Hi, this video is an in-depth comparison of the 2019 Acer Predator Helios 300
and the Asus ROG Strix Scar 3.
The choice is not easy and i received many requests to compare these laptops, so if you
don't know which one you should go for, this video may help you find the answer.
Both laptops are similare in terms of specs and features, but there are also few major
differences between them that you should definitely know to make a wise choice.
As always in the video description i left Amazon links for the USA and also for other
countries to check the correct price.
To skip to any part of this video you can use the timestamps down below.
I'm Chris from techfindsreview.com and now let's jump into the comparison.
If it comes to design the Scar 3 is a very eye catching laptop.
You have metal lid with brushed aluminium texture and the ROG logo that you can light up with RGB colors.
On the back it has extended exhaust section, but when you open the laptop it doesn't stick
out too much thanks to well-designed hinge mechanism.
On the front and on the sides there is one large light bar that makes the laptop look
like it's hovering above the ground.
The deck is made of solid plastic with few extruded lines and a keystone slot on the
left hand side.
Thanks to carbon fiber pattern the fingerprints are not so visible on it.
The Predator has also metal top pannel, but it's matt black with blue accents and a backlit
logo in the middle.
The back of 2019 Predator looks awesome - I love the triangular exhausts with blue heat
sinks inside.
On the front of the laptop there is a nice silver trim and the keyboard is eye catching
thanks to white key strokes.
Despite the matt texture of the deck, fingerprints show very easily, but they are easy to wipe away.
Both laptops come with thin bezel display, but only Acer managed to fit 720p webcam properly
on the top bezel.
On the other hand Asus decided to not include any webcam even though there is a lot of space under the display.
If it comes to dimensions the extended exhaust section in Scar 3 makes it slightly deeper
than Predator, but the weight is about the same for both laptops.
I think they both are pretty portable, so carrying any of them should not be a problem.
The keyboard in Asus Scar 3 is very good and i think that it's better than in Predator.
It has long 2mm key travel, good spacing and 5 additional useful keys.
It's not full size, but don't worry - you have the number pad displayed on the touchpad
after touching right top corner.
The useful feature that it has is the "overstroke" technology which registers the key press
before you actually press the key all the way down.
The keyboard in Predator has 1.7mm key travel, good spacing and comfortably big arrow keys.
You have also one dedicated key to open the control center app, and the turbo button which
improves the performance and sets the fans to max, more on that later.
The keys with white strokes look great but the lighting is not as strong and vivid as in Scar.
You have 4 zones of lighting and few simple effects, so you can customize the keyboard
a bit but please note that the most popular $1200 model with 1660Ti comes with only blue
keyboard lighting in the USA.
The models with higher specs and some of 1660Ti models come with RGB,
so make sure that you buy the right one.
In Asus Scar 3 you have very vivid per-key RGB.
You can customize every single key the way you want or use one of many built in effects.
However many people complain about the Armoury Crate app and i must admit that sometimes
it may be full of glitches.
Once Asus announced that per-key customization will be implementet yet i still couldn't find
it in the Armoury Crate, so i downloaded a separate Aura software from Asus and then
i was able to play around with the keyboard lighting a bit more.
If it comes to touchpads there is not much to tell.
Both are using Windows Precision drivers, so the tracking is good, and you can take
advantage of the gesture controls.
The only difference is that Predator has one big pannel with bottom mechanism for left
and right click.
In Scar 3 the touchpad area is smaller, but it has 2 separate buttons.
In my opinion it looks cleaner, and i like this solution more.
One thing to note is that if the numpad is on, you can't use the touchpad until you turn it off.
In terms of ports selection i think that Predator is the winner.
Basically it has the same ports as Scar, but in addition it has MiniDisplay port and Security lock
which the Asus is missing.
Unfortunately there is no Thunderbolt 3 and no SD card slot in both laptops.
In Scar 3 you can find a new feature called Keystone which is a magnetic NFC chip that
you can plug in to the slot on the right hand side.
It can save your gaming and lighting profiles and also unlock the secret Shadow Drive where
you can store your files.
One of the most hyped features of Scar 3 is 240Hz display and i believe it's buttery smooth
but i've got the unit with 1080p 144Hz 3ms response IPS pannel which is not worse at all.
Despite it doesn't support G-Sync it's the smoothest 144Hz display that i've tested,
which in combination with powerful hardware allows you to take advantage of the fast refresh rate.
The color accuracy is good as well, the colors are vivid and sharp with cold tone.
I find them very accurate, the games look great, but i can recommend this laptop for
content creation as well.
You have 97% of sRGB color gamut, 73% of AdobeRGB and the brightness is 320 nits.
My Predator has also 1080p 144Hz 3ms response time IPS pannel without G-Sync.
I felt like it's just a little less smooth compared to Scar, but on the other hand
it has slightly better color reproduction.
The colors are also very vivid and sharp, and the display has perfectly balanced cold tone.
It can reproduce 97% of sRGB color gamut, 75% of AdobeRGB and the brightness is 315 nits.
I think that any kind of color corrent work can be done on this laptop without problem,
and the games look perfect.
However there was one thing that was not perfect.
I found screen bleeding which was also slightly noticeable during normal use when the content
on the screen was black.
This may vary between laptops because of diversity in the production process, however this is
only a cosmetic issue which you may not even notice.
Despite this minor flaw i think that Predator pays off better, because it costs significantly
less than Scar 3 while the display is comparatively good.
Speaking of price i prepared a list with available configurations and approximated prices
of both laptops as for today, but please note that the prices may vary with time.
So in the video description I left Amazon links for USA and other countries to find
the configuration that suits you best and check the current price.
