This is among the most powerful gaming laptops around, duking it out for a percentage point here and there with the best from Alienware and Asus. That may not sound too impressive, but you'll see much better results in the 70+fps range if you disable ray-tracing. The Predator Helios 500 lets you play it at around 55-60fps at 1080p with ray-tracing set to high, and resolution boosted to 4K using Nvidia DLSS. That game is Control, which is still one of the most punishing titles around. Apparently this laptop should be able to take the RTX 3080 to 165W, but we couldn't get it to do so using the standard modes, even when playing a game so taxing the frame rates were down below 20fps. This takes you from delivering around 120W to the graphics card to around 150W - although we did see very brief peaks above that. Instead it sucks extra power from the RTX 3080 and sets the fans to full blast. Intel's chipsets dip in and out of their turbo capability when needed. You need these to turn on the Turbo mode, accessed using a button above the keyboard. This is so bright the screen can be uncomfortable to look at in a dimly lit room.Īdd that power to fantastic colour coverage (almost 100 per cent of DCI P3) and the sharpness of a 4K resolution panel and you have one of the best gaming laptop displays ever on your hands. It's around twice at bright as the average high-end gaming laptop, reaching 670 nits or 770 nits when you switch on Windows's HDR mode (as measured by us). Peak brightness is a primary benefit of the Helios 500's mini LED panel. As such, if you're a black-level fiend, then you'll prefer an OLED display over this. TVs have had FALD - or full array local dimming - for ages, but laptops have not. But it's not a huge issue for gaming and let's remember we're dealing with new tech here. This is where the backlight zone is a good bit larger than the bright area the display needs to render, resulting in a glow around areas of high contrast. We tested the Acer Helios 500 with a few videos of bright objects floating around a black screen and, unlike some of the very latest ultra-pricey Samsung TVs, the 'halo' effect is quite obvious. There are five different sets of controls, five zones, letting you choose a pretty wild profile for, say, the side and front sections, and a sensible static one for the keyboard. The Helios 500's Predator Sense app also lets you customise their behaviour comprehensively. There's no bleed, no obvious inconsistency in the light level, and their colours are vibrant. We're more interested in the how gaming laptops feel to use, and how they perform but - credit to Acer - these RGB elements do look good if you're into this kind of thing. The keyboard has an RGB backlight, which is a given, but there's also a bright strip on the front edge, a lit ring around the touchpad, and additional LED strips on the sides and back. The lid has a prominent light-up Predator logo, the heat outlet on the back looks like something ripped of a gaudy sports car, and there are far more lit parts than is really necessary. This year we've seen a lot of gaming laptops start to cut back on RGB highlights and classic aggressive 'gamer' design motifs, but the Acer Helios 500 is full of such things. There is some flexing going on elsewhere, though. A laptop like the Lenovo Legion 7 can get you similar performance for almost half the price, which is kind of mad. It's overkill for most people, and not because we think you should all be happy playing games at Full HD at 30 frames per second. It's big and heavy, has just about the best specs you can get in a laptop, and costs an absolute fortune. The Acer Helios Predator 500 is a heavyweight laptop in several ways. That's so much cash that we're just going to have to largely forget the cost for most of this review or we'd end up mentioning it every other sentence. The Helios 500 in this config costs just about four grand. However, price will be the real stumbling block for most. Its performance is excellent, the keyboard is great, thermal control is top-notch and the screen is about as advanced as laptop displays get, even if you can get far higher refresh rates for less money. And as such, it's kind of brilliant at its craft. The Predator Helios 500 is a laptop 100 per cent focused on one thing: gaming.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |