hey guys how is it going welcome back to
my channel so today we are looking at a
gaming laptop and this is the
best-selling gaming laptop on Amazon as
of now the reason I am picking this
laptop is because in addition to being a
great value for money for a gaming
laptop this is also a great laptop for
somebody who wants to buy a workhorse
like a laptop which is you know packed
with performance but at a reasonable
price
so the laptop that we will be looking
today is the Acer predator Helios 300
this is the 2019 edition of the laptop
so this video is intended for gamers
obviously because this is a gaming
laptop but this is also suitable for
people who are not gamers but who want
to buy a laptop which is packed with
performance because if you are
interested in doing 4k video editing or
running Photoshop or if you are running
some scientific application maybe 3d
modelling some CAD tool virtualization
or intensive programming this is a great
laptop because it comes with a fantastic
CPU and a kick-ass GPU so I will go into
the hardware details later in the video
but I just want to set the expectations
you can buy more expensive more fancy
gaming laptops but I am more interested
in a you know budget price this laptop
sells for around and $1,100 I will throw
a link in the description you can go
check out the price as of today it
should be around $1100 and in my opinion
for this price this is the best value
that you can get so the 2019 version of
the Helios 300 it comes in various
configuration there is a bigger 17.3
inch model and then there is the 15.6
inch screen which is the one I recommend
so for the 15.6 inch configuration the
best value for money is the
configuration that comes with gtx 1660
TI also there is a more expensive
configuration which uses there are TX
2060 Nvidia graphics card and unless you
care about ray tracing you should
actually avoid this configuration
because you will be spending extra money
for something which you are most likely
not going to use because most of the
games actually don't use the ray tracing
technology so in my opinion the best
configuration is the one that
link below in the description you can
check it out now like I mentioned there
is a bigger 17.3 inch model but it's too
bulky and clumsy in my opinion and so I
will not
you know recommend that laptop now let's
look at the hardware of this particular
configuration so this one is 15.6 inch
the screen it's a full HD IPS display
fantastic panel it has 144 Hertz the
fresh rate and for this price there will
be very few laptops which will have 144
Hertz refresh rate to screen most of
them have either 60 Hertz which is the
standard and some of them you may find
that 90 or 120 Hertz but I have not seen
any other laptop in this price point
which is offering a 144 Hertz refresh
rate so 144 Hertz refresh rate is really
important because when you play games
you want very fluid you know game play
and higher refresh rate screens tend to
do that so think of it as like your iPad
pro if you have ever played with the
iPad pro and it has a 120 Hertz refresh
rate the screen so this is even better
than that and it is really awesome the
screen is also very bright it's over 300
minutes and it has a 3 millisecond
response time so that means when you are
playing any game you will have a
fantastic gameplay because the perceived
lag is almost non-existent now regarding
the screen Acer has also trimmed the
bezels and if you compare it with the
last year's model which had relatively
thicker bezels this one looks very
premium and very modern and because the
vessels have been trimmed from the side
that means the physical size or the
dimension of this laptop is also smaller
it weighs around 5.5 pounds
which for a gaming laptop in 2019 with
the features that this laptop is
offering I think that's a pretty good
you know weight and the build quality is
fantastic so what a cell has done is
that they have anodized aluminium top
and the sides so those are metal
reinforced the bottom of the laptop is
hard plastic but for 5.5 pound weight I
think it feels really solid in your
hands
the anodized aluminium it's matte finish
so you don't get any fingerprints it's
not very glossy one other thing which I
like about this laptop is that this
year's model the flashy red color is
gone instead you have a blue
and it looks far more professional so if
you are using this laptop for gaming
that's fine but when you take it to a
classroom or your workplace you also
want this laptop to look a little
professional it does not look like a
douchebag
you know flashy red color laptop now
let's talk about the port situation so
you get the three USB ports the standard
USB type a you also get one type C port
and then the usual suspects the HDMI
connector the mini display connector are
present there is one gigabit lan port
which is awesome and you also get a
headphone jack and a mic and this is
something which is you know lot of
manufacturers have started removing the
headphone jacks and mics from the laptop
so I'm glad that those are present here
now what is not present is the SD card
reader and so there is no way you can
read you know SD card or micro SD card
which is a bummer especially if you you
know like taking videos and you want to
transfer 4k video from your camera to
the you know your laptop you won't be
able to use SD card you will have to
connect your camera with the USB cable
which sucks the other thing which is
missing and I would like to mention that
is the Thunderbolt port so the
Thunderbolt port a few years back this
was a big deal because people are
thinking that Thunderbolt port would
enable you know what the external GPU
for laptops but we all know that that
never really panned out and these
external GPUs are so expensive that it
really doesn't make any sense to you
know go that route so the lack of
Thunderbolt port honestly it doesn't
bother me okay now let's look at the
performance of this laptop because this
is a gaming laptop so the performance is
the most important thing this comes with
a core i7 processor specifically the
core i7 9 7 5 0 H processor this is an
Intel 9th generation processor this is a
coffee Lake series processor and it has
a whopping 6 core and 12 threads so this
is pretty amazing because there's few
years back something like this was not
even possible in a desktop computer and
now you have a laptop that this kind of
performance the cores are actually based
clock is around 2.6 gigahertz and the
turbo frequency is 4.5 gigahertz but
something amazing which Acer has done is
that they have under volted the CPU so
under volting is a technique where you
are able to run the processor at few
millivolts
lesser than you know
voltage and so what happens is that your
processor runs much cooler and as a
result it is able to overclock the turbo
frequency it is able to overclock and
give better performance without you know
getting heated and without hitting any
kind of thermal limitation so under
volting used to be a technique which
hardcore nerds they're familiar with
this hack and they used to you know do
it on their laptop but no manufacturer
