Customer Ratings & Reviews

Amazing laptop with a beautiful and fast screen. Gonna be able to do anything you throw at it. My only complaint is the price. You’re better off getting a desktop for the price because windows laptops honestly just suck. So much bloatware comes pre installed compared to say a MacBook. My MacBook was 1750 and I love it a million times more than this (obviously not for gaming)

Great value, I'm really very happy with this purchase. The "Battery Life" I could only put as average, but since this is a very powerful gaming laptop, there's not really any way the battery life could be as long as a laptop without the high end processor and high end video card, so average is about as good as it can get for that piece.

It was an impulse buy, but I couldn't be happier with it!! Incredible versatility makes this thing a perfect laptop for everything! I can play AAA games on one side of the screen and fire off work emails on the other. Love this thing!!

Pretty good for gaming and the other services but the battery is low key mid

Going to try to give an in-depth review since I did a lot of research on this laptop. My first and overall impression, is that this thing is fast! As my title states, this is the first gaming laptop I’ve owned that can truly replace my gaming desktop. Keep in mind, my gaming desktop runs an AMD 5800x, RTX 3080 video card, with 64GB of memory. Its not cutting edge or top of the line, but it is a solid desktop for everything I’ve thrown at it for 2k gaming and more. This laptop’s benchmark scores meet or surpassed those of my desktop. I’ve been PC gaming for the past 25 years, and owned half a dozen gaming laptops, and this one by far takes the cake when comparing it to a desktop. The price of the Predator is actually pretty good when comparing it to other brands with similar specs, I was quite surprised. My one actual disappointment was that the laptop did not come with 32GB of memory, which should be the standard for any gaming machine in 2023. My work computer has 16GB and I max that out with Office and browser tabs. Luckily they give you the ability to upgrade memory, up to 32GB of memory which I have done. For the record, all my benchmark tests were performed with the 16GB of memory that came with it. I upgraded after running them. First impressions. First and foremost, the keyboard lighting effects are pretty awesome. I’ve never been a big fan of lights, whether added to monitors or other peripherals, but I gotta give Acer credit for keyboard lights, they are amazing! You pick the type of response you want from the PredatorSense app, many cool options there. Next the build quality is heavy, but not HEAVY. I like this because it makes it feel like quality. I’ve had some super lightweight gaming laptops that just made wonder how powerful can this really be? There is no question about it, quality feel all around. The 5 USB ports are nice to have too. Many laptops these days try to limit the ports to create an Apple clone of a minimalist style... no thanks. I want my gaming laptop flooded with ports, 3 USB A and 2 USB C are great to have. Not to mention ethernet and memory card slot. The screen is decent, can get pretty bright, 3ms response, and runs at 240Hz, but probably won’t win any awards. Most the time I’m hooked up to a larger gaming monitor, but a good screen in-between those times More good stuff…. The cooling on this laptop is insane. Every gaming laptop I’ve used heats up tremendously, even around the keyboard level. My gaming partner’s laptop gets so hot he can’t touch the keyboard sometimes. The keyboard or really any of the laptop doesn’t even get warm. Yet, I’m playing games on the highest quality of settings they offer. Its wild that there is no heat on the top. The fans can get loud, but that expected when gaming. You have different profiles you can switch between with one physical button which is convenient without having to jump into an app. You can also switch profiles within PredatorSense, which has its own physical key shortcut on the keyboard. Performance Wow is all I can say. The 2 main games I’ve been playing on it are MWII and Diablo 4. I have the settings set to Extreme on MWII, and get anywhere from 150-200 FPS on a 2k monitor still! Diablo is maxed out as well, colors look good and zero lag. For a gaming GPU, I’m very impressed. Gaming is super smooth and no lag is noticed. The hard drive that came with the laptop runs exceptionally fast as well, and they allow you to add a second drive which I have done too. My benchmark scores are below ran from out of the box: 3d Mark Speed Way Graphics Score - 4771 Port Royal (Default) - Overall Score - 11991 Time Spy (Default) - Overall Score - 18161 CPU Profile - Max Threads - 11916 Cinebench R23 CPU - Multi - 29210 CrystalDiskMark (oem C Drive)- See attached pic Even more good stuff… Stock memory runs at 5600MHz, but in order to get the full 5600 speed from newer memory sticks IF you upgrade the memory, you’ll need to update the BIOS to version 1.12 which just came out in July. They made this very easy, just go to their support section for this laptop and download the exe, you can just run it in Windows and it’ll reboot and install automatically. No need for a USB drive and fumbling through the bios menu. I also think Acer went above by offering a free silicone case included with this laptop. This goes without saying, but this computer is fast. Not just for gaming, but I run trading software along with keeping many browsers and tabs open, with software running in the background that I use throughout the day. Once I got past installing all the updates and programs, rebooted a few times, this computer is a beast. No lag, stutter, or stalling…but keep in mind I did upgrade to 32GB of memory, so I can throw more open apps at once at it. Also the boot-up time is speedy. The DTS-X compatibility is a nice option to have. I’ve mostly played with Atmos, but have heard DTS-X is just as good if not better for home theaters, so I look forward to comparing the two. The NOT so good stuff. I have to mention the bad with the good. First, I already mentioned that I don’t think 16GB is suitable for a gaming laptop of this caliber. Well in order to take off the bottom cover to add memory or another HD, you need a T socket (T5 or T6). I did not have one this small so on top of buying more memory, I had to buy this kit. Also, it says the max memory is 32GB, but I believe this chipset can handle more, would have loved to see this number increased to 64GB. Next, I wish they had the PredatorSense app search for new drivers for you automatically, or their website could automatically scan your computer to see what drivers you needed and upgrade them all with one click. Its more of a manual process from what I could find, but not a deal breaker compared to other vendors. They do have the Acer care center app which does provide updates, but not sure if its drivers since it didn’t pull any up for me before I updated. This last one is a little nit picky, but I like to have dedicated volume buttons near the keyboard. Instead these are tied in with the function buttons. Overall, I’m extremely happy with this gaming laptop. I’m actually surprised Acer stepped it up as a true competitor. I’m proud that I can use this as a true desktop replacement and my experiences with games and using it for work purposes has been excellent. Its definitely the best mobile gaming computer I’ve ever used and I feel like most of this tech is quite new, you are future proofing yourself for at least the next 2-3 years when it comes to top of the line gaming and probably 4+ years as a personal or work computer. I’d definitely recommend this.

