The Acer Predator Helios 16 is not the fastest gaming laptop with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, but it has a lot to offer. If you're looking for pure performance, you should definitely look elsewhere, but there's something to really like about the raw quality of this laptop's Mini LED screen and its relatively affordable price.

The Helios 16 is a 16-inch laptop that joins the high-end specs we have already reviewed like the Alienware X16, Asus ROG Strix Scar 16, Asus Zephyrus M16, Lenovo Legion Pro 7i, and Razer Blade 16 They will join laptops such as the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i and the Razer Blade 16. As with these laptops, Helios' 16-inch frame blends screen space and chassis size better than most 17-inch devices, and this laptop has only a thin bezel on the outside of the screen, which is otherwise kept fairly tight to the 16-inch frame

The screen is a bit larger than the 17" screen.

Now let's talk about the screen, one of the Helios 16's most powerful features: a Mini LED panel with 1000 zones, and these zones are provided by tiny LEDs packed behind the screen rather than traditional diodes. The extra zones are intended to produce bright peaks without washing out the darker areas of the image. Sure, Mini LEDs are not micro-LEDs, but compared to a traditional LED screen, I'd choose this any day.

The Helios 16 screen is lush. Colors are rich and vibrant, and it doesn't struggle to project a punchy image like an inexpensive laptop. With the brightness turned up, the images are very impressive, both on the desktop and in games. Playing [Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition], the display is very, very good at showing bright flames erupting from the darkness and rays of light piercing holes in windows and roofs.

The laptop's Mini LED screen, with its enviable 240 Hz, 16:10 (2560 x 1600) design, is simply stunning.

But does it make up for the lack of performance that I sometimes see; the RTX 4080 and Intel Core i9 13900HX are a strong combo, but compared to other gaming laptops with similar spec sheets, gaming performance is a bit mixed.

Some games may outperform laptops like Alienware's X16, although the Scar has a more powerful CPU, which should explain the performance boost, if you're really chasing raw performance, You can rule out this Predator laptop altogether, although with the RTX 4080, you won't be short on frames.

Despite running the RTX 4080 at 175W, which is the same as most other RTX 4080 laptops we've tested, it still often comes in dead last in benchmarks.

For a gaming laptop, especially a high-performance laptop like this one, the Helios 16 is as loud as one would expect. You can hear it while gaming, and while it may be a little too loud to run at full speed in public without getting sideways glances, it is not as cacophonous as some of the other products. This is true of the Eco, Balance, and Performance modes, which are the modes in which I would use this laptop on a daily basis, but not the Turbo mode. This laptop makes a monstrous noise when the turbo mode is activated that, frankly, I can't believe my ears.

The overall chassis construction is a sleek black design. It's a bit plasticky, but I can forgive it for its overall fairly sleek appearance; it's a bit short of the Razer Blade 16's professional-looking shell and not as flashy as the Strix Scar 16, but it has plenty of ports and my first impression out of the box was certainly a good one.

However, my first impression upon booting up this machine highlighted a feature I absolutely hate. Ugh, why. This gaming laptop costs $2,000.

And the power brick is not my favorite either. It is quite huge and heavy, and I don't want to carry it around in my backpack all day with this machine, which already weighs 2.9 kg.

Any RTX 4080 gaming laptop is an expensive laptop, but this one will cost about £2,799 in the UK. For the equivalent model in the U.S., we found it selling for around $2,300, but Acer's website seems to suggest the price one would expect to pay for this laptop.

In fact, that's not a bad price for this kind of spec. Now, you could pay around $2,900 for the Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 and get clear benefits, but at its core it is definitely a similar laptop. Alternatively, you could pay $2,949 for the Alienware X16, which also has some advantages, but it would be spoiled at the bottom of the list next to this low-cost Helios 16. The toughest competition comes from Lenovo's Legion Pro 7i, which is priced at or below the Helios 16 and was named the best gaming laptop of 2023.

For this amount of money, it is much easier to look at the Helios' performance and not at the larger package. The silicon is there, the quality is there, and the screen is 100% there.