was actually under volting the cpu so
I'm very glad that Acer has done this
with this particular model and Acer has
brought under volting to you know
everybody and the result is that you get
a better performance so for example this
particular CPU the base clock frequency
is 2.5 gigahertz but because Acer has
under voltage eight processor actually
runs at around 3.5 gigahertz and that is
thanks to about 150 millivolts of under
volting that a cell has performed so in
simple English it means that you are
able to extract more performance from
this CPU which is already a kick-ass CPU
so now let's look at the CPU benchmark
in the CPU average market scores 13,000
679 points which is frankly speaking
unbelievable if you look at this chart
you will get an idea of how kick-ass
this processor is it's smoking every
other processor these are the top ten
common laptop CPUs and as you can see
this thing is just as smoking everybody
else and this kind of performance means
that not only you can play all the games
but you can also run CPU intensive
applications whether it is you know
Photoshop video editing CAD 3d modeling
you know programming if you are
crunching numbers you are running any
scientific application no matter what
you do this CPU is going to basically
handle any task you throw at it so I've
got a couple of benchmarks for the whole
you know the overall performance of the
laptop the first one is Cinebench and
here I am comparing this laptop that
some of the other gaming laptops or the
high end laptops and as you can see this
laptop is at par or better than the
competition and mind you some of these
laptops are actually more expensive than
Acer so when it comes to performance per
dollar this laptop is basically smoking
the other laptop in this category okay
so in this chart we are looking at a
real-time performance of the CPU so this
is a Photoshop the task was performed in
148 seconds which is lower than every
other laptop in competition so just as I
said before and I am just repeating
myself this laptop has a kick-ass CPU
performance and it's largely because
obviously the core i7 chip is great but
because it says under voltage there's
CPU you are getting such a good
performance okay now let's move on to
the GPU so GPU is the most important
component of your gaming laptop some
would argue that it's even more
important than the CPU and this one has
a NVIDIA GTX 16 60 TI a graphic card
there is an option to go with the more
expensive RTX 2060 but like I said
before I would not recommend it because
you will be paying more money to get a
graphic card which basically supports
you know the extra functionality which
is the ray-tracing technology but
because most of the games don't use the
ray-tracing technology you are basically
wasting your money so I will not
recommend upgrading the graphic cards
they stick with 16 60 TI and I think it
will get the best bang for bugs so here
are a couple of benchmarking for the GPU
this is the 3d mark graphics test and
again as you see the Acer laptop is
either at par or it is beating more
expensive laptops and the same story
holds in the super position 1.2
benchmark okay so this is not all bed of
roses there are some problems with this
laptop and in my opinion the biggest
problem is the battery life so the chart
here shows the battery life that you can
expect this is a video rundown and Acer
actually performed the worst among all
the laptops that you see here the
battery life was three hours 19 minutes
now for moderate use you may be able to
like get around 4 hours of battery life
but it is really not you know nothing to
talk about and that means that you will
have to charge this laptop multiple
times during the day and if you are
doing heavy gaming then you will have to
plug in this laptop to a power supply
now for gaming laptop this is kind of
understandable because it's packing so
much performance so the battery life
will take a hit there will be a
compromise somewhere Acer could have put
a bigger battery
but then that would have made the laptop
thicker and you know heavier so ASA
decided to make this compromise okay so
to summarize I think Acer Helios 300
2019 Edition is a fantastic laptop for
gamers it's the best bang for bucks and
even if you are not a gamer but you want
a high-end laptop this is the one to buy
I don't know of a single laptop which
will give you this kind of a screen
which is more than 300 minutes of
brightness 144 Hertz refresh rate and
three millisecond you know delay which
is fantastic so the more latency
problems now one thing I want to point
out is that this particular
configuration the storage is not a lot
it's only 256 gigabyte of SSD which
means if you are installing a whole
bunch of games you are going to run out
of space very quickly now the good thing
is that this laptop comes with an extra
m2 slot the PCI m2 slot for adding an
additional SSD and then there is also a
SATA slot available so in theory it
means that you don't have to remove the
existing SSD you can go buy another SSD
and expand the storage I will throw a
link in the description of compatible
SSDs that you can buy so here is my
recommendation I would highly encourage
that you know if you are thinking of
buying this laptop you should also go
get a 512 gigabyte of SSD or if you want
more storage you get a 1 terabyte of SSD
I will throw a couple of links in the
description below about you know the
compatible SSDs that we can buy from
Amazon and because the slots you get
extra slots which means your existing
SSD which has the operating system and
all the installation files you will not
have to mess with that and you can just
install it another SSD and you will have
256 gigabyte plus either 1 terabyte or
512 gigabyte whatever you decide to buy
and then that will give you enough
storage to install you know multiple
games and you know also have other files
videos pictures whatever you want to
save in your laptop also let us talk
about the RAM it comes with 16 gigabytes
of memory which is more than enough for
most of the gaming tasks but if you plan
to do some scientific work you know
maybe virtualization or some heavy
programming and you anticipate more
memory then you
upgrade the RAM unfortunately the two
slots are already filled so you have
dual channel setup an 8 gigabyte of RAM
any slot for a total of 16 gigabyte if
you want to upgrade you will have to buy
2 16 gigabyte DIMMs and you can max it
out you know to 32 gigabyte so I will
throw a link in the description of the
compatible memory modules if you are
interested in upgrading now this is also
going to be very straightforward just
like the SSD upgrade the memory upgrade
is also not very complicated and if you
have never done it before don't worry
this is like very easy and there are
plenty of videos on YouTube where you
can actually go and look at how these
kinds of memory upgrades are performed
ok guys I think that's all for today if
you like this video then please like
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my next video bye
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