Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL Review - Quick Verdict
The Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL is an impressive gaming laptop that comes with pretty good hardware. The 144Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time of the full HD display make the gaming experience much better as this isn’t something you see in every other laptop. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti allows you to play pretty much any game available right now without compromising on settings. Overall, a solid laptop for someone who loves to game.
- Gorgeous display with 144Hz refresh rate
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is a beast
- Affordable and feature-rich
- 256GB SSD is not spacious enough
Author's Rating
The Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL is a gaming laptop that offers super-smooth gaming at a price that is affordable for most gamers. The major differentiator of this laptop is the 144Hz screen. That is not something you’d find in most laptops, and that’s what got our attention as well.
When it comes to specs, the laptop manages to get all the big names on board. Apart from gaming, the laptop is a good fit for mid-range and heavy users which makes this a multi-purpose laptop. If you’re looking for an excellent gaming machine without shelling too much money, then this Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL review is something you must read.
Design
The Acer Predator Helios laptop comes with an industrial that looks good and feels great in hand. Right from the color of the laptop to the smallest details you can easily tell that they’ve not taken anything for granted in this laptop.
When you lift the laptop for the first time, the metal finish gives you a premium feel even at this price range. A gaming laptop’s design is judged heavily by the way it cools. The cooling system is made of a 4th gen Aeroblade fan. This is the latest generation of their proprietary fan and it improves the airflow by 45% resulting in excellent cooling. There are vents on the sides and on the back to facilitate the flow of hot air.
The keyboard is pretty neat and comes with concave keys for WASD and arrow keys. These eight keys are colored differently so that it is easier to spot them. The backlighting on the keys is impressive in a way that they don’t blind you in a dark environment. They’re subtle and it just works.
Typing on the Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL is also a neat experience. There is enough key travel which a lot of people like. If you’re someone who does a lot of typing, then this laptop is a tool you’d love. The touchpad is decent and does its job. If you’re serious about gaming, you are better off getting a gaming mouse.
Being a 15.6-inch laptop, the Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL is not as heavy as expected. The laptop weighs around 5 pounds which is not that heavy and you can take this with you wherever you go. Overall, this Predator comes with a solid design that works.
Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL Specs
One of the best features of the Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL gaming laptop is its display. We have a 15.6-inch full HD display with a refresh rate of 144Hz and a 3ms response time. These numbers are not something you see in every laptop out there.
The 144Hz refresh rate and the 3ms response time offer you smooth, stutter-free gaming experience. When you get used to this refresh rate, you will have a hard time using a display with anything less than this.
The display is also excellent for media consumption and gaming. You can watch Netflix for hours on this thing as the picture quality is truly something. Games appear dynamic in terms of pictures, thanks to the contrast ratio and color accuracy of this display.
For a regular user, the laptop packs more than enough power with the Intel Core i7 9750H processor. This is a 9th gen quad-core processor from Intel that comes with a base clocking frequency of 2.6GHz. With the help of turbo boost, the processor can reach up to 4.5GHz which is a lot of raw power.
There is a turbo button on the laptop that you can make use of when you need that extra bolt of lightning. The processor gets a CPUMark score of 13779 which puts this Intel chip in fairly good company. Even if you are a heavy user, this processor can handle most of your everyday routine.
The processor gets a lot of support from the memory department through the 16GB DDR4 RAM. Now, this is a lot of RAM for the average user. But we are talking about a gaming laptop here, and this RAM serves this one well. You can run most games without any problems, thanks to this memory. You can also multitask your heart out without losing on performance.
Gaming on the Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL
The graphics card here is the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with a dedicated memory of 6GB. The graphics card is based on the Turing architecture and has no raytracing or tensor cores. A raw comparison of power would bring this graphics card closer to the RTX 2000s series.
Talking about real-life gaming performance, this one can run most of the recent games at high settings without any problems. Let’s take a look at how most games fare with this GPU at high settings (something most gamers will use).
- Rage 2 – 70 FPS
- Anno 1800 – 77 FPS
- Dirt Rally 2.0 – 107 FPS
- The Division 2 – 81 FPS
- Far Cry New Dawn – 85 FPS
- Anthem – 77 FPS
- Metro Exodus – 48 FPS
- Apex Legends – 102 FPS
- Farming Simulator 2019 – 145 FPS
As you can see, most games run extremely well with high settings. If you have a secondary monitor with QHD or 4K resolution, you can also push the setting to QHD and ultra as well. Though the FPS will come down, the gameplay will still be smooth, thanks to the 1660 Ti GPU.
Storage and Battery Life
We have a 256GB PCIe NVMe solid-state drive for storage. The solid-state drive gives you excellent performance and keeps the laptop on its toes. It boots the operating system in a flash and opens apps and games super quick. While the SSD is great for speed, some might feel that there is not enough space. That is true, but you’re better off going for some cheap external hard drive.
The battery life on the Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL is above average. With light usage, you should be able to get around 8 hours of battery life. But with some solid gaming, the battery might lose all its juice around the 3 or 4-hour mark.
Connectivity
There are quite a few connectivity options in the Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL. You get a couple of USB type C Gen 2 ports, a USB 3.1 Gen 1 port, an HDMI port, a mini display port, and an Ethernet port as well. The laptop also comes with Bluetooth 5.0 which is a much-improved version of its predecessor. The inclusion of the Killer Double Shot Pro Wireless 802.11ac WiFi allows you to connect to the internet wirelessly and get excellent speeds.
Bottomline
The Acer Predator Helios 300 PH315-52-78VL gaming laptop comes with excellent hardware. The Intel Core i7 9750H processor, 16 gigs of RAM, the Killer Doubleshot Pro WiFi card, and the Nvidia GeForce 1660Ti make up for excellent user experience. The 144Hz display takes your gaming to the next level. You simply can’t find more monitors with this feature. If you’re looking for a gaming laptop that is affordable and feature-rich, then this one is a good fit.