Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 Gaming Laptop Review

Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 Gaming Laptop Review

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Takeaway: Good performance from mid-tier gaming laptop, nice display and visuals, smooth/fast performance, but only average battery life.

The laptop measures 14"" wide, 11"" from front to back, and is 1-1/4"" at its thickest. This laptop is quite heavy weighing nearly 6 lbs while the 230W charging brick adds another pound. It came with a neoprene travel sleeve to protect it from scratches. Its aesthetics are fairly plain with a steel-gray lid, black base, and reflective chrome Predator logo at the front and some stickers.

On the left-hand side are the RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet port, USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, microSD card reader, and combo mic/headphone port. On the right, you’ll find two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports with the left one supporting power-off charging, LED battery and power indicators, and a Kensington lock slot. And at the back is the DC power port, HDMI 2.1 output, and two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports supporting DP-alt mode with 4K/8K output, 40 Gbps bandwidth, and quick charging.

This build is the PHN16-71-73RR and ships with a 13th Gen Intel i7-13700HX CPU and 16GB of 4800 MHz DDR5 SDRAM pre-installed as two 8GB sticks, though you can upgrade the memory up to 32 GB max total. The hard drive is a bit small at 512 GB, but there is an open m.2 NVMe slot available inside for you to add as a second drive; or you can also simply pop in a microSD card for extra storage, as opening the bottom of the casing can be a little bit tricky. In addition to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 discrete graphics card, the CPU has integrated UHD Graphics 16EU that you can use to reduce power consumption at the cost of reduced performance. You can configure which GPU to use in NVIDIA’s control panel or PredatorSense app; when connecting an external display, it'll use the discrete GPU.

The laptop screen has a 16"" diagonal IPS display with narrow bezels, 165 Hz max refresh rate, 3 ms response time, and max resolution of 1920x1200 (16:10 aspect ratio). It produces fairly dark blacks with minimal light halo-ing of bright objects on dark backgrounds. Its max brightness is 400 nits which is decent for a laptop, and it is G-sync compatible. There is an integrated 2MP 720p webcam and dual-mic array just above the screen for live streaming and video conferencing on-the-go.

The keyboard features RGB backlighting, customizable in the PredatorSense app with static or animated color patterns. While keys are not individually addressable, there are 4 ""zones"" for which you can set individual colors. The mouse trackpad is large with a 5"" x 3"" area, and I found it fairly responsive while also supporting multi-touch gestures, taps, swipes, and clicks.

In balanced mode, the battery lasts about 1.5 hours with mixed/casual use but increases to 3.5 hours on the Eco settinig. A mode cycle button allows you to quickly switch between power profiles. This laptop puts out a lot of heat from the back corners at the sides and rear under heavy loads. In general, CPU idle temps ran around 50°C while the GPU hovered around 40°C with the fans running at 2200 RPM, which were pretty quiet. The RTX 4050 GPU delivered super smooth gameplay at maxed out Ultra settings on the internal display with games like CS:GO and Path of Exile. I didn’t notice any issues with tearing, lag, or stuttering and with consistent framerates over 120 fps. GPU temps occasionally rose to over 80°C, but setting the fans to max (6300 RPM) lowered the temps fairly quickly, but were noisy at around 55 dB.

For non-gaming purposes like content creation it works well, though the integrated panel only has 8-bit color depth in the SDR color space; text is clear and easy to read, and the processor is powerful enough to render and export large video files and 3D models in a reasonable amount of time. The screen is also suitable for media consumption like streaming video and web browsing, and the built-in speakers aren’t bad either, though will start to distort and get boxy at higher volumes. You'll have a better listening experience using headphones or external speakers as the laptop supports Dolby DTS:X for accurate sound stage placement.

Overall, this laptop delivers a satisfying gaming experience with clean visuals on its internal display and even better performance on external displays with higher resolutions. The machine boots quickly, loads games fast, and handles everyday computing tasks with ease, even when running multiple applications simultaneously. While it doesn’t ship with a ton of hard drive space or RAM, both these components can be upgraded by the end user. It is a bit on the heavy side, but expected for this size form-factor, though it only has so-so battery life and runs a bit hot. I hope you enjoyed this review. You can ask me any questions in the comments. I’ll put a link to the product in the description below. Don’t forget to subscribe to my channel and join me next time.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. #CommissionsEarned
Buy it at Amazon: Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 Gaming Laptop [Affiliate Link]