, you need to be careful it doesn't get detached or damaged when taking off the bottom cover. I was extremely careful since I was being very mindful of all the plastic snaps on the cover, so I didn't encounter that issue but it was disconcerting.

Other than all these relatively minor quirks it has been performing as hoped. Most of my time so far has been transferring games and getting them installed/verified. I plan to do some actual gaming with it this weekend.
 
Not a whole lot else to report with this project now. Looks great. Runs great and I finished installing pretty much everything I wanted on it filling just under 3TB of the 4TB drive I put in it. I didn't count but probably around 50+ games and plenty of big installs to boot.

I can set most games at Ultra settings, including RT, and use DLSS quality at get 60-100 FPS depending on the game while using the standard settings CPU/GPU settings and the fans, while noticeable are not even close to being an annoyance. The speakers are better than I gave them credit for as well and have no problem being louder than the fans even at lower volumes. For non DLSS/RT games which are known to be demanding the FPS is still about the same. I had to turn RT down a bit for CP2077 in order to get it to do 45-75 FPS. Crysis Remastered at 'can it run crysis' settings, inlcuding DLSS quality, is similar but hangs mostly in the 50s. The bottom line though is that you don't have to turn things down a whole lot if you want a 60-100 FPS experience with graphically intense games. I'd say that the mobile 175W 4080 (aka desktop 4070 Ti) is a great GPU and if you want to know more about the desktop version checkout Brent's review. This laptop is basically 16:10 1440p and that's a sweet spot for it. Most games are between 5-9 GB VRAM, or less, and only a few managed to hit 10+ so the 12 GB VRAM is also a good match here.

My only complaint is, and I think related to the CPU, an odd delay after clicking on a game. Once loading actually begins things are usually similar to my desktops but there is a noticeable delay before anything actually starts. I have no idea if this is a P-core/E-core thing. I did have one game, and I forget which, where if I changed certain in game settings it took forever for it to apply them. It was really weird. However, once a game menu is up and it needs to load levels/etc., things are about the same as my desktops. A tad bit slower but close.

The screen is as amazing as reviews state. I so love the brightness and having the option to turn it down vs other screens where I wish I could turn them up but they were already maxed. I ended up trying 5K player with my HDR 4K rips and wow do movies look amazing on it. Text is clear as one would expect also. All and all I'm really happy with it and once the warmer days come back around I'm looking forward to being on the patio with it.

I still need to do the Crystal benchmarks with it but in monitoring the copy speeds I can say the drive was performing as expected with an average of 600-800 MB/s.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
My only complaint is, and I think related to the CPU, an odd delay after clicking on a game. Once loading actually begins things are usually similar to my desktops but there is a noticeable delay before anything actually starts. I have no idea if this is a P-core/E-core thing. I did have one game, and I forget which, where if I changed certain in game settings it took forever for it to apply them. It was really weird. However, once a game menu is up and it needs to load levels/etc., things are about the same as my desktops. A tad bit slower but close.
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You sure that's not related to the GPU switching? I have that similar behavior on my HP Omni laptop (mind you only a 3070 and not 4080).

Congratulations on a great build though!
 
Space_Ranger said:
You sure that's not related to the GPU switching? I have that similar behavior on my HP Omni laptop (mind you only a 3070 and not 4080).

Congratulations on a great build though!
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Yeah, I thought about that as well and went into NV CP and switched it to 4080 only and it still happens. I also turned off the WIndows auto-HDR because I noticed it doing some odd things with some games.
 
Space_Ranger said:
mind you only a 3070
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Still a great mobile GPU. This is replacing an MSI GP66 Leopard that has the 130W version. I compromised in getting it with a 15.6" screen which I totally regret as it was just too small, and dark, for me and after spending roughly 2-years of trying to work around it with external displays I decided I would commit to this. However, that 3070 is plenty powerful on its own, I just also wanted to get into DLSS 3 since I've gotten spoiled with it.
 
So just a little update on the game-launch delay thing I was mentioning earlier. I noticed over the weekend that I had DSR turned in NV CP. I must've turned it on for testing some old games and forgot. I turned it off and most games are now llaunching in similar fashion to my desktops, as I would expect. The only one still putting up a fight if Marvel's GOTG which I do remember reading a game review a while back where it did something similar to that reviewer. Otherwise, so happy. This thing really is a beast of a laptop and I'm looking forward to gaming on it for years to come.

For anyone who watches any of the video reviews for this online where reviewers are complaining about the fans please be aware that it's totally unnecessary to have this thing in anything but "balanced mode". There's a toggle button on the keyboard to switch from quiet>balanced>performance>turbo modes. The performance an turbo modes engage higher clocks and power draw but after testing about 20-30 games I saw on average 5, maybe 10+ frame increases but when it's already doing 55-90 FPS with most games set to Ultra, this is totally unneeded. It's far easier to turn a setting or two down a notch and keep on balanced which is very, very quiet (in relation to most gaming laptop fans that is). I actually had this on a lap table and played Crysis Remastered, RDR2, and Baldur's Gate 3 (only tested this one for a bit since I was getting tired) for a few hours last weekend and it was a blast.

Edit: Only one minor annoyance that I've noticed and haven't figured out how to stop. HDR seems to be adaptive when browsing. It'll dim slightly until I type or click on something. This doesn't happen when gaming.
 
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