Acer Predator Helios 300 G3-571-77QK 15.6-inch

The Acer Predator Helios 300 G3-571-77QK is a bestselling gaming laptop that has been praised for its seventh generation Intel i7 processor, dedicated NVIDIA 10-series graphics, great price and for its fast SSD. However, it’s bigger and heavier than some of its competitors and its display is not quite as bright as the higher end Acer Predator laptops. Its cooling system will allow the Acer Predator Helios 300 to run cool during daily use, however, it does tend to heat up while gaming or working in more intensive applications.

Acer are known in the gaming world for their Predator line of gaming hardware, however, most of their Predator laptops have been priced out of reach for many gamers. This is where Acer have stepped in and taken note of the current trend of gaming laptops at around the $1000 mark. The Acer Predator Helios 300 joins the Predator range as a more affordable solution, however, Acer have had to make a few sacrifices in order to offer its attractive price.

The first thing that should be noted is that the display is dimmer than some of its counterparts and it doesn’t reproduce as many colors as the higher-end Predator laptops. However, the display is not all bad news, as you do get a Full-HD display panel which uses IPS technology for far better viewing angles and the quality is not terrible for gaming and streaming media. You can always connect the Acer Predator Helios 300 to a monitor if you need a wider coverage of the sRGB color spectrum for work or college assignments. The Acer Predator Helios 300 is powered by a Kaby Lake Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor and is backed up by 16GB of DDR4 RAM.

This will easily allow you to play your favorite games and will ensure that you can run even more intensive applications will little to no lag. While many of its competitors offer the GTX 1050 or GTX 1050 Ti, Acer have gone ahead and fitted the Acer Predator Helios 300 with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060. This card offers better performance for AAA gaming titles and is more suited for VR gaming than the two entry-level NVIDIA graphics cards. The 256GB M.2 SSD offers fast boot and game loading speeds, however it is a bit small for modern games. Titles such as GTA V and Mass Effect: Andromeda take up over 40GB each for their game install files.

Luckily, the Acer Predator Helios 300 ships with the cradle for a SATA based storage drive and you can easily install a 512GB or 1TB+9 SSD at home. If the SSDs are out of your price bracket, then you can also consider a good 7200rpm SATA storage drive to increase the laptop’s storage. However, this will mean losing the fast gaming loading advantage that SSDs provide. While the Acer Predator Helios 300 runs cool during everyday use, it will run hot while gaming or while you run more intensive applications. While this might put off some users, it is not at all uncommon for laptops in its price category and is not a deal breaker in our eyes.

Note: This laptop originally appeared in our best high-end gaming laptops guide. For newer laptop models be sure to check out the latest high-end gaming laptops there. Full Guide

• Weight: 5.95 lbs
• Processor: Intel Core i7-7700HQ 2.8GHz
• Display Size: 15.6 inch
• RAM: 16GB DDR4 2400MHz
• Operating System: Windows 10 Home
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060