Acer Predator Triton 500 review

Luckily, because the Acer Predator Triton 500 is packed with an Intel Core i7-8750H and an RTX 2060, along with 16GB of RAM, performance is nothing to shake a stick at. There are no slowdowns here, whether we’re playing The Witcher 3 on max settings or working with 20-plus Chrome tabs open. 

The benchmarks reflect this, showing up the Razer Blade in CPU tests. For instance, with the same processor, the Acer Predator Triton 500 scored a whopping 1,078 points, compared to the Razer Blade’s 906. Even the Geekbench scores are better, with Acer’s portable gaming laptop scoring 19,876 to Razer’s 19,064. 

As for graphics, the RTX 2060 is the little chip that could. In our canned gaming benchmarks in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Total War: Warhammer 2, the Acer Predator Triton 500 scored 65 fps and 51 fps, respectively, on ultra settings.

And, even outside of benchmarks, we’re impressed with the Acer Predator Triton 500. We regularly get the full 144 fps out of Overwatch on max settings. The Witcher 3 also runs at a silky smooth framerate on max settings, never dipping below 65 to 70 fps. 

This awesome performance comes with a thermal price, though. We regularly see the CPU running at 92 degrees Celsius, which is right up against the temperature limit. The laptop doesn’t throttle at this temperature, but it does stay there, even with the fans running at full speed. This won’t be a huge problem in the short term, but it could affect the longevity of the Acer Predator Triton 500. 

The GPU doesn’t get quite as hot as the processor, but it still gets toasty unless you have the fans ramped up.

Battery life

The Acer Predator Triton 500’s biggest surprise is the battery life. Typically, you’d expect a gaming laptop to only last a couple hours on battery, but this laptop does away with that stereotype. 

In fact, in the PCMark8 battery test, the Acer Predator Triton 500 lasted 3 hours and 33 minutes. So, you should be able to get some work done, or even some light gaming, without having to run for your charger after a couple minutes.

The laptop fared even better under our anecdotal movie test. Streaming a 1080p video on loop with 50% brightness and volume, with all radios but WiFi disabled, the Triton 500 lasted a whopping 5 hours and 35 minutes.

We’re still not at a point where we can work all day on a gaming laptop without being plugged in, but we’re getting close.

Software and features

There really isn’t a lot of bloatware on the Acer Predator Triton 500, and what is there doesn’t get in the way of anything. First, of course, you have a suite of standard Acer apps, including the Acer Care Center. This will keep your PC up to date, and display the status of your battery among other elements. These tools exist elsewhere within Windows 10, but it’s nice to have all of it consolidated in one place.

The big one, though, is the Acer Predator Sense software. Through this edgy-looking software, you can control everything from lighting, to fan speed and even overclocking. The overclocking is the main feature here. 

Only the GPU can be overclocked, and while you won’t be able to push it as far as a desktop graphics card, we were able to see marginal performance improvements with the GPU in ‘Extreme’ mode. 

Verdict

The Acer Predator Triton 500, for being such a thin and light gaming laptop, is kind of a beast. This laptop is packed with powerful hardware and lasts surprisingly long on a charge, making it ideal for any gamer that needs to travel a lot. 

We do have some issues with the design, namely the awkward keyboard layout and flimsy screen lid, but they don’t hold the Acer Predator Triton 500 back from being worth your time and money. 

There are better gaming laptops on the market, to be sure, but this is one of the fastest gaming laptops you’ll find for less than two grand in 2019.

Image credit: TechRadar