New gaming laptops keep getting released in short intervals. Yes, the market is hungry for good notebooks made for players. A new addition to this heavyweight series is Acer Predator Helios 300 (G3-571-77QK), a 15.6 inches Core i7 and GTX 1060 powered beast of a laptop. Despite its freshness the Acer has already sparkled some interest in Internet. Here is my take on the subject, hopefully you’ll find answer to your questions below!
Made for gaming – how good?
Acer Predator Helios 300 (G3-571-77QK) has decent specs for a gaming laptop. Most importantly, the graphics engine GeForce GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5 video RAM is excellent. Considering you’re getting 1920×1080 maximum resolution out of the display, you are good to use ultra settings on any game whatsoever. Popular titles such as GTA 5, Battlefield 4 and Doom would give +80FPS easily. Also keep in mind the GTX 1060 supports Virtual Reality (VR).
General performance
The storage on this unit is 256GB M.2 solid-state drive. I believe it uses SATA interface, although the slot also supports PCIe/NVMe standards if you are planning to upgrade later. In addition, the motherboard contains an open 2.5″ slot which means you can install a conventional hard drive to that. From what I can gather reading Acer support, the notebook ships with a bracket for installing such a drive. Nonetheless, with the current SSD using this laptop will feel smooth.
Also contributing to fast performance is the Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor. That is definitely a beastly unit, with 2.8GHz clock speed and 3.8GHz turbo boost running on its four cores. The i7-7700HQ is actually faster than many desktop processors, it getting a very high rel=”nofollow”>~9000 score in CPU Mark benchmark. This is exactly the kind of processor you want for gaming, multitasking, video editing etc.
The 16GB DDR4 memory will also ensure that lag is minimal or nonexistent. I can’t say for sure if the configuration is one or two sticks. But the mainboard has two memory slots, and the most RAM you can go here is 32GB. If you are asking my advice, just everybody will be happy with the default 16 gigabytes.
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Ports and interfaces
In need of connecting a device or two? All is clear, Acer Predator Helios 300 (G3-571-77QK) has a few ports for you. There are two USB 2.0, one USB 3.0 and one USB 3.1 Type-C connector at your disposal. The Type-C port can be used to charge mobile devices even when the laptop is powered off. However, I don’t think it’s possible to charge the notebook itself through that.
There might come a time when you want to connect another display to this laptop. For that, the notebook offers HDMI 2.0 output. Ideally, you could hook up a HDTV or your desktop’s monitor and play games through that bigger display.
Two types of networking interfaces exist: a Gigabit Ethernet RJ-45 port if you want the robustness and reliability of cable, or the dual-band 2×2 802.11ac WiFi for the freedom of wireless. Bluetooth works as well.
Optical drive does not exist in this notebook. It’s actually quite popular choice to leave that out these days. However, nothing is stopping you from using external DVD burner, one that uses USB as connection. SD card reader is also available for data transfers using memory cards.
Miscellaneous
Acer Predator Helios 300 (G3-571-77QK) is equipped with a 15.6″ display, with 1920×1080 resolution and IPS panel. It’s hard to say anything about the image quality so early, but usually the picture looks sharp and good in this price category. Like most gaming laptops, it’s not a touch screen. You can record 720p video with the webcam installed in the top bezel.
The laptop has a 4-cell 3220 mAh battery. Acer lavishly mentions a 7-hour battery life, although I am doubtful about it. The 4-cell batteries in gaming notebooks often last a maximum of 4 hours for web surfing and half of that under gameplay.
The keyboard has red backlight.
Why should I buy it?
If you love gaming, Acer Predator Helios 300 (G3-571-77QK) is a good pick. The GeForce GTX1060 is excellent for Full HD gaming, letting you enjoy any title with maxed out settings. In general, FPS will be 60 or more on the majority of games.
You might also have a thing for photo editing, video editing, virtual machines or similar heavyweight software. There is plenty of oomph in this laptop for those apps, too. You can thank the i7 processor and solid-state drive for the fast performance this Acer brings.
Why shouldn’t I buy it?
Simply put, it makes no sense to waste your money on this Acer if you will never play games. The price is high partly due to graphics card and if you can’t utilize it, what’s the reason to pay so much for this laptop, eh?
Verdict
When you throw GeForce GTX 1060 and Core i7 processor in a laptop it can’t be a bad choice for gaming. Indeed, Acer Predator Helios 300 (G3-571-77QK) enjoys solid components which manifest themselves, for gamers, as smooth frame rates and high settings. Playing at or near maximum eye candy is feasible, so are all kinds of resource-intensive software like photo/video editing. Considering the raw performance this Acer offers, it’s pretty decent buy for the money!
