It’s possibly one of the worst trackpads we’ve tested, and definitely not fit for gaming. Likewise, the trackpad is clunky, isn’t responsive and lags a lot. Plus, the laptop has side-firing vents, one of which directly blows hot air in the direction of where your mouse and mouse hand would be, and its display has thick, almost 1-inch bezels. Heck, even its power supply is almost as big as your face. You can take this laptop to your living room, if you want to squeeze in some gaming while watching TV, but you wouldn’t want to lug it around while you’re traveling. This is more like a fixed gaming station that takes up less space than an actual PC. This isn’t a laptop you can just stuff in your backpack and take anywhere with you. On the other hand, the Acer Predator Helios 500 is just heavy and massive. Acer also includes easy access to your hard drive and RAM via a quick access panel in the back, making it easy for upgrades. In addition, the laptop also has two aeroblade 3D fans, five heat pipes, four exhausts, and two intakes for better air circulation, so that while the laptop does get a little hot, it manages to keep the heat down even when it’s working on ultra settings in games. The laptop also has a plethora of ports, enough that you can connect it to three displays in addition to the laptop screen, which itself is already impressive. On one hand, it’s got a sturdy build that you can tell will last, a matte finish that doesn’t easily track fingerprints, that subtle gaming look that makes it accessible to the non-hardcore gamers, and blue trimmings instead of the usual red. For connectivity, it has three USB 3.0 ports, two USB Tyep-C ports with Thunderbolt support, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, a GbE LAN port, and both headphone and microphone jacks.Īccording to the listings, the Core i9-8950HK model will cost 11,999 PLN (~$3,500 USD), while the Core i7-8750H will run 8,999 PLN (~$2,630).We’ve got mixed feelings about the Acer Predator Helios 500 design. Other features include 16GB of DDR4-2133 RAM and a 256GB M.2 solid state drive (like NVMe, though the listing did not specify between and SATA). This appears to be a gaming oriented screen with G-Sync support and a 144Hz refresh rate, powered by a GeForce GTX 1070 GPU.
This is a 17.3-inch laptop with a Full HD 1080 (1920x1080) display by way of an In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel. So yeah, the Predator Helios 500 means business. We need to take these with a grain of salt, of course, especially with the Core i9-8950HK posting the slowest multi-threaded score of the bench. Leaked benchmarks show both of these processors strutting their stuff in Cinebench R15, a particularly demanding benchmark that is tuned to tap into all available processing cores and threads. It also has more 元 cache at 12MB, while maintaining the same 45W TDP. The Core i9-8950H is a beefier processor with a 2.9GHz base clock, 4.3GHz all-core boost clock, and 4.8GHz single-core boost. Both are 6-core/12-thread processors, giving users plenty of multi-threaded muscle to throw at workloads.īased on previous leaks, the Core i7-8750H has a 2.2GHz base clock, 3.9GHz all-core boost clock, and 4.1GHz single-core boost clock, along with 9MB of 元 cache and a 45W TDP. In this case, there were two configurations shown, one with a Core i7-8750H processor inside and the other wielding a Core i9-8950H. The Predator Helios 500 showed up on a Polish retailer's website, and though the listings have since been removed, the Internet has a speculator memory. This is one of several laptops in the pipeline to incorporate Intel's also-unannounced Coffee Lake-H processors. A little more sane (a lot more, actually) is the company's upcoming and unannounced Predator Helios 500. Acer has not shied away from offering big and burly desktops for gamers, even if it means attaching a price tag that many people will find cost prohibitive, like the $8,999 Predator X21.