The Acer Predator Helios 16 comes equipped with internals that’ll keep you sailing smoothly through heavy gaming pressure and everyday tasks. Add its plethora of ports, stellar thermals, and beautiful, matte display with a high refresh rate into the mix, and this laptop proves it’s worthy of its price.
That said, this laptop’s gamer-forward design may not suit everyone’s tastes. With a flashy light bar at the back and a backlit logo on the top lid, no one’s going to second-guess that this is a gaming laptop. You can change the default RGB wave light scheme to something more low-key, but its prominent gamer aesthetic may not go unnoticed in the office.
With its 14th Gen Intel processor, an RTX 4080 GPU, and a top-notch thermal design, this laptop is definitely a serious contender as one of the best gaming laptops Mashable has tested. Sure, there are a few minor features I wish I could improve, but I think the laptop’s positives greatly outweigh its negatives.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the good, the bad, and everything else about the Predator Helios 16.
Acer Predator Helios 16 price and specs
The Acer Predator Helios 16 is a pricey laptop, but it’s equipped with all the necessary internals to run AAA games at high settings. Our review unit costs $2,299 and comes with the following specs:
-
Intel Core i9 14900HX CPU
-
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 (12GB)
-
32GB of RAM
-
2TB of SSD storage
-
16-inch, 2560 x 1600-pixel, 240Hz display
If you like the look of this gaming laptop, but would rather trade slightly lower specs for a more affordable price, take a look at this Predator Helios 16 configuration at Best Buy for $1,699. It comes with the same Intel Core i9-14900HX CPU and 2560 x 1600-pixel display, but comes with only 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and an RTX 4070 GPU.
This won’t easily double as a work laptop in appearance
Constructed with an aluminum lid and keyboard deck and a plastic bottom, the Predator Helios 16 is quite sturdy. I’d love to see an all-aluminum build for durability and even better thermals, but that would definitely raise the laptop’s price.
Decking this laptop out in an all-aluminum chassis would also increase the weight, and it’s already quite hefty. This laptop weighs 5.7 pounds and measures 14.1 x 10.9 x 1 inches, so it’s not a very travel-friendly companion.
Then, in true gaming laptop fashion, there are multiple customizable RGB elements. Compared to its predecessor, this model gains RGB logos on the lid and below the keyboard’s right side. Personally, I’m not a fan because they feel like flashy, battery-draining details that most gamers probably don’t care about.
When you pair these backlit logos with the seven-zone RGB Infinity Mirror bar that sticks out at the back, the Acer Predator Helios 16 simply screams, “I’m a gaming laptop.” For some, that may not be a bad thing. But for those who want to use a single laptop for both gaming and work, this laptop’s design isn’t nearly inconspicuous enough, even after switching off all the lights.
A large, bright, and matte display that’s not super vibrant
The Acer Predator Helios 16 comes with a 16-inch, 2560 x 1600-pixel IPS LCD display with a 240Hz max refresh rate and a three-millisecond response time.
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable
I love the amount of screen real estate this gaming laptop offers, especially with its 16:10 aspect ratio. The max 240Hz refresh rate made watching content and playing games a stutter-free experience. And for a gaming laptop, its bezels are relatively small.
To scrutinize this laptop’s display, I fired up a YouTube trailer for Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.
With the display’s high resolution, I had no issues spotting minute details, like wrinkles and fine lines on the actors’ faces and hair strands. However, the colors don’t pop off the screen as much as I’d like. There’s a plane at the beginning of the trailer that I imagine is bright red and grass that should be vibrant green, but these colors come across muted on the Predator Helios 16’s display.
Despite not being colorful, this matte display is quite bright. Officially, it has 500 nits max brightness, which is kind of unheard of for gaming laptops — they tend to hover around 300 or 400 nits max. I found the display easy to see, even in direct sunlight.
The ports of a gamer’s dreams
For a gaming laptop, I’d expect nothing less than a plethora of ports, and the Acer Predator Helios 16 absolutely delivers.
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable
On the left:
-
Ethernet (RJ-45) port
-
USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port
-
microSD card reader
-
Headset jack
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable
On the right:
-
Two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports
-
Kensington lock slot
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable
On the back:
-
DC-in power port
-
HDMI 2.1 output port with HDCP support
-
Two USB-C (Thunderbolt 4) ports
The charging cable is pretty bulky, but it’s extra long, and the DC-in power port is conveniently located at the center of the back edge. There’s an HDMI port to connect a bigger monitor, an audio jack to hook up wired headphones, and plenty of USB ports to choose from for your peripherals.
The speakers are passable, but not for listening to music
The Predator Helios 16 has a lot of good things going for it, but its audio quality isn’t one of them.
This laptop’s two built-in stereo speakers deliver sharp in-game dialogue at a volume that’s more than plenty to hear characters over the powerful fans. When streaming media on the laptop, I got the same result. Character voices come through well, but these aren’t speakers you’ll want to listen to music out of.
I listened to “Real” by Unprocessed (feat. Polyphia’s Tim Henson & Clay Gober) and Bo Burnham’s “All Eyes on Me (Song Only),” and both songs utterly lacked that full-bodied, atmospheric depth that comes from bass notes rounding out the soundstage. Pairing some of the best headphones with this laptop is a must if you’re a music lover.
A fairly punchy keyboard and a smooth trackpad
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable
This laptop’s keyboard may not satisfy the biggest keyboard snobs (it’s me, I’m the keyboard snob) because the typing experience isn’t as satisfyingly clicky as on other laptop keyboards. That said, I found typing to be relatively snappy overall, and having a laptop with a full-size keyboard with well-sized and well-spaced keys is always a win in my book.
