Two colorful and powerful laptops.
Acer always comes to CES with several exciting new announcements. This year’s event kicked off with the impressive new Acer Predator Helios gaming laptops packed with power. I’m talking about big 16 or 18-inch Mini LED screens, NVIDIA RTX 40 series graphics, and tons of LEDs.
While Acer’s popular Predator laptops are the talking point, the company also updated its Nitro lineup with better displays and the latest Intel and NVIDIA silicon, all while keeping the price as entry-level as possible. That said, you’re here to learn about the Predator.
The Predator Helios is Acer’s high-end when it comes to gaming, so expect the biggest and the best on everything, price tag included. Both laptops come with 16:10 displays, which are available in several different configurations. While most will likely buy the IPS screen model (in 240 or 165Hz), you can upgrade to Mini LED, which is a big deal.
As expected, the new Predator Helios 16 and 18 come with the latest Intel 13th Gen Core i9 or i7 HX processors, up to 32GB of DDR5 4800 MHz RAM, SSD up to 2TB in Raid 0, and support up to the NVIDIA RTX 480, enhanced cooling, and a slew of RGB lights everywhere.
I’m excited about the Mini LED upgrades because that technology is still pretty hard to find, especially in a laptop. The upgrade to Mini LED (on either model) delivers a 250 Hz refresh rate and an AUO AmLED screen.
You’ll get all the benefits of Mini LED, including multi-dimming zones, a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and over 1000 nits of peak brightness. In fact, the 18-inch Predator has over 1,000 dimming zones on the Mini LED model.
Additionally, each Helios 16 and 18 comes with a Mini LED backlight keyboard, and as you can see from the images, they’re wildly colorful. The keyboards offer 1.8mm of travel, anti-ghosting, and more, so you can take your gaming to the next level without fear of missed keypresses.
Other specs include Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E, a slew of ports, Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, MicroSD, rear fans, and three USB-A 3.2 ports for all your peripherals.
The Acer Predator Helios 16 makes its North American debut in March, starting at $1,650. Then, the Helios 18 arrives a month later, starting at $1,700. As a reminder, that’s for the entry-level package, and you can expect to pay a lot more for 32GB of RAM, extra storage, or those fancy Mini LED screens.
Source: Acer