Excelent laptop who wants to have high performance for design, autocad, engineering simulations, rendering, IA programming ! Love that ilumination of keyboard and colors can be even per each key, patterns or none,

Overall this laptop should make any gamer or video creator very happy because of its top tier components. The battery life and fan noise can be annoying but its typical of what you would expect from a laptop with this much power. If you like high speed action games then this laptop is a perfect fit. Components: Acer built this gaming laptop with lots of power. The processor is the Intel i9 – 13900HX which supports 24 cores and 32 threads, the gpu is a Nvidia 4080, the display is a 2560x1600 WQXGA with a 240 hz refresh rate, the memory is 8gb x 2 slots of DDR5 5600 mhz and the storage is a Micron 3400 gen 4 NVMe 1 tb SSD. Upgradeability: The laptop comes with 2 x 8 gb = 16 gb but can be upgraded to 2 x 16 gb = 32 gb. If you look at the photo you will notice that the installed 2 x 8 gb of DDR 5 5600 RAM has both a heat sink and thermal/insulating wrap on the modules. If you upgrade the memory you are going to want to reuse both of these. I added a WD 2Tb NVMe 4th generation drive in the second M2 slot. Acer included the screw in the M2 NVMe mount so it was an easy install. The case build is solid and tight so after the screws are removed from the bottom its still a task to remove the cover. Modes: There are four operating modes Quiet, Balanced, Performance and Turbo which you can access via a dedicated button. In Turbo mode the noise from the fans can get rather loud just like other high powered gaming laptops I own. What I have found is that I can play most of my games in the Performance mode which lessens the noise without an enormous impact on the gaming quality. Below I listed the FPS difference as measured by 3Dmark in Turbo mode and Performance mode for comparison. Display: The display has a max resolution of 2560 x 1600 with a 240 hz refresh rate. I ran several display test and verified that the image quality at the 240 hz refresh rate was solid. The display is very bright and colorful. When playing F1 2022 and Forza 5 at full throttle the fast refresh rate and high FPS kept the image clear and distinct. Heat: The high powered components in this laptop generate some serious heat and to offset that Acer has done a respectable job with the fan management. There are two rear vents, two side vents and an open bottom. When gaming in Turbo mode I hear more wind noise than fan whine. One thing I have noticed is that the fans speed up and drop off rapidly with the gaming demands so they aren’t running high when you aren’t pushing the laptop. Software: The Acer Predator Sense app allows you to choose between modes, adjust fan control and set preconfigured and custom keypad and rgb lighting. It also has a monitoring page that gives you the status of the laptop components. The software is very intuitive and easy to use. Build: The laptop is mostly constructed of plastic but it feels solid. The rear vents extend beyond the display panel’s hinges and this tail assembly has some nice rgb lighting on the top. The keys are great for typing because they provide positive feedback when engaged. The power supply is a brick - as in big and heavy but it has to be to support the power draw. Ports: On the left side there is an ethernet port, Micro SD reader, Headphones jack and a USB-A gen 3.2. One the back there is the power port, hdmi 2.1 and two Thunderbolt type C connectors. On the right side there are two USB-A gen 3.2 ports. 3D mark Benchmark values for 1440p Ultra resolution: Battlefield V Turbo mode = 180+ fps; Performance mode = 165+ fps Apex legends Turbo mode = 140+ fps; Performance mode = 140+ fps GTA V Turbo mode = 125+ fps; Performance mode = 115+ fps Red Dead Redemption 2 Turbo mode = 75+ fps ; Performance mode = 70+ fps Fortnite Turbo mode = 95+ fps; Performance mode = 85+ fps Performance Graphic Score 17851, CPU score 15758 Turbo Graphic Score 18707