In true gaming laptop fashion, the keyboard offers RGB backlighting. More specifically, the Predator Helios 16 offers per-key RGB mini-LED backlit keys, so you can control the brightness and color of each individual key if you’d like. Or, if you prefer to save battery life, you can turn the lights off completely.
I have no complaints about the trackpad. It’s large, responsive, and feels velvety smooth. Some may care about the trackpad being slightly off-center, but it didn’t hinder performance or bug me at all.
Acer Predator Helios 16 benchmarks and performance
To jog your memory, here are the internals this Acer Predator Helios 16 configuration is working with: an Intel Core i914900HX CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU with 12GB of VRAM, and 32GB of RAM. Those specs work together beautifully to create a smooth overall experience, whether you’re playing a Triple-A title at high presets or hoarding tabs while completing a project for school or work.
On our traditional laptop stress test, which involves opening 20 Chrome tabs with a mix of static and video content and a few background apps, this laptop passed with flying colors. Because it has a discrete GPU, I even doubled the number of Chrome tabs, and it still refused to stutter. With all that open, I was able to type in Google Docs and load a new page with no issues.
To stress test this gaming laptop’s internals, I played Cyberpunk 2077 for an hour at high presets and native resolution (2560 x 1600) with DLSS turned off. Shooting and moving around in the game felt silky smooth, and I averaged around 80 frames per second.
While looping a video to run down the battery, going about my regular workday tasks, or playing Cyberpunk 2077, the laptop’s top-notch thermal design kept everything cool. After an hour of gaming, the laptop’s hottest points were barely warm. Of course, with excellent thermal design comes fan noise, but the only time the fans were noticeably noisy was during gameplay — and even then, I could easily hear the in-game audio over the fans.
Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable
Real-world performance tests show how a laptop functions in the day-to-day, but if you’re comparing laptops before buying, standardized performance benchmarks reign supreme.
On 3DMark’s TimeSpy benchmark, which assesses graphical prowess, the Predator Helios 16 delivered a staggering score of 16,837, far surpassing many of the other gaming laptops we’ve tested. The HP Omen 17 and Alienware m16 R2 delivered scores of 12,105 and 12,224 with an RTX 4070 GPU, respectively.
To test CPU performance, I ran Geekbench 6. In Performance mode, the Predator Helios 16 earned a multi-core score of 17,462. Switching over to Balanced mode, the laptop earned a slightly lower score of 16,817. For comparison, the 2024 HP Omen 17 received a multi-core score of 12,781.
Lastly, our Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark tests the laptop’s in-game performance with DLSS off, the presets notched at high, and typically, the resolution set to 1080p. Then, we switch DLSS on and report the recorded frame rates. However, this laptop consistently delivered puzzling results when set to 1080p, which could have something to do with recent DLSS upgrades and the new model.
With the resolution set to 1080p, our Cyberpunk 2077 delivered 111.8 frames per second with DLSS off and 109.7 frames per second with DLSS on. The only way I was able to up the frames per second at 1080p resolution was by enabling AI-powered frame generation, which then churned out over 200 frames per second.
Turning DLSS on traditionally gets you more frames per second, not less, which was reflected in running the same benchmark at native resolution (2560 x 1600). At native resolution, our Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark scored an average of 79.4 frames per second with DLSS switched off. Turning DLSS on notched an impressive 109.3 frames per second.
Acer Predator Helios 16 battery life
If you’re looking for one of the best laptops for battery life, the Acer Predator Helios 16 isn’t the one for you.
In our battery test, which involves looping a 1080p version of Tears of Steel at 50 percent brightness, the Predator Helios 16 only lasted 5 hours and 34 minutes. And believe it or not, that’s with all of its RGB LEDs turned off. With the RGB light bar on and blue, static lights under the keyboard, the laptop eked out a mere 3 hours and 42 minutes.
Considering the HP Omen 17 (with slightly lower specs) lasted 8 hours and 13 minutes on the same video rundown test, these results aren’t great. Granted, for gaming purposes, you’ll be using the Predator Helios 16 plugged in. But don’t expect to use this laptop at a library or coffee shop cord-free — at least, not for very long.
No one’s surprised by this grainy, dull webcam
The Predator Helios 16 is a gaming laptop, and as such, the webcam is far from impressive.
Credit: Screenshot: Sarah Chaney
Looking at myself through this laptop’s 1080p webcam, I wasn’t surprised a bit to see dull colors amidst a grainy reflection. I even gave the webcam the best chance possible and positioned myself in front of natural sunlight that wasn’t too bright.
The webcam is relatively sharp, proven by the individual strands of hair I could pick out in my selfie, but overall, it’s quite mediocre. Plus, there’s no privacy shutter.
Is the Acer Predator Helios 16 worth it?
The Acer Predator Helios 16 is an amazing gaming laptop, packed with a 14th Gen Intel CPU and an RTX 4080 GPU that are quite capable of playing AAA titles at high settings with remarkable ease and not a lot of heat, thanks to an adept thermal design.
I even think that this laptop’s prominent gamer aesthetic is easy to ignore if you’re simply looking for the best internals you can get at the best price. If you want a more subtle gaming laptop that could double as a work laptop, check out the HP Omen 17 instead.
The biggest potential flaw with this laptop, depending on what your needs are, is its lackluster battery life. You won’t be able to stray far from an outlet for long, even around your own home. Granted, if you don’t plan to ever play unplugged because it often means sacrificing higher frame rates, then this probably isn’t an issue worth considering for you.
If your top priority in a gaming laptop is overall performance at a great price (and you don’t mind the “gamer” look), I believe the Acer Predator Helios 16 is definitely worth it.
