A big, beautiful gaming laptop with power to match

Acer doesn’t play about its gaming laptops. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, because the Acer Predator Helios 16 (2024) is absolutely built for play, work, and anything else you can think of. The gaming laptop is absolutely OP with an Intel 14th Gen Core i9 processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU. The 16-inch laptop has power to spare and an absolutely stunning display. Furthermore, outside the typical customizable RGB keyboard, Acer has some fun ways to give the system a custom look.

But, as we all know, everything has a weakness. For the Helios 16, it’s the battery life, incredibly loud fans, and weight. And of course, those looking for more performance can get a laptop with an RTX 4090 GPU. But gamers hunting for one of the most powerful and one of the best laptops of the year, be sure to take a gander at the Acer Predator Helios 16.

About this review: Acer provided a Predator Helios 16 (2024) for review. The company had no input in this article and did not see its contents before publishing.

Premium choice

Acer Predator Helios 16 (2024)

A gorgeous beast of a gaming laptop

Armed with an Intel Core i9 processor with an Nvidia RTX 4080 GPU, the Acer Predator Helios 16 (2024) is a serious powerhouse. It’s got an eye-catching design that comes alive with a press of the power button. And thanks to a few add-ins, you can customize a few other points of the laptop for a unique look. A vivid, color accurate, brilliant display completes the package. However, a short battery life and distractingly loud fans are points to consider. 

Pros

• Fantastic overall and gaming performance
• Eye-catching, customizable design
• Lovely display

Cons

• Short battery life
• Loud fans

Pricing and availability

Acer is like Baskin-Robbins with all the flavors of the Helios 16 they have available. Some are a little bit fresher than others due to some configurations having an Intel 13th Gen compared to a 14th Gen processor. My review unit is at the top end of the scale, costing $3,000. It’s stacked with a 2.2GHz Intel Core i9-14900HX processor with 32GB of DDR5 5,600MHz SODIMM RAM, a 2TB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen4 x4 SSD, an integrated Intel UHD Graphics chip, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU with 16GB of VRAM, and a 16-inch, 16:10, 2560 x 1600, IPS, 240Hz refresh rate, non-touch display.

The 14th Gen base model costs $1,900 and comes with a 2.1-GHz Intel Core i7-14700HX CPU, with 16GB of RAM, a 1TB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen4 x4 SSD, an integrated Intel UHD Graphics chip, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU with 8GB of VRAM and a 16-inch, 16:10, 2560 x 1600, IPS, 240Hz refresh rate, non-touch display. If you don’t mind an older processor, there’s the $1,200 13th Gen base model which has a 2.1-GHz Intel Core i7-13700HX CPU.

Design and ports

From yawn to wow at the touch of a button

Sans power button, the lid is made of solid black aluminum with Acer’s Decepticon-esque logo centrally seated, and the top of the back vent is made of clear plastic.

When I first saw the Helios 16, I was about to bemoan how boring design has become on gaming laptops. Then I plugged it in and turned it on. In that moment, I started giggling like a schoolgirl.

Once you hit that power button, the keyboard, emblem, and top vent come alive in the Predator’s usual turquoise, making me feel like I’m in Tron or some near future utopia. It’s a good place to be. The button to switch performance modes in the Acer PredatorSense app glows in an inviting violet.

In an added bit of cool, you can swap out the vent grates on the back vent. Yes, you read that right. The company bundled a pair of magnetic gray vent covers to add a pop of color. You can also probably 3D print your own designs if you’re feeling froggy. The laptop also ships with two pairs of funky MagKey 3.0 keycaps for the W,A,S,D keys, plus a keycap puller.

But seriously, imagine my surprise when a piece of the back vent moved when I was inspecting the system. The cold panic quickly gave way to realization, but man, I was freaked out for a good 30 seconds.

Before I move on to the rest of the notebook, I should advise you to keep a microfiber cloth handy at all times, as both the metal and plastic are highly susceptible to fingerprints.

Now onto the rest of the laptop. I previously mentioned the keyboard. It’s lit up like a futuristic Christmas tree and even has a numpad. It resides in a slight recess that gives way to the plastic palm rest and the touchpad. I don’t know why, but the palm rest was a little uncomfortable as it dug into my wrists ever so slightly. Maybe it’s “Princess and the Pea” syndrome, but this is the first time I’m saying this about a laptop in a long time.

