Acer have completely redesigned their Helios 300 gaming laptop this year, and it’s back
to being one of the better gaming laptops that you can buy now!
I had some pretty major issues with last year’s model that prevented me from recommending
it, but now all of these have been fixed in this year’s redesign, so let’s check it
out in this review!
The Helios 300 has a dark blue finish, and both the lid and interior are metal.
There was some flex to the keyboard and lid despite the metal build, but overall build
quality felt good during normal use.
Fingerprints and smudges show up fairly easily, but as it’s smooth it’s easy to clean
with a microfiber cloth.
The predator logo on the lid lights up blue from the screen’s backlight, so can’t
be customized.
The screen goes back about 140 degrees, and I didn’t have any problems opening it despite
there not being anywhere to easily grab with your finger.
The hinge seems sturdy even when ripping it open hard.
The lid still feels easy and smooth to open, and only wobbles a little when typing hard.
It’s not exactly thin, but it’s still portable and similar to most other 15” gaming
laptops.
The laptop alone weighs 2.5kg or 5.5lb, increasing to 3.5kg or almost 7.8lb with the fairly large
280 watt charger included.
My configuration has Intel’s Core i7-12700H processor, Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti graphics,
16 gigs of DDR5 memory, and a 15.6” 1440p 165Hz screen with G-Sync, but you can check
out other options for less money with the link below the video.
There’s a 1080p camera above the screen in the middle, an increase compared to last
year’s 720p camera, but it does not have Windows Hello face unlock.
Here’s how the camera and microphones look and sound, and this is what it sounds like
while typing on the keyboard, and as you can see the screen does wobble a little bit when
doing this.
The keyboard has per-key RGB backlighting, and all keys and secondary functions get lit
up.
Key brightness can be adjusted between 4 levels or turned off by holding the function key
and pressing the F9 and F10 keys.
You can also change it through Acer’s Predator sense software under the pulsar lighting tab.
This lets you set different effects for the keyboard and light bar, or you can sync them
together.
The light bar is pretty subtle, at least compared to say Lenovo’s Legion 7i, ASUS’s Scar
15, or MSI’s GE series.
The keyboard lighting seems to stay on with the lid closed, perhaps because of the light
bar, but you can set all lighting to automatically turn off after 30 seconds of being idle.
The keyboard was fine to type with, but personally I prefer the feel of this year’s Lenovo
or ASUS models, though that is of course subjective.
The touchpad is smooth and is accurate to click with, but the front was a little loose
feeling.
Not sure if this is just mine, but I found it a little annoying sometimes.
The power button is part of the keyboard, but accidentally pressing it doesn’t do
anything.
You have to hold it down for about 3 seconds before software asks if you want to shutdown,
sleep, hibernate, or just turn off the screen.
The left side has a Kensington lock near the back, gigabit ethernet port, USB 3.2 Gen 1
Type-A port and a 3.5mm audio combo jack.
The right side has two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports.
The rest of the ports are on the back.
From left to right we’ve got the power input, a Thunderbolt 4 Type-C port, HDMI 2.1 and
Mini DisplayPort 1.4 outputs.
Acer’s website says 2.5 gigabit ethernet, but Killer E2600, which my Helios does have,
only that's gigabit, so that seems to be a mistake on the website.
That single Type-C port on the back can be used to charge the laptop, something that
wasn’t offered in last year’s model.
But due to the way Thunderbolt works, if you do want to connect an external screen to the
Type-C port, it will go via the integrated graphics and optimus, and you can’t use
advanced optimus to change that behavior.
The HDMI port does connect directly to the Nvidia graphics, bypassing optimus though,
and so does the mini DisplayPort.
We also confirmed that the HDMI port could run a 4K external screen at 120Hz 12-bit with
G-Sync.
Getting inside requires unscrewing 11 Phillips head screws, all the same length, and the
bottom panel was easy to open with my usual pry tools - I’ll leave a link to them below
the video.
The light bar isn’t part of the bottom panel like the ASUS Scar 15, so you don’t have
to worry about it.
Once inside, the RAM is covered by a metal cover which has the thermal pads we normally
see on SSDs.
I don’t think I’ve seen this on RAM before.
Otherwise the battery is down the front, two memory slots are above, the installed SSD
is to the left of those with a Wi-Fi 6E card just above that, and the right has a second
M.2 slot.