Best deal ever! The i9-13900hx with 32 threads is still a monster and the system is very fast. No regrets although new systems are coming out.

Best value gaming laptop available right now. Very happy with purchase. Buy a cooling pad, it gets warm!

Loving it. My third gaming laptop and so far tge best one, no regreats here

The laptop is a gorgeous device. I will detail more about individual features below, but I will just start by saying that the build quality is excellent and this 16” screen laptop weighs just a little over 5 pounds (without the power adapter, more on that later). It is less than an inch thick and is surprisingly sleek, fitting into my 15.6” laptop-accommodating backpack. Even better, the laptop includes a custom neoprene zippered protective carrying case from Acer, so it is ready for use on the go right out of the box! The colors of the finish of the device look great. Granted, the keyboard deck and the top of the lid are fingerprint magnets, so you are going to need to keep it wiped off if you want to maintain a clean look. There is an abundance of I/O enough to make anyone happy, including two USB-C ports with the latest Full-Function Thunderbolt 4 certification and an HDMI 2.1 Port for ease of hooking up additional monitors with high refresh rate capability. One of the most positive aspects of this machine is, as expected, the incredible screen. The 240hz, 1600p IPS screen with 3ms response time is incredible for all different kinds of gaming. I am primarily an FPS gamer with games like Doom Eternal and Hunt Showdown, and this machine CRUSHES both of those games. That 240hz refresh also corresponds to really smooth experiences with regular computing tasks like web browsing and productivity. Also, this screen gets BRIGHT. The 500-nit screen is bright enough to make daylight brightness in a room still possible while playing games with darker sequences or night maps (like in Hunt Showdown). There is some perceptible blacklight bleeding in the top right and left corners of my particular screen, but it is not enough for me to worry about. Finally, the colors look GREAT on this screen. I am not a photo editor so I can’t speak to the precision of the colors, but for gaming and general productivity purposes, the images this screen produces look fantastic. The hardware this is equipped with is appropriately top-spec for a high-end laptop like this but is in need of special accommodations for optimized cooling. The Intel i9 13900HX is an incredible mobile CPU and crushes at multitasking and pushing out all of those crispy, high-end frames to the monitor on AAA title games like Doom Eternal. With HWmonitor, I did detect the CPU temps climbing up to 100C on some of my more intensive multitask workloads while gaming and streaming. By putting the fans into turbo mode through the PredatorSense app and putting the laptop on a cooling pad, I was able to keep the CPU temps at 90C and below and never noticed any stutters or frame drops while gaming. This laptop has visible fans on the bottom of the device with slats to allow plenty of cool air to be pulled in. As such, it is essential that you keep that air intake unobstructed by keeping this on a flat, hard surface like a desk while gaming or utilizing a laptop cooling pad. The good news is that my complaint of some finicky cooling needs only extends to the CPU. During my most intensive testing while gaming at full graphics, running a second monitor, and streaming via the GPU hardware encoder on OBS, the NVidia 4080 this laptop is equipped with never exceeded temperatures higher than 94C! For a high-power mobile CPU like this with 12GB of VRAM, this is fantastic for my use case and has left me completely satisfied with the performance for concurrent high-fidelity and frame-rate gaming combined with streaming on Twitch! Another thing that I really like on this laptop is the keyboard. It is a comfortable keyboard to type on, with just the right pitch and angle to the palm rests for ease of typing on a flat surface. The keys themselves feel great and the full number pad they included is a welcome addition for my Excel spreadsheet household budget crunching. The media control keys above the number pad are a welcome addition, as are the comprehensive and fully lit controls on the function row of keys. The keys themselves are beautifully lit with the mini-LED RGB per-key lighting. Also, there is additional lighting on the rear jutting portion of the laptop, right on the top of the deck! It looks so cool and honestly adds some edgy appeal to this device without overdoing it. Altogether, as an almost 30-year-old, I can get behind the looks of this high-end gaming laptop without being afraid it looks too unprofessional in certain business settings. The speakers on this laptop are actually