Finding the right laptop to use while gaming can be tricky, especially when they’re so expensive. You want something that has high-quality parts to handle games and won’t break down in the middle of an intense match. Fortunately, the Acer Predator Helios 500 17 Amd balance quality and affordability in a way that’s better than other machines in its class.
Acer Predator Helios 500 17 Amd
The Acer predator helios 500 17 amd is a great gaming laptop. It has a sound cooling system and excellent specs for the price. This is the one for you if you’re looking for an affordable gaming laptop. I don’t think you could find better performance at this price point with any other brand! The Acer predator helios 500 17 amd 17-inch is perfect for those on a budget who want to take their PC gameplay experience to the next level. It’s lightweight and easy to carry around if you need to take your machine with you anywhere.
It’s also super powerful, which will come in handy if you are trying to do some work while you’re away from your home office! I found this was a significant perk since my old machine would get too hot sometimes when I tried working on it while on my lap in bed. All in all, though, I love this computer and would recommend it to anyone who is looking for something between a professional desktop setup and a full laptop setup.
Acer predator helios 500 17 Features
Many features of Acer predator helios 500*17 AMD are worth using. For example, the laptop is packed with a 7th gen Intel Core i7-7700HQ quad-core processor, which provides powerful processing and performance. The machine also has 16 GB of DDR4 2400MHz RAM, which ensures your PC will be up to any task. In addition, the laptop has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card with 6GB VRAM and an AMD Radeon RX 460 graphics card with 4GB VRAM. These two GPUs will provide you with a quality gaming experience. Furthermore, the battery life on this machine is awe-inspiring at 8 hours and 15 minutes in mixed usage.
This is undoubtedly an advantage for people who travel frequently or want to use their laptops outside their homes without worrying about recharging them every few hours. Finally, the cer predator helios 500 17 weighs only 5.6 pounds and measures 1 inch thick. It’s small enough that you can take it anywhere! The aluminum exterior gives the product a sleek design while maintaining durability. There is also ample space inside to store accessories. One downside of this product is that there are no USB ports on the left side of the computer. You must open up one of its flaps to access these USB ports and other ports such as HDMI, RJ45 Ethernet Port, Mini Display Port, Microphone/Headphone Jack (3x), and Kensington Lock Slot.
Price and Competition
The new predator helios 500 is available in one model only and will set you back the princely sum of $1199.99, which includes discounts for all retailers currently offering. Not unsurprisingly, all the competition is either a bit or a lot cheaper. The Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 G733 is another massive 17.3 gaming beast and comes with a superb mechanical keyboard, a Full HD display with a maximum 360Hz refresh rate, and an overclocked AMD Ryzen 9 processor. In short, it’s not much cheaper than other laptops, it’s a bit lighter. Our previous holder of the Laptop Trophy here at Expert Reviews, the x15 R1 is just as powerful as the acer predator helios 500 17 AMD and only costs half as much at half the size.
Acer predator helios 500 17 AMD is bulkier than the x15 but smaller than the other Helios. You can start with just the display, sound system, and graphics card and then customize it with your choice of storage and system RAM. We tested a sample model with 1TB of storage and 16GB of system RAM, but this is entirely customizable to suit your needs. In short, it is worth considering even if you don’t use Windows. The Mini LED display is excellent, and the power device’s battery life is unbelievable. You will not find a better machine.
Design and Build Quality
The Helios 500 is like the USS Iowa of laptops immense, robust, and pretty darn heavy. Measuring 3.9kg in weight, it’s more appropriate to call it portable rather than mobile, and the 400 x 319 x 35mm dimensions place it in the territory of large laptops. If you plan on taking it anywhere, a backpack big enough to fit it and the two large 750g power supply bricks would be best. Besides the lid, which is aluminum, the Helios is entirely made from plastic, but it still feels very sturdy.
The Acer predator helios 500 17 AMD is solidly put together, even with the lid, which must house a 17.3 display and is only 5mm thick. Its design is more restrained than expected much like Lenovo’s new Legion line of laptops. You would think that the laptop wouldn’t resemble a typical gaming machine since the flashy Close Encounters light show was turned off. Instead, there are LED strips around the laptop’s four edges, over the trackpad, and on the keys themselves. All of which can assign different RGB colors. All these LEDs need to be set first.
Then the black exterior of the machine can see and only interrupt by the similarly-lit Predator logo on the laptop’s lid and the bright blue LED power button. It has two USB Type-C and three USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports. There is an HDMI 2.1 port, a Mini DisplayPort 1.4 port, and a Gigabit RJ45 port. And separate 3.5mm mic and headphone jacks. Putting both Type-C ports in the back, the Helios 500 can draw 600 watts of power if plugged in. And if the center DC-in jack is used, the other ports cannot access that power. To help you keep your desk tidy, Acer includes a stand for your two power supplies.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard is the first thing you’ll notice about this laptop. The keys are very well-spaced. And provide a comfortable typing experience with plenty of travel to make it feel like you’re typing on a desktop keyboard. It also comes with a Numpad, which can be easily disabled if not needed. The touchpad has two responsive buttons for most tasks. But will have trouble distinguishing between two or more fingers when used in tandem. However, the pad does provide a smooth scroll experience that makes it easy to quickly jump from page to page or tab to tab in your browser. Additionally, two side-mounted fans offer strong airflow throughout the device to keep things cool during long gaming sessions.
The predator helios 500 display offers excellent clarity at 1080p resolution. Text appears crisp, colors pop off the screen, and images show no pixelation at all viewing angles. Unfortunately, glare becomes an issue if the brightness isn’t high enough in direct sunlight. So, take caution if you’re planning to use this computer outside! The preinstalled cooling system offered by Acer does an excellent job of keeping temperatures under control for the most part. They run various games like League of Legends and Starcraft 2 on it. Both of which only cause temperatures to reach around 70 degrees Celsius. If you plan on overclocking or want to push any graphics card further than factory settings. Then the Acer predator helios 500 17 AMD will likely start having some problems keeping itself cool overextend periods.
Performance and Battery
In the Acer predator Helios 500 17 AMD, you’ll find a 5GHz Intel Core i9-11980HK processor. An Nvidia RTX3080 GPU with a TGP of 110W, 32GB of DDR4 system memory, and 16GB of GDDR6 video memory. With that specification, it’s no surprise that the Helios scored the highest for a laptop in our in-house productivity test. The results of our gaming benchmarks were similar. In Hitman 2, we scored 89.9fps at 1080p and 62.7fps at native 4K. As for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we achieved 74fps at 1080p and 42fps at 4K with ray tracing enabled.
In Geekbench 5, the Acer predator helios 500 17 AMD scored 1,664 for a single core and 9,964 for a multicore. Acer ConceptD 700 outperformed Apple’s M1-driven MacBook Pro in the SPECviewperf2020 3dsmax-07 rendering test with 89 frames per second. While the ROG Strix Scar managed 134 frames per second. In this test, both power supplies and the GPU were at the highest boost clock, with the fans running continuously. The Helios 500 is expected to overclock and thus requires two 300W PSUs. Stock RTX3080s in the Helios 500 draw 165W at 1,710MHz, but the power draw increases when the boost speed increases. Considering the 65W maximum thermal design power of the i9 chip. And keep the fans running and the screen on, 600W suddenly doesn’t seem so drastic.
