Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop PC, 15.6 FHD IPS w/ 144Hz Refresh, Intel i7-8750H, GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB DDR4, 256GB NVMe SSD, Aeroblade Metal Fans PH315-51-78NP

I like it, good and clear screen can reach 120 FPS easily (expect no lag) and play pretty good on the most up-to-date games.

I’ve only used this computer a few times since I purchased it as I wanted to use it for photo editing. It continually freezes up and I can’t do anything at all with it. One of my worst purchases ever. So disappointed. Going to have to return it.

At first I liked this laptop as the specs looked good on paper, but when I finally got around to gaming on it, I noticed that it draws power from the battery even while plugged in, and if you play long enough to draw the battery down, it shuts down without a warning. I first noticed the battery draw while plugged in when using the VR headset and figured it was Normal due to the sets power requirements. I also noticed it again while playing Assassins Creed, though I never played long enough for it to completely drain the battery, only a couple of hours. But when I finally got around to playing The Long Dark tonight, it shut off on me after only 4 hours due to its faulty design of draining the battery while plugged in (power supply not good enough). Please choose a different laptop. What good are the specs if you cant use it.

Overall, this laptop does exactly what I wanted it to do but I will warn of two issues I have had with it.

You must put a fan pad under it. It gets very hot running Battlefield 4. You will hit shutdown in a hot room and running and gunning at 108p if you do not cool it. The W key area will be hot to the touch- no joking. That aside, cooking or not, I bought it in 2018 and use it today for gaming and Inventor. Complex models could use more RAM, but for most folks doing big spreadsheets, CAD and some gaming (not the latest and greatest games anyway) it does real good. I am going to continue using it for CAD and games, but will be driving multiple printers with it and switching over to a desktop for heavy CAD and games.

Yes, this model has overheating issues, when gaming at 120FPS. That said, I define overheating issues as getting close to the safe working temps defined by Intel (100 °C in the case of this laptop) minus a padding zone of 30 °C, this means reaching 70 °C for long periods of time. Which you will definitely notice since the keyboards starts getting hot in the 65 °C neighborhood. If you create a Gaming battery profile in which you limit the CPU to 99% usage, then you drop the frequency to 2.1 GHz on all cores but never go over 65 °C while only losing a couple of frames (I go from 90FPS consistently to 83-87FPS consistently in BO4 max settings). Another solution (tho a less effective one) is undervolting the CPU, but I found my specific laptop only dropped a few degrees, that is while barely giving away any performance. The keyboard is incredibly comfortable to use for the price point and the screen is great (again, given the price point). Battery life is what you might expect from a gaming laptop, tho again, a battery profile is always useful. In terms of power, it is more than I need then I let it run free, I can easily have a Linux VM using half the threads doing something intensive and have both the host OS and the VM show no signs of lag. The SSD is a bit small but has a great performance (FOR THE PRICE POINT [that seems to be the important thing to remember here]) and adding another drive was extremely easy. All this said, I am still considering repasting the CPU (since ACER is known for cheapening out on the application process and the thermal paste quality) and if I do Ill update the overheating issues.

I built a top end gaming desktop in 2015 and the specs on this laptop are better than it which is saying something for a laptop. Its got me even thinking about upgrades to my desktop like a newer video card and monitor. I really like the 144 MHz screen. I did upgrade the NVMe SSD card though to a terabyte because the 256 GB is way too small and I reloaded Windows Home 64 on it. I also added an old 500 GB 2.5 SSD I had in the open bay. As others have said it does get a little warm during game play but Acer does offer a program to control the fan speed. Probably the only thing I do not like about it is that Acer has locked the bios firmware. By that I mean they have limited the setting within it that can be viewed and changed. Ive read that someone has hacked the firmware to gain access to the hidden settings but I am not comfortable with using hacked bios firmware. Acer needs to offer an unlocked bios for power users. Especially on gaming PCs. I am used to building my own PCs and having unlocked bios firmware on the motherboards.

Great refresh rate with the gtx1060. I can run everything highest setting in gtav. Just need to buy yourself an extra ssd for more storage.

Pros:

I bought this so I could have a laptop to run my design software and other programs that require heavy use. Works amazingly. Gaming on the side is great too. Good screen quality. It does heat up pretty easily so I recommend getting a cooling fan pad. Battery isn’t as good as what’s advertised.