a real surprise as to how loud and clear they are. There is a detectable bit of buzz to them occasionally on the very top end of the volume levels when an audio track gets dense with mixed trebles and mids, but it is not that bad or frequent. Frankly, I am an obligate headset and earbud user so the speakers on a laptop like this are not important to me. Most gamers I know are also using headsets, so the gamer crowd should be perfectly satisfied with the audio on this laptop. The webcam on this laptop is one of the reasons why I can openly say that a business professional or student would be thrilled to have it. It is a crispy 1080p full HD camera and has proved to be excellent in dim rooms. I am impressed that they managed to squeeze such a good camera into the top of this very thin bezeled screen without having to go with a notch design (thank goodness). I used this camera on OBS while streaming on Twitch and even though it isn’t the most flattering camera angle for my face, it worked great and was seamless to use. There is a green indicator light that lights up next to it when it is activated, but there is no physical shutter to block the camera. Now to just touch on a few of the identified downsides of a device like this. The first is that the power adapter this comes with is an appealingly rounded edged adapter but is an absolute brick weighing over 3 pounds with the cords included. To my testing, this laptop cannot receive power in through its thunderbolt 4 ports, even during eco and battery saver use, so that means that if you are expecting to use this beast of a gaming laptop on the go for more than a few hours, you are going to have to lug that large power brick with you. The next gripe is one that I am going to be reasonable about, but it is the short battery life. This beast is absolutely ravenous for power! In my battery test, I went as absolutely low power as possible, including using eco mode, setting the battery immediately to battery saver mode, setting the keyboard RGB to static color and to turn off after 30 seconds of nonuse, and turning down the screen refresh rate to 60. While that took away some of the beauty of the screen, it did not reduce my productivity on the machine. An addendum necessary to all my battery testing is that I am an obligate Google Chrome Browser user due to my online master’s college program being a Google University, so I recognize that there is less power efficiency there than with Google Chrome as my web browser. With all of these efficiency settings implemented, I did manage to squeeze out 2 hours and 4 minutes of unplugged use before I hit the 10% mark on the battery. While this is acceptable for my use case, I just want to make sure others are aware. I really wish that Acer could have included the ability to charge this over the USB thunderbolt connection with a 100W PD option or the like so that there might be a more portable way to juice this thing up on the go than that 3-pound beast of a power adapter, especially given that the laptop draws less than 100watts when fully charge and doing basic tasks that don’t involve the discrete GPU. One other issue I think should be mentioned in this portion of the review, is that the software of the PredatorSense app will not allow you to change the mode from balanced to Performance or Turbo, where it claims to overclock the GPU and CPU, until you reach 40% or more battery power, even while the adapter is plugged in. This makes sense I suppose from a voltage and device protection perspective, but it is still a limitation people should be aware of. That way, you know to plug your laptop in when you get home from the coffeeshop for some time (as an example) before you get your high-power gaming session started. Benchmarks: 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD in this laptop is a PCIe Gen 4 drive. It achieved over 6500MB/s read speeds and 4978MB/s write speeds! This is a beast of a drive. There is also one more M.2 slot open for additional storage to be added. Geekbench 6 (GPU) OpenCL score: 170020 Geekbench 6 (CPU) Single Core score: 2799 Multicore: 16022 Unengine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 with Ultra Quality, Extreme Tessellation at 1600p resolution: 105.3 FPS with a score of 2654 Overall, this laptop delivers exactly what I would expect at this price point in the way of being a beastly gaming laptop with some aspects that make it more reasonable for mixed business or school use like the FHD webcam and full-sized keyboard. I really don’t have any recommendations for how Acer could make this laptop better, except that I am always game for more ways to power mobile devices on the go such as with USB-C power input capability. Thanks for reading and I hope this review has aided your purchasing decision.