Flip the notebook over, and you’ve got a lot of vents. Frankly, I expect nothing less from a gaming laptop. Thanks to the lighting, you see both of the fans. The plastic panel has three raised feet, with the biggest one sporting a cool geometric design. It’s held in place by 10 screws and has a vent on either side towards the front of the laptop for the pair of speakers.

Ports, ports, everywhere, and I love them. On the right, there are a couple of USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports and a Kensington lock slot. You get a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port on the left with a microSD reader, an Ethernet port, and a headset jack. In the back, nestled between the removable vent covers are two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports, a HDMI 2.1 port, and the power jack.

At 5.7 pounds, 14.1 x 10.9 x 1.06-inches, the Helios 16 is on the chonkier end of the spectrum. However, it finds itself in good company, including the Alienware x16 R2 (6 pounds, 14.4 x 11.4 x 0.73 inches) and Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 9 (5.8 pounds, 14.3 x 10.3 x 1.02 inches). The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024) (4.3 pounds, 13.9 x 9.7 x 0.63-0.67 inches) is definitely the lightweight in this cohort.

Display, webcam, and audio

Excellent display… but the audio, not so much

A high refresh rate, accurate color gamuts, and over 500 nits of brightness, now this is what I want to see in all laptops, not just gaming laptops. Despite a matte display, the Helios 16’s 16-inch, 2560 x 1600 is absolutely scintillating, with an average brightness of 522 nits. When I measured for color gamut, the sRGB hit 100%, with DCI-P3 right behind at 99%. The Adobe sRGB reached 91%. The NTSC gamut proved to be the most inaccurate at 89%.

The trailer for “House of Ga’a” was some serious eye candy despite the consistently fraught atmosphere. The laptop deftly reproduced the various burnished skin tones. I couldn’t help but admire the lush reds, golds, and blues in the intricate costuming. Sharp details and deep contrast meant I had no problem making out each of the individual beads in the headdresses.

The panel has a 240Hz refresh rate which, when paired with Nvidia’s G-Sync, means there wasn’t a jag or ripple in sight as the Tiger Vanguard defeated me for the thousandth time in Black Myth: Wukong. I don’t know whether to be happy or mad that I can watch myself getting tossed in such a gorgeous fashion. Le sigh. The laptop also has Nvidia’s Advanced Optimus technology, so the system can switch between its integrated and discrete graphics without necessitating a system restart.

I was impressed with the color captured by the 1080p webcam. Even though I was sitting on the second floor of my apartment, which tends to be dark, the camera did a great job with my chocolaty skin, chartreuse dress, and colorful locs. The detail left something to be desired, however, as you can see the visual noise in the picture without even zooming in.

Just get yourself a gaming headset and save yourself some disappointment. Even buoyed by DTS: X Ultra software, the bottom-mounted speakers are weak. No matter how much I switched between the presets and even created my own, the bass is non-existent, the highs are tinny, and dialogue is hollow. When I listened to “Still D.R.E.,” that iconic chord was the most forward thing on the track, there was no bass to speak of, and neither Snoop’s nor Dre’s vocals sounded like they were in the vicinity of the music.

In an effort to keep things cool during operation, Acer has a pair of high-powered fans designed for airflow to prevent any thermal throttling. But boy howdy, when those fans are in Turbo mode they are loud. Even when I was fighting my way through Black Myth: Wukong, there was never a moment where I wasn’t conscious of the fans.

Keyboard and touchpad

A tad mushy, but gorgeous to look at

The keys on the Helios 16 island-style keyboard are too mushy for my tastes. Just a little more snap back, and this full-sized keyboard would be golden. As it stands, it’s okay as I matched my 70 word-per-minute average on the Monkeytype typing test. The keycaps are nice and big for the most part, save for the left Shift, Enter, and Backspace keys which are smaller than normal to accommodate the numpad. There are keys for Microsoft Copilot and PredatorSense. The former sits between the right click and arrow keys, and the latter is located above the numpad.

The keyboard is lovely otherwise, with bright backlighting that you can easily see through the lettering on the keys. You can toggle between 15 light presets in the PredatorSense app or create your own custom light show. While we’re here, PredatorSense is a one-stop shop as you can check out system diagnostics, select performance modes, and monitor fan speeds.

