The Ultimate Gaming Laptop – Hands On With Helios 300

Isaac Taylor

The last couple of laptops I’ve managed to play with recently have been dinky work machines, so it’s been a breath of fresh air to finally get my hands on with something with some serious grunt in it. The Predator Helios 300 from Acer is a beast and it keeps up with my home rig no sweat. For those who are hearing the name for the first time, Predator is Acer’s gaming line that is all about zero compromise, and, after trying it out for myself, I believe them.

I was using the PH315-53 model which has a 15.6” 144hz screen with a crispy quality that feels good on the eyes. For those with a little more to invest, you can step up to a 17.3” option which can only be better. It’s packing a GeForce RTX 2060 which is more than capable of keeping up with everything currently out on the market and a 2.60 GHz Intel® Core™ i7-10750H CPU.

Turning it on, I was immediately greeted by a sci-fi wooshing sound which perfectly encapsulates it’s energy. If the startup sound is a bit much for you, it’s easily tweaked by pressing the dedicated PredatorSense key above the numpad. This brings up a console for controlling things like temperature, the colour patterns of your keys and various other performance options.

Plugged into the wall, it’s framerate is silky smooth. Honestly after trying a 144hz monitor, it’s hard going back. Unplugging it limits performance somewhat as it goes into a custom power saving profile.

Setting up in the lounge, I was able to pair it easily with my VR headset and crank Half Life: Alyx, which is revolutionary for my home gaming experience. In fact, with it’s built-in Bluetooth 5.0, I’m no longer reliant on the Bluetooth dongle I’ve been using. Being able to move around the house to larger spaces means I won’t be crashing into the wall next to me in the small computer room where my main machine is, while shooting Head Crabs anymore.

Lid rigidity is good and the entire unit feels solid, clocking in at around 2.4kg. It’s .90” thick and has a total width of 14.2”x10”. Heat is a big issue with gaming laptops so Predator has gone out of its way to make sure this thing has the optimal amount of ventilation, blasting any excess heat away in no time. Fan speed can be controlled via PredatorSense and if you were wanting to do a little overclocking, you can press the dedicated turbo button to send everything into overdrive. Despite Predator’s custom-engineered 4thGen AeroBlade 3D Technology, things can still get a little loud. Fortunately the inbuilt speakers are pretty good if you wanted to drown it out if you didn’t have headphones. But frankly, turbo is a bit of an overkill and the Helios 300 does just fine with standard settings.

All in all, if you were looking for a solid gaming rig that looks pretty cool to boot then Predator’s lineup might just be the way to go.

Shop the Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop at Harvey Norman.