So far, this laptop has handled everything I've thrown at it with ease. I'm not the most hardcore gamer, but after purchasing an ROG Ally, I started wanting to be able to play more games at higher settings, so I bought this laptop. Outside of gaming, it has some flaws that you should know about before spending over two grand on it. My complaints are pretty much what I DIDN'T get after spending so much money on this laptop (just over $2400). First, I should warn you. This thing is a fingerprimt magnet. The second you touch it with an ungloved hand, it will never be the same again. Don't consider this a complaint, just a word of caution. The display: It has two refresh rates. 60Hz and 240Hz. There is an overdrive option of some kind in the display settings, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it does. My only real complaint in this area is the lack of HDR. On a laptop this expensive, there is absolutely no excuse for not having it. The sound: In short, it's trash. Absolutely nothing sounds good coming out of these speakers and I've used laptops under $1,000 that sounded MUCH better. Even my phone sounds better! So make sure you have some good headphones or have it hooked up to anything else with decent audio. Battery life: This is not a laptop that's designed to be on the go. Whether you're using the built in Intel graphics, or the RTX4080, battery life is abysmal at 3-4 hours with a light to moderate load. Switching between the two graphics options seem to have no real impact on the battery. Security: Hope you weren't planning on using facial recognition via Windows Hello or your fingerprint to log on to your new, expensive laptop. Your only options are a pin or password. You can always buy a YubiKey and use it if you don't mind having to momentarily plug in a small USB key. The software: The laptop comes with "Predator Sense" software pre-installed. It lets you control lighting, fan speeds, set performance profiles etc. 90% of the time it's great. The other 10% will have you uninstalling and reinstalling the software, killing the process in task manager restarting it and generally pulling your hair out because it decided you don't need backlighting on your keyboard. Over time it's gotten better, but it's still a bit finicky. Another issue you may have is that sometimes when you turn the laptop on, the screen resolition sets itself to something just a little under half of it's default resolution. I can't figure out why, but it's not a constant issue and is a quick fix when it happens. I decided to give this laptop 4 stars, even with all of my complaints, because I'm rating it for what is and has, and not for what it isn't and doesn't have. It's a gaming beast designed to be used as a desktop replacement with a sound system or good headphones, and when used that way, it's excellent. I was initially really peeved about the poor security options, but the previously mentioned YubiKey solved that problem. If this were a sub-2K laptop, I'd highly recommend it. At the price I paid, I'm a little more hesitant, as there's most likely better options for less if you have the time to wait for a laptop to be delivered. I didn't have that luxury, so I had to go with what was on the shelf. I don't regret it, I just wish I'd got my money's worth.

Pros and Cons first. Summary below. PROS: PERFORMANCE is awesome right out of the box. Most of the time it is meeting, if not surpassing, the performance of my PC (depending on the game). That speaks volumes because I have a beastly rig. -TEMPERATURE isn't a problem. The chassis gets warm, but not hot. The design of the Chassis including rubber feet on the back allow for better airflow, so while the components do get hot, they aren't getting to temps that worry me. It still wouldn't hurt to either prop the laptop up on its power brick or buy a folding stand for it because that does change its temps by a few degrees. -FEATURES are pretty nice. It comes with a "Mode Button" that allows you to switch between four different modes. You have Quiet Mode, Balanced Mode, Performance Mode, and Turbo Mode. Each mode, for obvious reasons, makes the fans a little louder BUT I keep it on Quiet and Balanced and I still hit high frames so unless you are running Modern Gen titles with Ultra settings and Path Tracing, I don't really see why you'd need to make it sound like a jet engine. -MATERIAL quality is top notch. It has quite the sturdy feel to it. -SHIPPING was immaculate. It came in three boxes, all with padding, before I got to its actual box. The laptop box itself was snug in very thick foam padding and the laptop was wrapped in a layer of protective cloth with another layer resting in between the keyboard and the screen. CONS: BATTERY is not great. But I personally only use this plugged in because it both increases performance and why wouldn't I? I did set the battery limit to 80% via the ACER Care Center application. If you're someone that, for whatever reason, doesn't plug your laptop in while gaming I don't think this is a good purchase for you. -BULKY build makes the portability kind of a pain. Although it should be expected when you are running a 40 series card it still didn't click just how big this laptop would be until it was in my hands. That being said it is still a good size, all things considered. The bigger issue for me (no pun intended) is actually the size of the power adapter. Between the adapter itself and the cables being so thick I have almost no room left in my bag for anything else. But again, it is running some pretty big and power-hungry components. -SOUND QUALITY and NOISE is not great. Although I don't run it to its full potential, it's still a laptop, so fan noise is going to bother some people. This can easily be remedied by increasing the volume of whatever you are doing. This is where I start having some complaints though because the speakers aren't great. They aren't awful and I have heard much worse, but they do sound very tinny. I expected a little more out of a laptop in this price range. -CAMERA feels a bit useless because it has no Windows Hello capabilities. I suppose if you are someone that uses a laptop camera for calls it is a good addition, but I don't personally do that and don't know many people that would use a gaming computer for that. In my opinion they could have just left the camera out entirely to cut cost. SUMMARY: Overall, this laptop is worth the money. I can look well past its cons because at the end of the day it performs as advertised and I haven't had any issues in terms of quality control. If that changes soon, I will update my review. Most of the two and three-star reviews are being unfair and nit-picking. The touch pad IS centered with the keyboard, despite what reviews say, but because this laptop has a number pad it appears that it isn’t. Because it’s a laptop the touch pad gets in the way of the WSAD keys while gaming, but I can't imagine anyone gaming with a touchpad instead of a mouse so an easy fix is to disable the touch pad while gaming using the windows settings which takes less than a minute. As for the reviews stating Acer needs better quality control, I can't say much about it. I guess it's possible that people are getting units with bad screens, and I just got extremely lucky, but that's just not something I can comment on. UPDATE: I wanted to give Best Buy huge props for letting me come back and price match this item after purchase when they dropped the price. It was quick and easy and the agent I spoke with was awesome.