Let's talk about the Predator first.
You can get it with the GTX 1660Ti, RTX 2060 or RTX 2070 Max-Q. It's also available with
different storage and RAM options, so if you don't wanna bother with upgrading it on your own,
you can buy just the right configuration.
As a default the 2019 Predator comes with 144hz display, but I've heard about 60hz models
too depending on the country.
The most popular $1200 model is well known for the best price to performance ratio out there
and from time to time it goes on sale for $999 on Amazon.
So stay tuned and don't forget to check the current price, especially in the Black Friday.
The Scar 3 is only available with full size RTX 2060 and RTX 2070.
For the processor you can choose between i7-9750H and i9-9880H, but if you want wider range
of configurations there is also a budget option, the Asus Strix G which you can buy with
GTX 1650, GTX 1660Ti and i5-9300H processor as well.
There is also the Asus Hero 3 which except for few visual changes looks the same as Scar,
but you can mostly find it with 17" screen.
Alright, comming back to the review let's talk about speakers.
As always a definite winner in this category is the Asus Scar 3 which has the best sounding
speakers on the gaming laptop market right now.
I was surprised by the amount of bass that they can produce.
Every shot and every explosion in game was full and punchy so there was no really need
to use the headphones.
Mids are just on point but the highs may seem to be a little bit overwhelmed by lows.
You can always equalize the sound the way you want using a Sonic Studio III software.
The sound in Predator is above average, but it's not even close to the Asus.
It has noticeably more bass than many other devices and i was surprised how clear was the sound.
On stock settings it had a lot of detail and depth, but if you want you can equalize it
in Waves MaxxAudio software.
The performance comparison is probably the most exciting part of this review.
I've got the Scar 3 with RTX 2060 and the Predator has GTX 1660Ti on board,
but in this case the results were very similare.
I pushed both laptops to the limits, so for testing purposes i manually overclocked the
GPU in Scar and set the turbo mode for more CPU power and better cooling.
In Predator the only thing you need to do is to click the turbo button which instantly
overclocks the GPU, increases the CPU power limit and sets the fans to max.
Here is a quick preview of the game performance, but if you want to see more games tested,
check out my gaming benchmark videos where i tested 20 games on each laptop.
Please note that in the benchmark video of Scar 3 i showed the results of the overheating
unit that i had previously, but in the comments section and in the description you can also
find the results of a proper unit that i'm talking about now.
Links to the videos will be in the description.
Speaking of temperatures i had to test 2 units of Scar 3, because the first one that i got
was overheating due to bad thermal paste application in the factory.
It happens sometimes, so i decided to test another unit with exactly the same specs,
and this time i was able to see it's full potential.
The average temperature of the CPU was 84 degrees Celcius
and the GPU average was only 74 degrees.
The Predator was a little bit cooler hitting the average of 83 degrees on the CPU
and 71 degrees on the GPU.
By the way, this time i also tested the M.2 SSD speeds in both laptops and the Predator was faster.
If you'll get the configuration with only SSD you'll probably wanna add more storage,
so if it comes to accessibility i find the Predator easier to upgrade.
You have to unscrew whole the bottom lid to get access to your RAM, 2.5" hard drive
and two M.2 PCIe slots.
In Scar you have also 2 Ram slots, one 2.5" drive bay, but only one slot for M.2 Pcie drive.
To get access to the components you have to take off whole the bottom lid as well,
but there are also 2 hard to access ribbon cables that you have to disconnect as first.
I made a step by step detailed guide showing how to disassemble and upgrade
each laptop, so if you're planning to add more RAM, swap out your hard drive or SSD,
you can check it out.
As for the battery life i managed to use the Predator for up to 6 hours when browsing the web
and doing light productivity work.
When gaming battery died after 1,5 hour.
The Asus was a little bit behind - it ran for up to 5,5 hours when light work,
and 1,5 hour when gaming.
Alright, it seems to be everything that you need to know to wisely choose one of these laptops,
but before we finish let me share my closing thoughts.
So if it comes to the Scar 3 i think it's a great choice for those who have some extra
dollar to spend.
It's not the cheapest out there, but it has many features that will take your gaming experience
to the next level.
The performance is good as well.
With RTX 2060 can play most of current games on ultra settings at smooth 60fps and above.
All of that at respectable temperatures without throttling.
The andavtage of it is that it has a full size RTX 2070 variant, while the Predator
comes with about 10% weaker RTX 2070 Max-Q. Buying Scar 3 you're also getting a per-key
lighting keyboard, tons of RGB, the best sounding speakers on the market and slightly smoother
display without backlight bleeding.
For the weak sides we can include lack of webcam, no MiniDisplay port,
and the Armoury Crate app issues.
On the other hand we have the 2019 Acer Predator Helios 300 which shows the best price to performance
ratio out there, without really sacrificing anything.
It has premium metal build, above average speakers and almost the same smooth display
with slightly better color reproduction.
Unlike the Scar the Predator comes with webcam and MiniDisplay port, but the $1200 configuration
has only blue keyboard lighting.
However if you want to squeeze the most fps out of your buck i think that
this configuration is the way to go.
As you have seen the GTX 1660Ti in Predator gives you very close results to the Scar 3
with RTX 2060, and it runns at respectively low temperatures as well.
The only issue wasthe screen bleeding which was actually noticeable in my unit,
but it vary between laptops and i believe that it's not so visible in most cases during normal use.
If i had to choose i'd rather go for the 2019 Helios 300, but i am curious what is your choice.
I hope that this video helped you decide, so if you know which laptop you're gonna buy now,
let us know in the comments.
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Now thanks for your time and see you in the next video!