I was not able to install two of my 2TB M.2 drives in the spare slot, as they have chips
underneath towards the end which came into contact with the other stuff on the motherboard.
It’s not quite as bad under the primary slot that came with the SSD installed, my
2TB drives could fit there, but I’m not sure if this chip would cause a problem for
4TB or larger.
The speeds from the installed SSD were quite good though thanks to PCIe Gen 4.
It’s worth noting that my Helios has two sticks of memory now, and not one like last
year’s, granted the difference between one and two sticks with DDR5 seems to matter far
less compared to older DDR4.
The Wi-Fi performance was decent when compared against other gaming laptops, about the same
as last year’s Helios despite this year’s having newer 6E, but my router unfortunately
doesn’t support 6E so we’re not getting the most out of it.
I took off half a point from the upgradeability score due to the limits on the 2nd M.2 slot,
but otherwise like most other laptops, you can change both memory sticks, two SSDs and
the Wi-Fi card - no major components are soldered.
The speakers are found underneath on the front left and right corners.
I thought they sounded pretty average for a gaming laptop, so nothing special and definitely
not great.
There’s no bass, but they sound clear enough, and the laptop hardly vibrates at max volume.
The latencymon results were looking pretty good.
It plays this crazy boot sound by default when you turn it on.
Fortunately you can disable it either through the software or in BIOS.
You can also customize the boot logo with your own jpg or gif file.
The Helios 300 is powered by a 4-Cell 90Wh battery.
Acer has finally gotten rid of the 2.5” drive bay to give us a bigger battery.
This results in the 2022 Helios 300 scoring above average for an Intel based gaming laptop
with these specs, lasting for about 5 and a half hours in my YouTube playback test.
Quite a bit longer compared to last year’s Helios which had a smaller 58Wh battery.
Personally I think the tradeoff of not having a 2.5” drive is well worth it here, two
M.2 slots should be plenty for most people, and m.2 drives aren't that expensive these
days.
That said, it is kind of annoying that at least the second slot can’t fit my 2TB drives.
Let’s check out thermals next.
There are a couple of heatpipes shared between the CPU and GPU, with two fans that exhaust
air out of both the left and right sides, as well as out of the vents on the back.
Acer’s website notes that they’re using liquid metal on the CPU, and we can see there
are holes underneath where the fans are for air intake, as well as some holes directly
over the CPU and GPUs, and also come ventilation above the keyboard.
Acer’s Predator Sense software let’s us change between different performance modes,
which from lowest to highest are quiet, default, extreme and turbo.
Turbo mode sets the fans to maximum and doesn’t let you adjust the fans at all, while the
other modes allow you to either leave the fans on auto, maximum, or do a bit of customization.
Both Extreme and Turbo modes apply the following overclocks to the GPU, and if you unplug the
charger you can only use default mode.
You can also enable turbo mode at any time by pressing the turbo button above the top
left of the keyboard.
This button seems to need the Windows software to work, as it doesn’t work in Linux.
The internal temperatures were cool when just sitting there idle.
The rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU stress tests which aim to represent
a worst case full load scenario.
Nvidia sets a temperature limit of 87 degrees Celsius for their laptop GPUs, so thermal
throttling was being hit in both quiet and default modes.
Setting extreme or turbo modes was able to lower GPU temperatures significantly, but
as you’ll hear soon, these modes get loud.
Because turbo mode is so loud, I’ve tested with the cooling pad in extreme mode, but
it only lowered temps by a couple of degrees.
These are the clock speeds being reached during the same stress tests.
We can see that extreme and turbo modes were the same, as there’s no throttling with
the fast fans, and this is why the cooling pad didn’t help either.
It probably would have been more useful in default mode where the GPU thermal throttling
was going on.
Nvidia allows the RTX 3070 Ti for laptops to max out at 150 watts, and the Helios was
able to sustain this with the CPU under stress test at the same time, a good result, and
don’t forget it was actually running fairly cool in extreme and turbo modes.
Here’s how a game performs with the different performance modes in use.
There’s not really a difference between turbo and extreme modes, which makes sense
given the power limits and clock speeds were both very similar.