The good - Amazing performance, couldn't find a game that it couldn't run at least 60 fps at highest possible settings. 240hz 2k display absolutely beautiful to look at. The Bad - 1 hour battery life, super loud fan which is typical of windows gaming laptops. Something atypical - acer software glitchy and unintuitive. Keyboard RGB settings kept resetting on restarts randomly.

I upgraded it to 32gb ram and 3tb of hard drive right off the box . Uninstalled McAfee . Pradator sense gets messed up if you unplug or plug power adapter while shutting down or starting up. So do that before or after. I'm able to play aaa games at max settings 4k 70fps plus on standard 80fps on performance and 90fps on max but I would never use max since it hits 99 degrees which screws the machine in a long run . But standard is super cool and performance barely hits 90 degrees which is fine . I got it for $1800 definitely is worth that .

I'm happy with the performance of this laptop from Acer. The performance has been very good, and most importantly for me, predictable. Like every other gaming laptop, the fans do make noise when you're pushing it, but as someone very sensitive to this, the noise isn't bad. It's fairly low pitched brown noise which doesn't fluctuate very much. You can play most games on quiet settings. The screen is very bright, clear, and is anti-reflective. I think Nvidia Optimus is confusing and ended up and disabling it. The keyboard is great, but the off-center touch pad gets in the way... Acer, please move this. The touch pad is large, sensitive, and accurate, but again, it's in the wrong place. If you use WASD it's going to annoy you. Finally, as a note to Acer... please, please, please... we need high performance laptops that don't look and sound like Transformers.

For what you get, this laptop is worth it. Out of the box I upgraded ram to 64GB and SSD to 2TB 7400 read/6900 write. With its 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports. I had two usb c to diplay port 1.4 cables going to two 1440p@144hz monitors, and USB 3.0/3.1 hub for all the periferals. It’s a fairly high end desktop at that point. I am going to fabricate a mount for the laptop to live underneath my standing desk with as little visability as possible and I’ll have a clean towerless gaming/workstation. If I want to hit the road ill just unplug the two monitors grab the laptop/charger and peripherals and hit the road. I would give 4stars because the battery is just there to make the thing work. Youve got maybe 60 minutes of battery if you are doing anything while off charger. Must have charger with you at all times. I bump it up another .5 because the build quality is quite a bit better than I expected and it is very very easy get to the ram and ssd for upgrading.

TL;DR - I'm content with the purchase of this laptop with a few caveats. Excruciatingly terrible battery life, with a not-so-eco Eco Mode. Runs for about an hour and a half in "Eco Mode" while doing very basic web surfing. But that's not why you buy this thing. You buy it to keep it plugged in for G A M I N G. The power supply is also massive but only supplies 330 watts. Many other manufacturers have gotten power bricks about half this size that output more. It's a lot to lug around if you plan on doing that. The Predator Sense software was giving me major issues in Windows 11 since I bought this back in August of 2023. When powering on from a shutdown, it would start the program but the program wouldn't work. It's like it wasn't communicating with the hardware. RGB wouldn't change, temps and speeds weren't showing in the software, and pressing the mode button did nothing. I would have to do a full Windows restart to get it working. Recently I've found gotten it to work by disabling Windows' "Fast Startup" option and it's been working perfectly ever since. I just wish this was actually addressed by ACER, but what can you do? Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work great. No complaints. The webcam is useable. Not much more I can say about that. IO is acceptable with two USB-C/Thunderbolt ports on the back along with an HDMI out, 3 USB-A ports on the sides along with a LAN port, and a 3.5mm headset port next to a Micro-SD card slot. I would prefer at least one more USB-A port on the side of the laptop in place of the Micro-SD card slot, and maybe a full-size SD card slot as well, but in total it's quite acceptable. I have had no issues with keeping the CPU and GPU cool. The thermal solution is, at the very least, enough to keep everything within acceptable bounds. The fans do get a bit loud when set to Performance mode, and they are deafening when set to Turbo. You may need earplugs, but at least your laptop will stay cool. The display does not support HDR, which is not a selling point for me at this moment but it may be for you. Color-wise, to my surprise, it's super color accurate. I'm very happy with this as I do all my video editing on it. Also, the 16:10 aspect ratio is a great to have. It's a full keyboard which is a must have for me. Each key is also individually backlit so you can create some neat color profiles for it. That being said, it doesn't currently work properly within OpenRGB. If you're into that sort of thing then this would be a letdown, but I'm just a solid color kind of guy so it's a non-issue. The trackpad works and is a decent size. While I don't use it often, when I do I wish it was one of the big etched glass ones. You know, the ones that sit flush with the chassis and feel great to use? Yeah, that one. This isn't it, but it's not the worst by a longshot.

