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

Overall great computer, can run all the games i wabt to play. The battery life us short, but its a gaming laptop so its meant to be plugged in. The SSD that it comes with is very small, but it has slots for upgrades to that and memory. Overall good gaming laptop on a budget.

I got two of these - one is great (hence a two star, not 0) the other crashes all the time. Gives an unbootable device type error message and I have to shut it down and restart.

Yes, this model has overheating issues, when gaming at 120FPS. That said, I define overheating issues as getting close to the safe working temps defined by Intel (100 °C in the case of this laptop) minus a padding zone of 30 °C, this means reaching 70 °C for long periods of time. Which you will definitely notice since the keyboards starts getting hot in the 65 °C neighborhood. If you create a Gaming battery profile in which you limit the CPU to 99% usage, then you drop the frequency to 2.1 GHz on all cores but never go over 65 °C while only losing a couple of frames (I go from 90FPS consistently to 83-87FPS consistently in BO4 max settings). Another solution (tho a less effective one) is undervolting the CPU, but I found my specific laptop only dropped a few degrees, that is while barely giving away any performance. The keyboard is incredibly comfortable to use for the price point and the screen is great (again, given the price point). Battery life is what you might expect from a gaming laptop, tho again, a battery profile is always useful. In terms of power, it is more than I need then I let it run free, I can easily have a Linux VM using half the threads doing something intensive and have both the host OS and the VM show no signs of lag. The SSD is a bit small but has a great performance (FOR THE PRICE POINT [that seems to be the important thing to remember here]) and adding another drive was extremely easy. All this said, I am still considering repasting the CPU (since ACER is known for cheapening out on the application process and the thermal paste quality) and if I do Ill update the overheating issues.

I dont play a lot of games, Im using the laptop for video editing. It gets very hot but I didnt have some issues. After 3 years its still working fine and Im satisfied. Only one thing I cant use for long time, the software with control of fans, Ive tried to reinstall but still doesnt work.

**Update** I WOULD LOVE TO RETURN IT AND THEY FIX THE SHUTDOWN DEFECT!!! I’m over being sick and tired of it just shutting down whenever and without notification!! It’s not hot, it’s not being worked to capacity!! I work from home and when I am screen sharing and your laptop just shuts down...it doesn’t look very professional.

I purchased this gaming computer for my sons big Christmas present. The components list was amazing and I couldnt pass it up for the price. If you arent gaming, this machine is a wonder. Its fast and the screen is amazing. But when gaming, the overheating issues begin. I cant believe that the overheating is such a common issue and Acer still hasnt addressed it. Using Acers own Predator Sense monitoring program, I was hitting high 90s CPU temps. I lowered the settings on the games, lowered the refresh rate (one of the main reasons I purchased this laptop was because of the 144hz refresh rate) and even purchased a laptop cooling pad but nothing I did would keep those temps from getting too high. Frame rate drops and stuttering sucks during gaming and ruins the experience. I contacted Amazon Customer Service and they have shipped out a replacement. I will update once I receive the replacement.

Laptop ran well right out of the box, was charged about 70% on arrival. Packaging nice and sturdy. Laptop works great, have had for almost a year and it is still working the same as new. Screen quality is good, runs really well. Can play newest games on High graphics easily. Several games on Ultra-High are limited to 60 fps, but most people who buy laptops for gaming dont expect more. Fans do run very loudly though, dont expect to game quietly. You can manually control the fans, but I find it best to let the laptop choose, as it is very good at knowing what speed to set the fans to. It doesnt run the fans high until you get into games, and it will slowly decrease after exiting the game rather than dropping the fans immediately. Its also a very cool-looking laptop in my opinion.

The best gamer notebook my son has ever had. He ia playing Paladin at 174 fps and only 5ms ping!!, The only issue is the loud fans, but playing fast like a jet (in his words) is the really important thing.

Never received the black ops 4 code but the laptop is top quality for a low price and I appreciate the savings

I shopped for a few months and kept coming back to this laptop. I got this laptop for school more than gaming. It is a little large for portability but thats fine with me, I am older and like the larger aspects of the laptop. As far as performance it has been great. It took about an hour to set it up and update everything. The fans tend to be a bit on the noisy side, but not so bad that its a negative. Not much bloatware at all. The keyboard layout is nice. I did play WoW on it with no issues whatsoever. I have an additional 500g ssd to install and that should make this unit good to go for a reasonable period of time.