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Acer’s decision to pair the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 with a beefy 12th Gen Intel chip may seem a little disjointed. And with a price tag in the £1,686 range, it really gave us a shock – we don’t tend to recommend laptops with RTX 3060s in them for more than £1,000 these days.
Much to my delight, the Predator Helios 300 (PH317-56-79UB) I was sent comes with an impressive 140W GPU tucked under the hood, and it does a much better job of complementing the 14-core, 20. Thread Intel CPU Acer selected from Intel’s 12th Gen lineup. While the Predator Helios 300’s killer hardware specs don’t convince me of the price tag, the addition of a fast, high-capacity SSD, 16GB of dual-channel DDR5 memory, and a smooth 1440p screen make the configuration even more compelling. Challenging for price.
A few settings tweaks are required to get the most out of the 165Hz refresh rate panel, especially at 1440p. Even out of the box, it’s clear that this laptop is capable enough to push those frame rates in a bunch of 1080p games.
In testing, I chose the similarly priced Lenovo Legion 5 Pro. (Opens in a new tab) Gaming laptop and Asus TUF Gaming A15 (Opens in a new tab) To compare Helios. Both come with an AMD Ryzen 9 5800H CPU and Nvidia RTX 3070 combo, with the TUF’s GPU clocked at just 95W. Razer Blade 14 (Opens in a new tab) It stands out because, although it’s slightly more expensive than the rest, the Ryzen 9 5900HX and 100W RTX 3060 are somewhat closer to the Helios’ configuration with a 1440p panel.
Acer Predator Helios 300 Spec
Processor: Intel Core i7 12700H, 2.3GHz
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, 140 W
Memory: 16 GB DDR5-4800
Demonstration: 17.3-inch IPS 165Hz
Quality: 2560 x 1440
Storage: Samsung PM9A1 1TB NVMe SSD
Battery: 90 W
Communication: 1 x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1, 2x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2, 1x DisplayPort with Thunderbolt 4, 1x 3.5mm Combo Jack, Built in Microphone
Dimensions: 28 x 399 x 295 mm
Weight: 3 kilos (6.6 pounds)
Price: £1,686 (Opens in a new tab)(around US$1,800 (Opens in a new tab))
The main thing? Although they sit well between TUF and Blade in terms of price, Helios manages to kill all three of them in synthetic and real-world GPU benchmarks, equaling TUF except for Metro Ascent.
When it comes to slightly older games like F1 2020, it can even break the 165fps barrier on extreme settings—just barely, but that’s when that rainy ass takes on the Vietnamese circuit. With a few tweaks, it’s easy to achieve frame rates above 165fps to make the most of the panel in today’s games, as long as you don’t have to sacrifice some of that sweet fidelity.
When it comes to ray tracing, the Helios blows all three out of the water in the 3DMark Port Royal synthetic performance benchmark, nearly doubling the Razer Blade’s score, although it falls behind the Legion in ray tracing tests.
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That’s not to say that changing ray tracing makes games unplayable – 61 fps is more than acceptable for Metro output – but even with Nvidia’s DLSS enabled, the 140W RTX 3060 still has trouble matching the RTX 3070 in terms of real-world ray tracing. Performance, especially when faced with a heavy game like Metro.
As for the Intel Core i7 12700H’s contribution to gaming performance, Hitman 3’s CPU-intensive Dartmoor benchmark shows 30 frames per second more than the Legion 5 Pro. The 3D Mark Times CPU score beats a list of 13,452 comparison laptops by a fair margin, and the CPU shows on display. The Core i7 12700H’s multi-core performance is impressive, and it does a decent job of video encoding, averaging 55fps versus 41–44fps on the others.
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Unfortunately, the Core i7 12700H isn’t the most efficient mobile CPU in Intel’s 12th Gen lineup, and coupled with the 140W RTX 3060, it leaves battery life in an abysmal spot – 74 minutes isn’t enough time to get through a game. Unplugged, but that’s the business we’ve grown to expect from a machine that ticks the gaming and productivity boxes.
What’s more surprising is that energy does not add up to heat sinks. We are looking at a maximum CPU temperature of 85°C and a maximum GPU temperature of just under 80°C. That’s not bad at all compared to laptops in that price range, and if you feel like it’s getting too hot, you can always hit the turbo button on the top left of the keyboard. All of a sudden it cranks somewhere between 68-75 decibels, but put your hand underneath for half a minute and you’ll physically feel the chassis cool down. It’s great for that panicky moment when you’ve covered the chimney and need to fix the heat build-up.
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Loading Cities Skylines with my 10,000 mods didn’t take me long to make a cup of tea.
And it’s not just the CPU/GPU combo that beats it. Acer’s decision to add a 1TB Gen4 Samsung NVMe SSD (Opens in a new tab) We really appreciate it as we need more laptops with high capacity SSDs on the market. Speed-wise, we’re looking at real-world load times of over 10 seconds, which is still a better look than the laptops I’ve compared. Loading Cities Skylines with my 10,000 mods didn’t give me long to sip tea, in fact I suppose that’s technically a good thing.
In terms of RAM, the Acer comes with 16GB of dual-channel DDR5 memory, with Sysoft’s Sandra tests claiming a whopping 41.52GB/s bandwidth. This provides a lot of slack when it comes to multitasking and is practically superior when compared to comparable laptops.
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It’s a relatively nimble machine, but not until you take over your desk. It was easy to pick up one-handed, but fitting it into a bag was a bit of a stretch, given the 17.3-inch screen. The thickness makes it a little awkward, and it’s not as chunky as the Razer Blade, but that little bit of extra thickness helps keep this machine running a great temperature range. With a little bag modification, I’d happily carry it to and from work.
The only problem with using it at work is something the Razer Blade also suffers from: the fact that this dumb gaming logo (sorry Acer) is slapped on the back of an otherwise beautiful chassis. The metallic blue is nice and subtle, although the edges are a little sharper to sit on my right lap, it’s still very pretty and still a very portable machine.
As for peripherals and ports, the addition of Thunderbolt 4 is great, along with the two USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports you’ll find, though a few wouldn’t go amiss. I’m very happy that the 2.1MP camera included in both has a high resolution and works at 60Hz. A quality webcam for once on a gaming laptop that doesn’t point my nose.
I’m not a huge fan of the feel of the keyboard, but at least it’s full size. Having spent a lot of time testing press samples of US keyboards and laptops, using a laptop with a UK keyboard layout is also fine for me. Although that brings me to one of the major weaknesses: US availability.
The closest configuration I can find in the US only comes with a 144Hz 1080p screen and half the SSD storage, and retails for around $1,800 in total, which I can’t wrap my head around. Basically I wouldn’t recommend it to you guys in the US, sorry but if you’re in the market for a good gaming laptop in the UK, this machine is killer. It’s the 1440p panel in beefy configuration that makes the cost worthwhile here, and the rest serves as icing on the cake. And be sure to use one of Acer’s coupon codes for a little extra value.
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