This is a pretty remarkable machine. It's packaged beautifully, it includes a soft case. Upon installation, I made sure that Windows 11 (Home, I would have preferred Pro for the $s) was up to date, and that Predator Helios was updated, it did go throught 2 bios updates, but nothing unexpected.   But there are some issues you should be aware of.  For a 16" screen it weighs in just over 5 lbs (without 3.3 lbs power brick (the biggest I've seen)).  The first thing I did was some simple battery rundown tests.  If you are going to do any serious work on battery power, be prepared to plug-in within 2hrs.  I ran several tests, and even with only surfing the internet I only got just over 2.5 hrs (screen brightness 75%).  Running Diablo (@1440p) brought on the "jet engine" fans and cut battery life to just over 1 hour.  But I did not get this to run it on batteries.  Diablo ran very smoothly, no screen tearing, absolutely fantastic gaming.  This is what I expected from the latest Nvidia 4080  (with 12GB of VRAM); to excel, and it does. Keyboard customization is done with the PredatorSense app, it is very easy to make changes. The Predator key brings up numerous gaming/configuration/performance options.  The supplied Micron SSD is acceptable, but not outstanding.  I've attached an image showing CrystalDiskMark's benchmarks comparing the Micron to Acer's latest Predator SSD.  The touch pad is also superb, although I attached a logitech BT mouse, as I'm accustomed to it for several games. The screen's resolution is 2560x1600. Now I'm going to go a bit off road, and not exactly use this notebook as intended.  My biggest attraction to this beast of a machine was Intel's I9-13900hx processor (supporting 24 cores, 32 threads).  It's about as fast as you can get today.  This Predator ships with a somewhat underwhelming configuration. So it's time to do a couple of upgrades.  First I'll add a faster 4Tb Acer Predator SSD (GM7000).  And this notebook only has 16Gb of memory (although it's fast DDR5 memory), and Acer's spec sheets say it only supports 32Gb.  Yet Intel's spec sheets spec it can support 64Gb.  So I was not deterred from trying 64Gb.  At first, after removing the 2x8Gb sticks and replacing them with 2 Crucial DDR5 4800 SODIMM sticks...  Powered it on, and the notebook would not boot.  But I've seen this before.  I removed the stick from bank 2, and reboooted.  It took over 2min but the system did boot this time with a single 32Gb stick.  Power down, add the second stick back in. Reboot and wait another +2min, and the system booted with 64GB!!  One other note, that I don't know if it is normal, The Acer battery was NOT screwed in, and I didn't have any screws of that size. So powering on/off, testing, was complicated by the loose battery (there were 4 screw holes to afix the battery).  When re-assembling the LED panel on the tail end of the computer, has to be 'hooked on' before reassembly Why all the memory?  I want to run multiple virtual machines (preferably 4, Win 11, Win 10, Win 8 Pro and Win 7 Ultimate (32 bit).  I want to do this for support purposes, I'm a software developer and I need to be able to test my software on different versions of windows.  I also need to be able to run a Development SQL Server.  This machine should be able to do this, but only if it has sufficient memory. I know the CPU can deal with it.  I setup each Virtual machine (Oracle VirtualBox) with 16gb, 8gb, 4gb and 4gbof memory, and with between 100gb to 750gb of disk space. And still there is space left over on the 4TB drive.   So it can be done, and an image shows many details with all running. The screen on this Predator Helios   is excellent, plenty bright and very even backlighting (500 nit).  There are 3 USB-A (3.2) ports, 2 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports (rear), 1 Full size HDMI 2.1 port (rear), 1 Micro SD card slot, 1 Ethernet port and a headphone jack.  Very well outfitted.   As for sound quality, it's acceptable, it can get loud enough but the overall quality of the sound is not the best I've heard (or have).  And the camera is: so, so @1080P, it's pretty good with low light, better than most.  When the camera is on there is a green led to the right of the camera, but no physical shutter lock. I'd really hoped that this notebook could be powered via the thunderbolt input, at least in eco mode.  But I could not get that to work even with a 100W PD USB-C adapter.  So if you're going to travel with this 5lbs notebook you're going to also have to bring its 3.3lbs (with cords) power supply (really too bad this did not work).  If you're going to game with this, you won't be putting it on your lap, when running in turbo mode the heat from the fans is quite noticeable, and pretty loud, but not unexpected.  The fans run as required, if you're not pushing it, you barely hear them. I do some astrophotography and use an app that aligns stars, this I9 notebook is nearly 50% faster than my current state of the art notebook (w/Nvidia 3060).  The good news is it's a post processing process, where I process a "stack" of images.  I'm sure the 4080 GPU has something to do with this. In summary, this is a workhorse of a computer,  I wish Acer had included their own Predator SSD, as it's easily 10-15% faster than the Micron stock drive. I wish I could power the machine (maybe without the 4080, with a 100W USB-C PD device).  I also think that a machine of this quality should ship with 32GB memory.  And the battery should be screwed in. I'd also like the option of a touch screen, all the fingerprints on the screen are because I've become accustomed to touch screen notebooks. But in terms of performance, properly configured, this is a remarkable machine.

