If a high refresh rate gaming laptop is what you desire, I've found a deal well worth casting your eyes across. It's this Acer Predator Helios Neo 16—and while the 240 Hz display is definitely the headline feature, the rest of the specs are pretty impressive for its $1,450 asking price at Best Buy.
A very fast panel can make all the difference for competitive multiplayer gaming, as the faster you can see your opponents, the better chance you have of making yourself look like a hero rather than, I don't know, me, a multiplayer zero. Speedy displays are plentiful these days, but a 240 Hz IPS unit in a gaming laptop under $1,500 is a bit of a boon.
Still, while it's all very well having a super-speedy screen, if your components can't feed it pixels fast enough then it's a bit of a waste. Thankfully, here you get an Intel Core i9 14900HX in tandem with a 140 W TGP RTX 4070. That's one of Intel's latest and greatest mobile CPUs stacked with an Nvidia GPU that really can deliver the goods.
Sure, it's not an RTX 4080, but the full-fat RTX 4070 in combination with some DLSS 3 upscaling and potentially some Frame Generation should be able to pump a serious number of frames to that high refresh rate panel. If you fancy yourself the next esports darling—or want to take fast-paced gaming on the go—this lappy should deliver performance that keeps up with all your online gaming heroics.
It's not all roses, of course. I'd like to see 32 GB of RAM in more gaming laptops these days, but 16 GB should still get you by as long as you don't have too many background apps open. 1 TB of storage is fairly standard, but you can always shove a bigger SSD inside to give yourself some more breathing room.
It's also a bit chonky. While I've definitely seen bigger gaming laptops, the Helios 16 isn't perhaps as slimline as I'd like. That being said, if you're looking for something that's mainly home-based but can still be reasonably taken on the road (or perhaps to a friends for some old-school LAN gaming fun) then the Helios should do you proud.
I would also imagine it gets quite loud. We reviewed an RTX 4080 version of the Helios and found that the Turbo setting was pretty distracting—although it must be said that any laptop rocking one of Intel's top-spec chips in combination with a decent GPU is likely to be a hair dryer at top whack.
Still, if you feel the need for speed, the Acer has a lot going for it, and at this price it's definitely a deal worth some serious consideration.
