Customer Ratings & Reviews

With an MSRP of $2,499.99 this is the cheapest Mini-LED laptop you can get with these specs. Even better if you can get it on sale. The unboxing experience is better than most in the same class. I think budget premium is an apt description for the Helios 18. There are certainly places they cut corners but that makes sense given the price. Where it matters, they've hit it out of the park. The specs are nearly as good as you can get in a gaming laptop, and it's packed with features. It truly is a huge laptop though, if you think there is a chance it might be too big for you then I'd probably go for a 16-inch laptop. Build Quality 8/10 Keyboard 7.5/10 RGB 8/10 Trackpad 6/10 Speakers 6/10 Software 6/10 Battery Life 5/10 Display 9/10 Thermals 8/10 Performance 9/10

I will start off by saying that I got this for $2199.99 before tax so that you have a reference when I talk about price to performance. Things I love about this laptop: The specs of this laptop are insane considering the price. It's a full blown i9 13900HX and an RTX 4080 mobile, with 32GB of 5600Mhz RAM and a 2560x1600 Mini LED HDR 250Hz screen. Competitors have laptops with far inferior specs for more money. (looking at you Asus, Razer, and Dell/Alienware) You would think that they would have to cut serious corners to cram that much awesome in at this price point (and they did cut corners, just not ones I would consider serious), but one of those corners that wasn't cut was the build quality! This thing is rigid with a full aluminum top and lid. The hinges on the screen are just right as well. It opens with one hand and stays at whatever angle you leave it at. Another thing I'm a HUGE fan of, and the main reason I bought this laptop in particular (other than that crazy price point) over its competitors, is the dual Thunderbolt 4 ports. I'm running two 18" 2560x1600 portable monitors on this thing. I have all the comfort of my triple monitor setup from home, on the go! On to things I don't care for about the laptop: The keyboard is the number one offender and the reason I bought a portable keyboard to add to my on the go kit. I didn't need one with my old laptop (a Cyberpower) because it's keyboard was surprisingly excellent. This keyboard is kind of squishy and just unpleasant to use, though I do appreciate the numpad for when I'm using Excel or the calculator. Next, the power brick is an absolute unit, which is only to be expected out of a non GaN 330w charger. Only a few competitors even offer GaN power bricks though so I can't exactly complain about that. I ordered a SlimQ 330w GaN charger to take on the go with this and I will leave the stock one at home, cable managed into my docking area for the laptop. And finally, the protective sleeve for this thing fits like a worn out sock. It's nice that it was included, but it just feels like an ill fit when you put the laptop in it. Overall I absolutely love this laptop and none of the corners that were cut merit losing a star in my opinion. If this thing had a character sheet, all the attributes I care about would be maxed and the one's I don't are the dump stats. Side note, this just barely fits into the laptop compartment of the LTT backpack, but not into the part that is meant to hold the laptop protectively. You have to put in in and pull the corners of the bag over the corners of the laptop. It doesn't feel good to do that at all, I suggest buying a laptop bag that is sized for an 18" laptop.

Ever game on a 14-15" laptop and think "wow I'm having a hard time seeing opponents"? I did on the Blade 14, and that's not an issue here. Size isn't the only thing that matters in a laptop though, so here's how this big boi pans out in the market, read whatever interest you. Final Thoughts: Excellent value laptop, offering incredible performance with above-average build quality, and huge, bright display, great trackpad, and acceptable keyboard. If you buy it for gaming, you'll love it. Size and Weight; Although 18" is a monster, the package is kept pretty tight being not much wider or taller than the display, except for the 'trunk' which isn't massive. At 7 lbs, I find this laptop light for it's class (omen X laptop was 10 lbs a few years ago). Power adapter is huge, wish R&D went into developing a small GaN version. 1" tall laptops are not a burden, don't mind the 'thin' laptop garbage. Display: key selling point for 4080 model, mini LED. It's excellent, and kinda quirky. Most-dark content dims the backlights low, even if white text is present, so you end up with darker text wondering if Intel Adaptive Contrast is screwing with you and it's not. Open a brighter image and the laptop comes to life. This can make text and pages look like they have a gradient applied, and they don't. I'd rather have the option to single-plane backlight the screen here. In game, i haven't really noticed it, thank goodness. Otherwise, its sharp, fast, and bright. Keyboard: It's fine. Stiffer membrane switches. I don't like heavy keys, and these are kinda heavy. Typing not as nice as gaming, since gaming I'm rougher on the keys. The backlighting is amazing though, around Razer quality lighting. Vivid and even colored keys. Cant find an option to switch from FN to Media keys without holding FN though. Trackpad: Excellent, its big and its glass. The glass texture is perfect, not too smooth or rough. Clicks are good. I daily use Macbooks so I'm not going to say its perfect because windows doesn't offer that, but it's a good windows trackpad! Speakers: Not good. Down-firing, no depth, just use headphones. There are worse speakers, but there sure as heck a lot better out there. Build quality: Mix of aluminum lid, keyboard deck, and plastic bottom and trunk. Kinda creaky opening lid. No flex on keyboard deck. If gaming is your mission, it's totally acceptable. Razer does better, but chargers 1k more lol Thermals: excellent. The fans blast out heat all 4 vents. In Zero Builds, performance mode, i9 hovers around 80 in game, 90 on occasional loading. 4080 around 80 flat. The FPS is awesome in zero builds on QHD. Still testing all this though. KB and palm rest stayed very cool. Right mouse hand was being warmed. Battery life: Not enough experience yet, but low. Used for around an hour, and lost around 30%. Still setting up the PC though, need time to see.