The Acer Predator Helios 16 is the powerhouse you have been wanting for your portable gaming. It is loaded with great features, it's upgradable, and amazingly fun to play on. Unboxing Acer knows how to pack a computer! There is careful attention taken to avoid vibration, dropping, or throwing damage. The laptop is securely bundled up in thick foam bricks and well presented in an awesome product box. It is nice to see this level of detail and care on packaging. It comes with some standard paperwork and a sticker sheet for Planet9 gaming league. In the product case there is the power brick and cables, and also 2 colorful magnetic fan port covers that you can swap out with the plain black covers already on the back of the laptop. Also included is a very nice zippered carrying pouch. It is slightly padded, and well crafted. Outside Features This laptop comes equipped with 3 USB 3.2 ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, a MiniSD port, Ethernet, Headphone jack, 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports, and charger port. Setup and initial thoughts Make sure you are plugged in to power, because there is quite a bit of updating to do. The startup button is actually part of the keyboard, which takes some getting used to. The initial splash logo on startup is accompanied by a sound clip that is quite startling and loud if you are not expecting it. This can be disabled in Predator Sense once windows setup is complete. There is a bit of bloatware installed, so you may want to visit add/remove programs and do a bit of cleanup. PredatorSense Acers overclocking, monitoring, and customizing software. You can quick access it by hitting the Predator logo on the keypad. It is full of details and abilities. You have your power mode, which can choose between quiet, balanced, performance, and turbo mode. Turbo mode overclocks the cpu and gpu, and max fan speed. It gets quite noisy on that mode, but really beast modes the hardware safely in Acers specs. Also is fan control, where you can set custom fan speeds for the gpu and cpu. There is also lighting control, and also sound enviroment control. Sound The sound leaves a bit to be desired through the laptop speakers, even with DTS X ultra on. Most of the contol and quality comes through headphones or bluetoothing to a stereo system. Display This laptop comes with a 16" WQXGA LED Panel with a whopping 240hz refresh with a 3ms response time. It comes with Gsync and Optimus, which lets the computer jump back and forth between the RTX4080, and the I9 13900HX's integrated graphics to save on battery. It seems to work quite well. The panel is 500nits of brightness, but with a resolution of 2560x1600, the picture quality is insanely detailed. Performance With the I9's 24 cores up to 5.4ghz, and the RTX4080's 12GB of video memory and dlss, games run on ultra settings with high fps, and process cpu rendering amazingly fast, especially on turbo mode. The 16GB of DDR5 5600 Ram really help quick boots and loading. Upgradeability There is 1TB of SSD storage that comes with the computer. There is a 2nd SSD port will let you add more memory, and the 16GB of ram is upgradable to 32GB and is super easy to access. Keyboard, touchpad, and camera They keyboard takes up almost the entire width of the case, and includes a number pad which I like. The keys feel pretty good to type on and have a nice response. There is also a hotkey to open PredatorSense, and another off the keyboard to quick adjust your mode between performance and turbo. The key lighting is fully customizable and looks good. The trackpad is large and feels very smooth with gliding and clicks. The camera seemed ok. It is 1080p, but depending on what program is running it, it can be kinda fuzzy or super clear and sharp. The Flaw The reason for 4 stars is that the panel bezel is very thin and has quite a bit of flex. This has left the screen to have a few bleedthrough spots, especially in the upper corners where you open the panel. Acer needs to find a way to better sturdy that. The bleedthrough is not very noticeable except on pure blacks. Overall This is an exceptional gaming machine and is so much fun to game on, and also video editing or using design software. It flows so well. Even with the screen issue and the subpar speakers, I would highly recommend this laptop.