For some reason, some people use their laptops for "work" instead of gaming. One guy in the office uses his laptop to work on spreadsheets. Weird, but true! The Predator Helios 300 laptop from ACER is perfect for people who want a portable work computer that can still crank out top-level graphics when it's time to punch the clock.
For roughly the same price as a desktop rig, the Helios packs a full-featured NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 into a traditional laptop form factor. More importantly, it's also around the same price as far less capable Windows laptops with underpowered graphics capabilities. Portability, power, and price at these levels finally does away with the conundrum of having to compromise between performance and portability when you buy a laptop.
So let's break it down. Acer makes the Predator Helios 300 in a few configurations, but they're mostly based on the same Holy Trinity of GPU, CPU, and RAM. All of the Helios options run on a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, Intel Core i7-770HQ processor, and 16GB of RAM (DDR4, of course). There are a lot of full-size desktops with a weaker platform than that, and for around the same price.
I want to stop and focus on that GPU for a moment. For any modern computer, the GPU has the biggest overall impact on performance. For laptops especially, a great GPU is the most important thing—the only thing, really—that you should look for when you're shopping around and comparing specs. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 10 Series rocked the boat when they launched last year. They were the fastest cards around at the time (and still are), and we called the GeForce GTX 1060 "fast enough" and "smart enough" for anyone looking for a powerful card at a good price.
Using the GeForce GTX 1060 at the core of the Predator Helios line is a smart move from Acer, because it delivers great performance at prices that don't necessarily break the bank. And the GeForce GTX 1060 comes with support for a bunch of NVIDIA GeForce Experience features we really love, like automatic game optimization, Shadowplay for screenshots and video capture, and easy social-media sharing.
Depending on what you're looking for, Acer has a few different combinations of HDDs and SSDs to choose from, and for screen sizes, the Helios comes with either a 15.6" or 17.3" display—both ready for full 1920x1080 resolution gaming. Or spreadsheets, possibly. If you're into those.
If you're performance obsessed, looks and style might not be the first thing you're shopping for, but it's worth mentioning: these laptops are sexy as hell. From the front it's angular and aggressive in black and red, and from the back the exhaust vents look like an industrial sci-fi aqueduct.
We've been a fan of Acer's work in general for a long time, but the Predator Helios is on another level. We all know they make great laptops, but the Helios has a level of performance at a price that we haven't really seen before. A powerful, mobile laptop without an astronomic price makes the Helios 300 a good buy for people who use their laptops for more than just gaming. Check out Acer's full line of gaming systems at www.acer.com/predator.
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