Finally, we had the possibility to test the Acer Predator Helios 500 which is well known for its great cooling good performance and reasonable price.
General Info
| Acer Predator Helios 500 | ||
| Series | Predator Helios 500 | |
| Brand | Acer | |
| Model Number | PH517-51-78UP | |
| Weight | 4 Kg | |
| Laptop Type | Gaming Laptop | |
| OS | Windows 10 Home | |
| Display | 17.3 Inch | |
| Type | Laptop |
The Predator Helios 500 is definitely a big-sized laptop but thankfully the design is not so bad. The laptop is all made of matte plastic which doesn’t show fingerprints so easily. Despite the plastic construction, Helios 500 feels very tough and premium.
On the back, you can find nice-looking exhausts with blue heat sinks and the top panel contains only the predator logo in the middle. We actually like the fact that it has blue accents instead of red but if use a different colour of lighting on your keyboard it looks kinda mismatched.
Display
| Acer Predator Helios 500 | ||
| Display Type | IPS Display | |
| Display Size | 17.3 Inches | |
| Display Resolution | 1920 x 1080 Pixels | |
| Display Touchscreen | No | |
| Colour | Black |
The display 17.3 inches, 144-hertz IPS panel, and depending on the model it supports G-sync for Nvidia graphics and Free-Sync for AMD version which we’ve got here the combination of free sync and fast refresh provides smooth gameplay and the colour reproduction is just on point.
This display can reproduce 97% of sRGB colour gamut 75% of Adobe RGB and the brightness is 329 nits, it’s more than enough for gaming but the Helios 500 can be also used for content creation especially with 8 core processor. As for now, this model is one of the best laptops that you can buy for that kind of job, and no, RTX laptop can beat Helios 500 at least for now.
Specification
| Acer Predator Helios 500 | ||
| Processor Name | Intel Core i7- 8750H (8th Gen) | |
| Graphics | NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1070 | |
| Chipset | Intel HM370 | |
| Dimensions | 428 x 298 x 38.7 mm | |
| RAM | 16 GB DDR4 RAM | |
| Storage | 1 TB HDD/256 SSD |
Performance
| Acer Predator Helios 500 | |||
| Clockspeed | 2.1 Ghz | ||
| Graphic Processor | GeForce | ||
| Processor | GTX 1070 | ||
| Graphic Ram | 8 GB |
If you dip into graphics work you can buy this laptop with 4k display that has 100% of sRGB and 100% of Adobe RGB, now the price of our unit is about $1,800, for comparison you can buy an i9 version for $2,400 or 6 core i7 for $1,800, so we think that Ryzen 7 + Vega 56 model gives you a much better bang for your buck.
However, the Helios 500 with intel processors comes with a full-size GTX 1070 which is about 5 per cent better than vega 56. In both cases, the GPU will be the bottleneck for the CPU in games so if you want to sacrifice two cores for slightly better performance in games, you can go for the i9 or i7 model with GTX 1070. If it comes to content creation the Ryzen 7 is significantly better than any six-core processor. So we think that it’s worth considering even though you will have a 5% weaker GPU.
Multimedia
| Acer Predator Helios 500 | |||
| Web-cam | HD 720P Webcam | ||
| Speakers | Dual Speakers | ||
| Microphone Jack | Yes | ||
| Wireless Lan | IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac | ||
| Bluetooth | v5.0 | ||
| Memory Slots | Yes | ||
| HDMI Ports | Yes | ||
| Ethernet Ports | Yes | ||
| Finger Print Reader | No |
The speakers are located under the device on both sides there is also a subwoofer but we couldn’t hear a big difference between the base strength of Helios 500 and another decent laptop without a subwoofer. So if it comes to sound in predator there is nothing special, it’s loud clear and the bass is only fine.
Battery
| Acer Predator Helios 500 | ||
| Battery Cell | 4 Cell | |
| Battery Type | Lithium-Ion | |
| Battery Backup | Upto 3 hours | |
| Power Supply | 330 W AC Adapter |
If it comes to battery life we managed to use predator for only 3 hours when doing light productivity work and 40 minutes when gaming, that’s a mediocre result for a gaming laptop. But considering the size of this laptop and the big power brick, we doubt that anybody would use it on the go anyway.
Conclusion
This Helios 500 is a good gaming and content creation laptop. When you add performance to a colour-calibrated panel you get helios 500. If you are buying for just the purpose of gaming, we think you should go for the i7 or i9 model with GTX 1070, which is better than Vega 56 and provides better graphical performance. But if you are buying for content creation getting those extra Ryzen 7 cores will be a much better deal despite we are getting a little weaker GPU, which is Vega 56.
