Acer’s new Helios Neo 16 is generally a great gaming laptop, but like all things in life,
it's not perfect. For some reason, Acer’s Helios 300 from last year is
actually cheaper and it performs better in games. That’s a pretty big problem,
but it’s not the only one, these are the top 7 problems that I’ve got with the Neo 16.
The first major problem is the price and performance. Right now, the Helios Neo 16 with
RTX 4060 graphics goes for $1580 USD. Meanwhile, Acer’s Helios 300 from last year with RTX 3070
Ti graphics frequently goes on sale for $1300 USD. And as we can see in these game benchmarks,
the older model was often performing better. Let that sink in for a moment,
you’ve got to pay more money for the newer model to get worse performance.
Now you could definitely argue that the 4060 gets you Nvidia’s new frame generation feature. And to
be completely honest, I do think that is a nice feature in supported games. It just makes them
feel smoother to play. But it’s currently only out in a small number of games, so if you were to buy
this right now you’d be spending 22% more money for that privilege. It’s hard to say if that’s
worth it today, obviously there will be more games in future that have frame generation support. But
hopefully by that time this laptop also costs less money. So probably not worth it just yet.
The second problem that I’ve got with this laptop is the battery life. Despite
both laptops having the same 90Wh battery, last year’s model actually lasted longer,
whether we were playing a game or just watching a YouTube video. I would have thought that newer
hardware would be more power efficient, but to be fair, I suppose the new Neo 16 does have a
bigger screen with more pixels, and technically I suppose that would require more GPU power to run.
The third problem is the speakers. Don’t get me wrong, last year’s Helios 300 didn’t
have particularly amazing speakers. I’d say they were at least above average,
but this year they’re just not as good. They just sound tinny and flat without any bass.
The fourth problem is the keyboard. Well, I suppose it’s not actually a problem,
it’s just another instance where this newer laptop feels like a bit of a
downgrade compared to last year. Last year’s model had per-key RGB lighting,
so you had more lighting effects and could make more customizations. Oh, plus more importantly,
last year’s model had an RGB light bar on the front, which is now gone. Alright but seriously,
this year’s model now has a 4 zone keyboard. It still looks pretty good,
I just don’t think we should have this many downgrades for a laptop that costs more.
And problem number five is the size and weight. The Helios Neo 16 is slightly bigger in all
dimensions compared to last year’s Helios 300, and it also weighs a bit more too. Something
that’s not helped out by the fact that it comes with a chunky 330 watt charger. I’ve got no idea
why that’s the case, because the Helios Neo 16 maxes out with RTX 4070 graphics. Generally you
only see those big 330 watt chargers with 4080s and 4090s, because they actually need
more power. So yeah kind of weird but I suppose at least there’s Type-C charging on the back.
And it’s not just the game performance that’s lacking. CPU performance wasn’t actually that
much different, despite the newer processor in the Helios Neo 16 having 2 more P cores and it being
a newer architecture. I was only seeing a 4.5% boost to single and multi threaded
performance with the new laptop. But hey, at least it’s not worse like the gaming results!
Another downgrade is in the camera. This year’s model has a 720p camera while last
year’s was 1080p. And while neither of them looked particularly amazing,
I think last year’s looked a little better. Luckily it’s not all bad news,
here’s how the Helios Neo 16 is actually better compared to last year.
That new larger 16 inch screen gets brighter and has a faster response time,
but the color gamut isn’t quite as good. I think it’s still plenty good for gaming,
but if you’re a content creator you might want to look elsewhere. The new model can also fit double
sided M.2 SSDs in both of its M.2 slots. Last year’s model could only fit that in one. So now
you can max it out with more SSD space. The new model has a bigger and better touchpad. On last
year’s I had a weird sort of left click issue, but that could have just been mine. In any case,
it’s still bigger and it feels nicer and accurate to use. I also think the new ports are better. The
newer model has an extra Type-C port and MicroSD card slot, but the tradeoff was that they removed
the Mini DisplayPort. But does anyone actually use that? Because you can still do DisplayPort
over both the Type-C ports on the back, so I don’t really see it as that big of a loss.
Now those are certainly some welcome improvements, but I don’t think that
it quite makes up for all of the negatives that I mentioned at the start. There’s way
more that you need to know about the Acer Helios Neo 16. Check out my full review
on my main channel to get all of the details next, as I go into way more depth in that one.