Superb display, great keyboard, okay software, but glitchy. Despite hours of trying to fix and adjust display settings, this laptop refuses to maintain maximum brightness. It constantly dims, increases, and dims again, every time I move my mouse. This defeats the purpose of having a 1,000-nit mini-led screen. It isn't an issue when gaming or watching content, fortunately. But when I spend a lot of time working from home and use my browser (Chrome/Edge/Firefox, doesn't matter) it is a giant headache.

I bought this laptop hoping for a smaller footprint and more portable very capable gaming PC. I have a i5-13600k with an RTX 3080 desktop, and the performance of this laptop seems to match or exceed it in all the games I've tried so far, it's very impressive and exceeds my expectations. The display is stunning. At 18 inches it's plenty large, and the 16x10 aspect ratio is pretty convenient as well. The mini LED screen gets extremely bright, and handles HDR pretty well. The colors are vibrant, and at 250 hz it's incredibly smooth as well. In performance/turbo mode the fans do get very loud. Not loud enough to hear over my headset, but audible from a couple rooms away. With that noise comes respectable cooling for a laptop though. I was surprised how cool to the touch the chassis stayed while gaming for an extended period of time. The keyboard isn't anything special, but it's easy for me type on and I don't fumble around with the keys like I tend to do on some laptop keyboards. The large size also allows for a num pad. There is a fairly generous amount of ports (3 standard USB ports on the sides, a full size ethernet port, and 2 USB-C ports as well as a full size HDMI port in the back). Due to the size and noise it can kick out, I wouldn't recommend this for someone looking for a portable or stealthy laptop, but if you're looking for a desktop replacement type machine, this is a great option. I had pretty high hopes for it when I purchased it, and it still blew me away. It's not cheap, and there are some drawbacks (mainly the noise, heft, size of the battery, and it seems to be a bit of a fingerprint magnet), but for the price it sure packs a punch.

For the price this laptop is a steal. The display is gorgeous and new games run at very nice fps with the 4080 mobile gpu. I had mine for 10 days and the acer predatorsense software seemed to not be able to control the device anymore. Fans were going on and off continuously in perfromance mode and then the keyboard backlit just stopped working. I returned it but really wish it would have worked.

I bought because of the sale. I have a similar spec MSI with an Intel i9-11900 and RTX 3070 and wanted the 4080 as well as the alleged superior mini LED 18 screen. After running some real world video processing tests, I found the 480 did not handle these process any faster. Also the mini LED was disappointing. After calibrating it did not look any sharper than my 17" LED 240hz screen. In fact my MSI has a better color balance and seemed brighter and just as sharp. So much for the mini LED hype at least as ACER is concerned. This unit was not worth the cost, even on sale so I returned it.

This laptop is the absolute pinnacle of laptops. If you don’t mind sacrificing portability it is a little bit big and a little bit heavy but the trade-off is desktop level performance, huge, bright, amazing screen, good keyboard, good thermals, good noise there was really no downside after you understand what you’re getting into with an 18 inch laptop.

So this laptop is all about the LED screen that gets to more than 1000nits. I just leave the HDR on in windows settings all the time, and it is stunning. Watching anything is brighter and more vibrant than any LCD IPS screen. I take it with me on my business trips, and watching sports or non HDR content is just like watching on an LED TV versus a IPS panel TV. If you've never seen a LED screen on a laptop, it is brighter than most pure OLED screens and has way better contrast and brightness than IPS panels. Also LED panels have less issues with side bleeding since they are not edge-lit as IPS panels are. So you don't have to stress about returning a laptop until you get a good panel. Today most high end OLED TVs and desktop monitors have technologies that combine OLED and LED in the same panel. No laptops have these panels yet.

This laptop made me regret switching from ROG to ACER. This product will run mostly smooth on games 80% of the time aside from the random, very bad stutter youll get every 5-10 minutes. The only positive and only reason this product reaches a 2 is because of its truly great mini-led display. The rest is below average performance at best for the price you pay. I previously owned a ROG 3050-TI and that ran smoother than this trash, which shouldnt happen with the supposedly much better hardware this product claims to have. I deeply regret buying this product. Its making me search desperately for a ROG in the same price range, which of course best buy doesnt have. Overall I got ripped off and i hope to spare anybody else the trouble. Im returning this asap.

Really good experience, can run every single AAA games with no issues!!!!

Incredible fast, very elegant, materials are top tier. 10/10 would recommend this product for the price point and your getting i9 13th Gen, 32gb RAM, & 1TB SSD, i’d say that’s a win.

Great display, great gaming video, great processor, fair price for what you get.

Pretty great machine, i had returned it for a computer with a metal shell however.

A magical artifact that will dazzle you. Master race desktop replacement with all the cutting-edge technologies and superior features. The most flawless and ultimate computer money can buy for this price range. The best, of the very best.

This computer does not disappoint. It does it all and more. You will love it

Awesome. Super powerful and mighty. Great of gamers and power users

Had it for a week got it for starfield was playing on 2k low settings for a few hours was working great and thing just died..... It was in performance mode plugged in not even turbo Also it's not mini led....

For the fourth week in a row I have purchased this laptop from BestBuy only to receive an email two days later that my order has been cancelled because the item is sold out. I have literally purchased it within a minute after it becoming available to no avail. Last time, this item stayed available online for six hours after I purchased it before the website updated it to sold out and regardless, I still got my order cancelled. BestBuy has turned into a haven for bots and as long as the items get purchased BestBuy doesn't care. They won't do anything about it and will refuse, per policy, to give you the email or phone number for corporate because God forbid you call to complain.

I ordered my laptop as soon as it was available like really early in the morning around 6am and my payment went through an said it would be coming Friday and then a day later best buy canceled my order like come on best buy what are you doing i have been waiting forever on getting this laptop