Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop PC, 15.6" FHD IPS w/ 144Hz Refresh, Intel i7-8750H, GTX 1060 6GB, 16GB DDR4, 256GB NVMe SSD, Aeroblade Metal Fans PH315-51-78NP

Screen Quality: Excellent. 144 Hz, 1920 x 1080 pixels. Screen looks excellent for the price. Youtube and games look great on this screen. Big enough and completely suits all my needs for gaming and watching videos. A lot of laptops in the same price range only have a 60 Hz screen. While that's decent, the fact that this one is 144 Hz is pretty impressive.Battery Life: Meh. It isn't going to last very long even if you're just chillin' watching youtube videos or netflix. Gaming, it's definitely not going to last more than an hour or so. But I always have it plugged in, so I don't really care about this. However, you have to make sure it's in "better performance mode" and not "best performance mode" while doing hardcore gaming. When I put it all the way up to the best performance mode possible while gaming, my battery was actually slowly draining WHILE it was PLUGGED IN. The drain was slow, but it got down to about 94% after an hour or so. That's a bit lame. But after putting it in the proper mode and undervolting and such, there's no issue and it stays at 100%. This is just potential minor issue, but I think it's worth mentioning.Gaming: I can play GTA V at 60fps on ultra settings. League of legends on ultra settings at about 110 - 120 fps. Good enough for me. You should of course search up acer helios predator 300 gaming videos on youtube if you're curious how it performs in various games. It does much better than a PS4 pro. So I'm pleased. Every game I play nowadays, league, GTA, apex legends, etc, runs smoothly and at a high enough fps, so it's good enough for me personally.Cons: Space. You're going to want to spend money on purchasing and installing an extra 1TB or 2TB hard drive or SSD if you're a hardcore gamer like me. The built-in 256 GB SSD the laptop comes with is nice, but with the size of many major games nowadays, it's just not going to be enough for you. Thankfully my laptop came with the screws and stuff you need to install a second SSD, which is what I did. I dropped another 150$ on a second 1TB SSD. I've heard that some people had their "cage" missing that you need to install an SSD, and had to contact Acer to get one mailed to them for free. I was lucky enough to have a cage and screws included with mine.Overheating: Not a problem anymore since I undervolt mine and bought a cooling pad and it runs just fine and at safe temperatures, but if you haven't done either of these things I've heard that the laptop can potentially reach unsafe temperatures.***You will likely have to go on youtube and watch a video or two on how to undervolt your computer so it doesn't overheat while gaming. After doing this I saw virtually no drop in performance but a humongous drop in heat while gaming, so it seems to have fixed everything. After undervolting, I'm able to play demanding games like GTA V on ultra while staying in the 55 - 60 degree Celsius range which I've heard is quite safe and optimal. But it's annoying to do all this if you're a computer noob and don't really want to learn how to do it. It'd be nice if the computer didn't have overheating issues in the first place. Before undervolting, I may have saw heat spikes of about 75 - 80 degrees Celsius while gaming. I am not an expert on computers and GPUs and CPUs and what temperatures they can safely handle for how many years and such. But I've heard people with this computer voice real concerns that their helios has reached 85 - 90 degrees or even higher under certain conditions. I can understand why that would make anyone nervous. That seems quite hot and is a definite issue. Learn to undervolt it a bit or reapply some thermal paste or both and everything should be peachy.I've had it for about a month and I'm quite pleased. I think the CPU and GPU in this laptop are quite good and the price is acceptable. Overall I'm pleased with my purchase and would definitely recommend to anyone getting into PC gaming.

I bought the Predator Helios 300 over Black Friday weekend 2018 and was a bit anxious before and after the purchase. “Will this be the right laptop?” I thought with some trepidation, or more than once, “God, I’ve made a huge mistake!”The big reason for this was the price for the thing - $1,000 or more, plus the $175 or so on accident insurance - as well as the many reviews saying it gets too hot and too loud.I did a lot of research and it came down to this Predator Helios or the HP Omni. I decided on the Predator, and when I got it I downloaded and installed two Ubisoft games: Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands.I would suggest removing some of the bloatware - there isn’t too much - and then restarting the computer. I didn’t restart, and as I began to download my games from Ubisoft, it was clear there were some problems. “Why is it only giving me 400 kb/s...or less?” I thought. After a restart, though, I got up to around 7-8 mb/s. Not that fast, but the games got downloaded and one of my concerns was alleviated.I started AC Black Flag on the highest settings with the best, full-screen resolution of 1920x1080 60hz. The game played great, it looked great, and there were no lags. More important, there was no rapid heating of the computer and the fans never kicked onto their max setting. After an hour of gameplay the fans were going at about half-rate with an average of 70 degrees and a few spikes as high as 87 degrees. When I stopped the fans stopped and the computer was soon down to around 60 degrees. It usually sits steady at 45 degrees when you’re doing nothing.Oh, and that max fan setting doesn’t sound like jet engines, as one reviewer wrote. I wouldn’t even liken them to the stovetop fan or the bathroom fan. If you were in another room, I don’t think you’d hear them. If you’re sitting in the living room, you can hear them but they’re not so loud they take away from your experience or someone else’s activity.Ghost Recon Wildlands got pretty hot during the intro, running around 85-90 with spikes up to 96 degrees. The fans were running at about max at that point, but again, this isn’t a huge bother. With headphones, you don’t notice. I asked my wife if it was too loud and she said no from about 15 feet away. That game pretty much runs in the upper-90s throughout.When playing Fallout 4, the highest temp I reached was 93. When playing XCom 2, I usually got in the upper 90s for temps. I have no problem with the GPU heating up anymore, as I overclocked it after downloading the Intel performance program.All in all, I’m happy with this purchase. I had to get a gaming laptop as my wife won’t let me get an Xbox - my preferred system - saying it’s a bad influence on our 7-year-old son. I can see her point, but I had to pay $700 more to play the same games. Oh well - that’s marriage.I’m glad I have a system that will play all the games from the past few years, as well as all the games that will come out for the next couple years, and hopefully more. I have no problems with this system, and plan to use it solely for gaming, keeping my other $250 laptop for MS Office and most internet tasks.I was worried this would be a bad purchase, but so far after 25 days of playing it for around 4 to 6 hours a day, it’s still working fine. I’m glad I bought it.