Although the CPU was maxing out with a 40 watt power limit with the GPU also under load,
when the GPU is idle it’s able to run much higher.
I’ve got a range for extreme and turbo modes, because thermals were the limit even with
the crazy loud fans.
I think this is fine though, because the tradeoff is great multi core performance.
We can see it’s basically tied with the liquid cooled Neo 15 from XMG just above it,
so one of the best results from an i7-12700H recorded so far.
It’s worth noting the single core score is 22% higher compared to the i7-11800H in
last year’s model, and 59% better in multicore, big improvements.
Performance lowers if we unplug the charger and instead run purely off of battery power.
Again it’s one of the better results for a 14 core i7 laptop, though a number of 8
core AMD Ryzen laptops are able to do better in terms of multicore now, implying those
are generally, but not always, more efficient, but as we can see that’s not always the
case, it depends on the specific laptop the CPU is in.
Most laptops I test are in the low 30 degrees Celsius range on the keyboard at idle, and
the Helios was cooler than this, a good result.
It’s warmer in quiet mode with the stress tests going, but the keys only felt a bit
warm.
Stepping up to default mode and we’re seeing similar results, though the fans are louder
now to compensate for the higher power limits and better performance.
Extreme mode was impressively cool considering the 3070 Ti is running at 150 watts, I’ve
had other gaming laptops run warmer than this at idle.
Turbo mode is much the same, very cool, but it’s also very loud to achieve this, let’s
have a listen.
The fans were barely audible when idle, and quiet and default modes weren’t too bad,
but extreme and turbo modes are very loud and well above average compared to most other
laptops.
You can actually feel the laptop vibrating which didn't make it pleasant to use.
Honestly there’s no real point going above extreme mode to turbo mode, because the performance
is pretty similar, but turbo mode is just louder.
Now extreme mode is definitely still louder compared to most other laptops out there,
but at least you do have the option of fan control there, which is disabled in turbo
mode.
Just before we get into the game testing, let’s check out the screen, as that’s
what you’re actually going to be looking at when playing games.
Unlike last year’s model, the 2022 one has added a MUX switch, as this is a requirement
for advanced optimus to work, so you can turn optimus on or off without rebooting through
Nvidia’s control panel, but there’s no traditional user accessible MUX switch option
through software or the BIOS.
My Helios has a 1440p 165Hz screen with G-Sync, but there are others like 1080p 165Hz or 1440p
240Hz.
Color gamut was surprisingly good for a gaming laptop, though contrast didn’t look as good
from an angle.
Brightness is fine, but not amazing, surpassing the 300 nit minimum that I want to see when
maxed out at 100% brightness.
Average gray-to-gray screen response time was measured at 7.66ms, not quite the 6ms
needed for transitions to occur within the 165Hz refresh window.
It’s certainly much better compared to last year’s Helios, granted I have no idea if
this year’s 1080p configuration uses a slow panel, that could be possible.
I suspect this year’s result could be even faster if Acer was offering an overdrive mode,
as that’s why many other similar panels are able to do better here.
The total system latency is the amount of time between a mouse click and when a gunshot
fire appears on the screen in CS:GO.
Again the result is way better compared to last year’s version, in part because of
the faster screen, but also due to the addition of the MUX switch.
Backlight bleed doesn’t look great here, but I never actually noticed it when viewing
content normally.
Alright now let’s find out how this year’s Helios 300 compares against others in games!
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested the same on all laptops, and I’ve got this year’s Helios
300 shown by the red highlight.
It’s doing quite well at 1080p, and close to a number of other full powered 3070 Ti
options, including XMG’s liquid cooled machine just above it.
We’re also looking at a 40% boost to average FPS compared to last year’s Helios 300 with
RTX 3070 graphics.
Not only was last year’s model missing a MUX switch, but it had single channel memory
and a lower GPU power limit.
We’ve got a different selection of laptops at the higher 1440p resolution, as fewer machines
can run it well.
Again the Helios is right up there near other maxed out 3070 Ti gaming laptops.
Not quite the best, but we’re only talking about a 2 to 3 FPS difference, which isn’t
a change anyone’s going to notice when playing.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the games benchmark tool.
Again at 1080p it’s one of the better 3070 Ti results, coming out ahead compared to lower
powered versions that are often found in thinner laptops.
