Acer’s Gaming Laptops Get Huge Upgrades With the Latest Chips

Acer is clearing its digital cabinets and stocking them with new gaming laptops. After launching three new Chromebooks earlier within the week, the Taiwanese laptop computer maker has revealed refreshed variations of the Nitro 5, Predator Helios 300, and Triton 500 SE this week at CES 2022, every outfitted with the most recent Intel or AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs.

We anticipated Acer to replace its gaming laptops with just lately revealed processors and graphics playing cards, but it surely’s the smaller tweaks made to those methods that ought to put PC players on discover. I’m particularly referring to the Helios and Nitro’s minor redesigns, which ought to make these two extra inexpensive fashions enchantment to a wider viewers.

Acer Triton 500 SE 2022

Acer’s refreshed Triton 500 SE comes with as much as Twelfth-gen Core i9 CPUs and Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti graphics with 32GB DDR5-5200MHz RAM. Storage goes as much as a 4TB SSD in RAID 0.

I’m glad the design hasn’t modified a lot, as a result of the chassis is refreshingly sterile, stripped of any pointless gamer-y touches with the one RGB glow coming from the keyboard. And regardless of packing some severe energy underneath the hood, the Triton 500 SE is just 0.75 inches thick and 5.5 kilos.

Sitting in a pleasant center floor between 17 and 15 inches, the 16-inch panel sports activities a 2560 x 1600 decision with a 240Hz refresh price and a peak brightness of 500 nits.

The Triton 500 SE will hit cabinets in March beginning at $2,299.

Acer Helios 300 2022

If you don’t want as a lot energy however nonetheless need a succesful gaming rig, the Predator Helios 300 comes with Twelfth-gen Intel Core i7 CPUs, as much as 16GB of DDR5 reminiscence (upgradable to 32GB), both an RTX 3080 or RTX 3070 Ti GPU, and as much as 2TB of RAID 0 storage.

You get loads of show choices to select from in each 15.6- and 17-inch sizes. The smaller possibility comes with both a 15.6-inch, 1440p IPS show at 165Hz or a 1080p decision with the identical refresh price, whereas the 17.3-inch shows can be found in 1440p at 165Hz, 1080p at 165Hz, and 1080p at 144Hz.

Where the Triton is designed for each gaming and work, the Helios focuses on the previous. As such, the Helios 300 is nowhere close to as transportable because the Triton, with a chunky 1-inch thick chassis that weighs 5.5 kilos. The 17-inch mannequin provides one other 0.1 inches of top and weighs a back-breaking 6.6 kilos.

At least Acer did one thing to modernize the Helios 300’s chassis by dialing issues again and choosing a easy, matte-black lid with a centered Helios emblem. Gone are the unusual hip-shaped parentheses from the earlier mannequin, although the aggressive (and inoffensive, IMO) exhaust vents on the again are a reminder that the laptop computer was designed for players.

Both 15- and 17-inch fashions will go on sale in May beginning at $1,649 and $1,749, respectively.

Acer Nitro 5 2022

Acer equally scaled again the design of the Nitro 5, its immensely standard price range gaming laptop computer.

Where the lid on the earlier mannequin had a generic sci-fi theme, the brand new model has cyberpunk-inspired pink and blue (or is it inexperienced) etching touring up the lid. It’s a bit a lot for my style however I hate it lower than earlier than, and it might need even seemed good had Acer eliminated the falling pale traces, which appear to be scuff marks to me.

Part of the redesign is a brand new cooling system that makes use of twin followers, an consumption on each the highest and backside of the chassis, and 4 exhaust ports. Asus claims this could maintain the Nitro 5 from overheating, however we’ll have the final phrase as soon as we play a couple of rounds of Battlefield 2042 on it (assuming there are nonetheless full servers in a couple of months).

The Nitro 5 is Acer’s most inexpensive gaming system however it may be configured with some premium specs, together with both an Intel Twelfth-gen Core i7 CPU or AMD Ryzen 6000 processor. Whichever you select, graphics go as much as an RTX 3070 Ti and reminiscence tops out at 16GB of DDR4 (upgradable to 32GB).

Historically, Intel and AMD variations of laptops differed in key methods, with Intel-powered methods usually getting preferential remedy. That isn’t the case with the Nitro 5, which comes with both a 15.6-inch or 17.3-inch show in 1440p at 165Hz or 1080p at 144Hz, no matter which chipset you go together with.

The Nitro 5 is, sadly, extra related in dimension to the Helios than the Triton, with the 15-inch mannequin weighing 5.7 kilos and measuring 1.1 inches and the 17-inch model tipping the scales at 6.6 kilos.

The 15.6-inch Intel model will go on sale in March beginning at $1,049, with the 17-inch mannequin arriving a month later for $50 extra. The smaller AMD mannequin will go on sale in March for $1,099, whereas the 17-inch AMD version will arrive in May for $1,149.