The bottom corners have better feedback than the keyboard, which is a shame for the latter. Other than that, the trackpad is responsive and agile whether you’re scrolling through a website or pinch-zooming in to get a closer look at something.

Performance

The devourer of frame rates… and battery life

Acer didn’t just come to play. Arming the Helios 16 with an Intel Core i9-14900HX processor and an Nvidia RTX 4080 GPU, the Helios 16 came to dominate. Both the CPU and GPU can be overclocked with the proper software. The notebook shrugged off my collection of 80 Google Chrome tabs with my mix of G-Suite apps, social media, videos, and news and entertainment sites. And it just dusted off its shoulders when I resized a particularly large batch of photos in Adobe Photoshop and transcoded a few videos without any stress.

With that out of the way, it’s on to the synthetic benchmarks. On PCMark 10, the Helios 16 hit 8,804, but the Asus with its own Core i9-14900HX CPU, was right on its tail with 8,779. The Helios 16 had an equally strong showing on Geekbench 6, although the Legion Pro 7i (Intel Core i9-14900HX CPU) bested the competition on the single-threaded test at 2,884, while the Acer held off the competition in the multithreaded portion of the test with 16,759. However, the pendulum swung fully towards the Legion Pro on the Cinebench 2024 test.

While I’m never going to turn my nose up at a 4080 GPU, I wish Acer had gone full hog and gone for the 4090 GPU. But the Helios 16’s 4080 did a bang up job on just about every gaming benchmark I threw at it. The Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark proved to be a bit too taxing on Helios at its native 1600p resolution, only scoring 20 fps without Nvidia DLSS enabled on Ultra. The frame rate jumped to 38 fps with the technology enabled. It got better when I dropped the resolution to 1080p. Then I saw a frame rate of 66 fps sans DLSS and 79 fps with the feature.

Aside from Cyberpunk 2077’s demanding benchmark, the Helios served up big numbers during the rest of the benchmarking. During the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark at 1080p on Highest, I got a result of 137 fps without DLSS and 229 fps with it. At native resolution, I got 164 fps with DLSS and 115 fps with it disabled.

Unsurprisingly, all those powerful specs run alongside the fact that the Helios 16 has a short battery life. With the brightness turned down to 200 nits, the notebook’s 90Wh battery only lasted 3 hours and 23 minutes on the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery test. That time was so short, I had time to run the Gaming version of the test where the Helios 16 tapped out after only 1 hour and 39 minutes.

Should you buy the Acer Predator Helios 16 (2024)?

You should buy the Acer Predator Helios 16 (2024) if:

• You want a gaming laptop with fantastic overall and graphics performance
• You want gaming laptop with a stunning display
• You want a gaming laptop with customizable keys and vents
• You want a gaming laptop that’s as pretty as it is powerful

You shouldn’t buy the Acer Predator Helios 16 (2024) if:

• You want a gaming laptop with the most powerful performance
• You want a gaming laptop with longer battery life
• You want a gaming laptop with quieter fans

What a power play. Acer really stacked the deck with the Predator Helios 16. Outfitted with an Intel Core i9 CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU, there’s not much the gaming laptop can’t do. With a 2TB SSD, there’s plenty of storage for your collection of games (and work stuff of course). When its backlighting is enabled, the laptop is a feast for the eyes. And speaking of eyes, this is one of the best matte displays I’ve seen on a laptop this year. Also, the RGB backlight is simply captivating.

But gamers looking for a lighter, slimmer laptop might want to take a look at the Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 (2024). And those who want just a bit more oomph should check out the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 9. You also might get quieter fans, louder speakers, a firmer keyboard and a longer battery life. But for gamers looking for a gaming laptop that chews through anything in its path and looks good doing it, the Acer Predator Helios 16 is a no-brainer.

Premium choice

Acer Predator Helios 16 (2024)

A gorgeous beast of a gaming laptop

Armed with an Intel Core i9 processor with an Nvidia RTX 4080 GPU, the Acer Predator Helios 16 (2024) is a serious powerhouse. It’s got an eye-catching design that comes alive with a press of the power button. And thanks to a few add-ins, you can customize a few other points of the laptop for a unique look. A vivid, color accurate, brilliant display completes the package. However, a short battery life and distractingly loud fans are points to consider.