Similar deal at 1440p, though we’re starting to see that most of the time the other 150
watt 3070 Ti laptops are a little ahead, but again it’s generally only a difference of
a few FPS which isn’t that important.
Control is a GPU heavy game, and the Helios is the lowest of the 150 watt 3070 Ti machines
that we’ve tested at up to 7 FPS behind, but it’s still better compared to lower
powered 3070 Ti laptops, so not bad, just not the best, and again similar stuff at the
higher 1440p resolution.
This level of hardware should have no problems playing any modern games well at 1440p with
good settings.
Here are the 3DMark results for those that find them useful, now for some content creator
tests.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark tool, and the Helios was basically
right next to MSI’s GP66 which has the same i7 CPU and same 3070 Ti GPU running at the
maximum 150 watt limit, so right where expected.
Adobe Photoshop likes single threaded performance, which is why most of the top results are Intel
i9 machines.
The Helios is close to other similarly specced i7 laptops.
GPU power usually matters more in DaVinci Resolve, and the max 150 watt 3070 Ti is doing
quite well here.
It’s only really beaten by others that have higher tier 3080 Ti graphics, or MSI’s GE67
with 3070 Ti, though that one has a 16 core HX CPU.
The Blender score was a little under some other lower powered 3070 Ti options, but hey
it’s still ahead of lower wattage and more expensive 3080 Ti laptops.
We’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
The BIOS looks modern, but doesn’t really have a whole lot of customization available.
Maybe about the same amount as ASUS, but nowhere near as much compared to MSI’s advanced
BIOS or Lenovo.
Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu 22.04 live CD.
By default the keyboard, touchpad, speakers, camera and ethernet worked, but not the Wi-Fi,
probably needs extra drivers.
Keyboard shortcuts for adjust screen brightness and volume work, but you can’t change the
default lighting effects or key brightness at all, and the turbo button doesn’t do
anything.
Let’s discuss pricing and availability next.
This will change over time, so refer to the link below the video for current prices.
And if the Helios goes on sale, I’ll be sure to add it to my new website gaminglaptop.deals,
so check that out for current gaming laptop deals.
At the time of recording, in the US Helios 300 starts at $1500 USD for the RTX 3060 model,
though I’ve seen it for $50 to 100 less, but again check sales with the link below
the video.
The 3070 Ti configuration is $300 more, though this one is currently on sale and also has
a 240Hz refresh rate screen, so probably a little more expensive compared to the one
I tested.
For this sort of price, it’s kind of competing against Lenovo’s Legion 5i Pro, and it’s
got pretty similar features too.
Let me know if you want to see a dedicated comparison between them.
Alright, let’s recap just how much better this year’s Helios 300 is compared to last
year’s version.
This year’s version adds both a MUX switch and advanced optimus, which will increase
FPS in games.
The GPU power limit is higher, which also means more FPS, and my configuration had two
sticks of memory rather than one, granted that doesn’t really matter so much with
DDR5 memory based on my own testing.
It was more of an issue with DDR4.
The screen this year is also way better, with faster response time, it’s brighter, and
it’s got great color gamut.
The CPU performance has a 59% boost in multicore thanks to Intel 12th gen, but also due to
higher power limits which are possible with this new design.
Like we saw with the GPU.
We’ve got the option of Type-C charging now, and battery life is improved with a larger
90Wh battery.
I’m running out of fingers to count all the improvements, but the camera was also
upgraded from 720p to 1080p.
And then there’s perhaps the biggest improvement of all, the RGB light bar on the front!
But seriously, all things considered, Acer has basically fixed every single problem that
I had with last year’s Helios 300.
The Helios 300 is finally back to being a gaming laptop that I can happily recommend.
The loose touchpad could be a bit annoying, but that could just be my unit, and some extra
Type-C ports would be nice.
One in 2022 doesn’t seem like enough.
The crazy boot sound is just obnoxious in my opinion, but at least you can disable it.
And just make sure you’ve got some closed back headphones, because the fans on this
thing can get seriously loud.
Check out how the i7-12700H CPU in this laptop compares against AMD’s Ryzen 7 6800H over
here next.
AMD options definitely have some benefits, and unfortunately the Helios 300 doesn’t
have an AMD configuration, so make sure you know what the differences are before you buy
your next laptop!