There’s a lot to like about the USA-specific WQXGA display my review machine was fitted with. Brits are restricted to a 1920 x 1200 resolution instead, which feels unfair. The display is good, though I should clarify that the 2560 x 1600 resolution on our review sample is not what UK customers will get. A Turbo key is set into the vent above the keyboard that puts the system into high-performance mode.ĭespite being made of plastic rather than glass, the touchpad is smooth, responsive, and very satisfying in daily use, whether for productivity or gaming. The WASD, full-sized arrow keys, and the Predator Sense CP hotkey all have coloured walls, so they are easily distinguishable with the four-zone RGB backlight turned on or off. The keyboard is typical Nitro in look and feel a chiclet affair with chunky keys and a solid deck. This is just as well as the Neo 16 only comes with 512GB of storage as standard, which is a feeble effort when you consider the price of the Neo 16 and the size of modern games: 1TB should be the entry point for any gaming laptop with a retail price above £1400/$1400. Removing the base panel from the Neo is very straightforward, and once inside, you can easily access both SODIMM memory slots and 2280 PCIe 4 SSD bays.
#ACER PREDATOR HELIOS 300 SSD CODE#
An indication of what ports are where on the top of the case would be more useful than the Morse code that actually sits above them. On the laptop’s rear are two Thunderbolt 4 ports supporting 65W PD charging and DP Alt Mode video output, an HDMI 2.1 socket, and the DC-in jack. On the right are two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports and a Kensington Lock. On the left, you will find one USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, a microSD card reader, a Gigabit RJ-45 ethernet port, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack. The Neo has many ports dotted along both sides and the rear. The blue plastic applique on the rear corners is all that breaks the all-black colour scheme. On the back edge of the body, the word Predator is printed in Morse code (well, so I’m told, I don’t read Morse). Those dimensions are the same as for the Nitro 16 bar thickness, where the Neo is marginally more portly. At 2.8Kg it’s quite heavy, and at 360 x 280 x 28.3mm, it’s on the chunky side. The body is substantial, but the lid is quite wobbly.Īffordable Acer gaming laptops have never been known for being light or compact, and the new Neo 16 is no exception. And it’s built like a Nitro, with an aluminium lid and a plastic body. I am unsure I could tell the two apart if you plonked them in front of me side-by-side. In fact, it looks a lot like the Nitro 16. The Nitro-style chiclet keyboard is excellentĪlthough it’s called a Predator, the Neo resembles a Nitro.The plastic body is solid, but the lid is a bit wobbly.Looks much like the supposedly lesser Nitro models.If you don’t understand what Acer is trying to do here, welcome to the club. Over in the USA, there’s more flexibility for the Predator Helios Neo 16 with a base $1199.99 model with an i5-13500HX CPU and RTX 4050 GPU. It will set you back £1699/$1549, which confusingly is the same price as the top-spec Nitro 16 (reviewed here in RTX 4050 guise) with an AMD Ryzen 7 CPU and RTX 4070 GPU. That plug goes by the name of the Predator Helios Neo 16, which is either an expensive entry-level machine or a cheap mid-range machine depending on how you look at it.Ĭurrently, only one Neo 16 machine is on sale in the UK, built around an Intel Core i7-13700HX processor and a Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU. In between sat the Predator Helios range.īut apparently, a yawning chasm between the Nitro and Predator Helios line-up had to be plugged. On one end of the scale, you had the entry-level Nitro machines and on the other, the state-of-the-art Triton models. Previously Acer’s gaming laptop was easy to understand.
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