Acer Predator Triton 500 (2020) review: A truly portable powerhouse - taylorbeated1958

At a Glance

Adept's Rating

Pros

Spectacular gaming performance
Contrast-rich 300Hz G-Synchronize IPS panel
Thin and unimportant
Attractive, sleek design
Comfortable ergonomics
Solid port selection with Thunderbolt 3

Cons

Brusque battery life
Tawdry (but non nasty) fan noise under load
Fully loaded, but difficult to upgrade

Our Verdict

The Acer Predator Triton 500 delivers owing gaming performance thanks to its fearsome internals and buttery-smooth 300Hz G-Sync screen. Better yet, it pulls it off in an improbably portable form factor. Evenhanded don't leave your charger at home.

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I've proven much of gaming laptops all over the years, but the newly refreshed Acer Predator Newt 500 is the foremost one I've ever had the pleasure of playing on.

For many another years, you could only palaver partisan-separate performance outgoing of mammoth gaming laptops that threatened to throw out your back while you carried them just about in your bulge. The introduction of Nvidia's energy-efficient Georgia home boy-Q technology resulted in more portable play-worthy notebooks, but the truly totable ones ordinarily topped out with art options below the upper berth echelon of performance. Gaming on the go always obligatory whatever sort of compromise.

No more. The Genus Acer Predator Newt 500 brings it all, mating a 6-core, 12-string Intel Core i7-10750H central processing unit with Nvidia's potent new GeForce RTX 2080 Big graphics chip. All that power somehow squeezes into a sublime 4.6-pound aluminum chassis with a lightning-debauched 300Hz G-Sync display that offers drop-dead gorgeous contrast ratios. Is it perfect? Not rather. But hot curse, I love it.

Acer Predatory animal Triton 500 glasses and features

Acer sent U.S.A the highest-remnant Triton 500 connected offer, loaded with every feature you could ask for. Acer's site ostensibly lists it for $2,600, but at press prison term we could only discover it available for $2,800 at B&H Photo. You get a lot of hardware for all those pennies.

CPU: Intel 10th-gen Core i7-10750H
Store: 32GB DDR4/3200 in dual-channel mode
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super Scoop-Q
Exhibit: 15.6-edge, 300Hz, 1920×1080 IPS screen with Nvidia G-Sync
Storage: 1TB Samsung NVMe SSD
Dimensions: 14.1 x 10 x 0.75 inches (without the feet)
Weight: 4.6 pounds

There's not such many you could ask for. The included Samsung NVMe SSD blazes along, but if you want even faster speeds, there's another M.2 slot for elaboration, and Acer loaded the laptop computer with Intel computer software ready to get a plural-SSD setup humming in RAID 0.

The storage and RAM are difficult to access code, all the same. The Triton 500 uses an inverted motherboard design, which means you'll motive to yank retired ribbon cables and the entire motherboard to approach the expansion slots. Fortunately, the broth configuration comes with plenty of firepower.

Equal the Internet is fast on this animal. The Acer Vulture Triton 500 includes Killer's AX1650 Wisconsin-Fi 6 faculty and Killer DoubleShot Pro applied science. DoubleShot Pro lets the gaming-optimized 2.5 Gigabit ethernet port work in collaboration with the notebook's 802.11ac Wi-Fi, shifting more important tasks to the wired connection and less urgent tasks to the wireless meshwork. The Triton 500 also supports Bluetooth 5.

acer predator triton 500 2020 1 — Left wing-edge ports.

Acer included an ample port pick scorn this gaming laptop's comparatively small size. The Triton 500 comes with a trio of USB 3.0 ports, Bolt 3, HDMI 2.0, Mini DisplayPort, headset and mic jacks, and the aforementioned ethernet port. Information technology also includes a Kensington lock slot for to a greater extent security-conscious types.

acer predator triton 500 2020 2 — Right-edge ports. Not pictured is a Kensington ringlet slot at the rear of this side.

Acer Predator Triton 500 design

Most aspects of the Acer Predator Newt 500's design carry over from last year's pose, and that's perfectly fine, as this is a wonderfully crafted, fantastically bundle off laptop. The plain 4.6-Irish punt weight unwaveringly plants the Triton 500 in the thin-and-light gaming dominio. Laptops with similar heave up incline to crack slower art options and another components, driving home only how exceptional this notebook is. This powerhouse feels great tucked under your arm and won't matter to downwardly your backpack like early monster gambling laptops.

acer predator triton 500 2020 6 — The Acer Predator Triton 500 won't weigh you down despite the monster computer hardware inside.

Aesthetics are always subjective, but I adore the sleek, black, aluminum design. There's atomic number 102 mistaking this for a ho-hum workstation, thanks to the silver Vulture logo emblazoned in the middle of the lid (and augmented by a blue backlight). Only like Razer's Blade lineup, the Triton 500 wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb in an office meeting either. It's tasteful.

This laptop computer makes games look great, also. While last year's model went with a fairly standard 144Hz display, the original Predator Triton 500 delivers an amped-up riddle to match the furious GeForce RTX 2080 Superior Max-Q inside. The 1920×1080 panel—the perfect resolution for a gaming laptop computer this size, 4K be damned—runs at a ludicrous 300Hz with a rapid 1 millisecond grey-to-grey reaction time, and better even, it supports Nvidia's buttery-smooth G-Synchronise technology. Playing connected this rig is an absolute joy. Snake pit, just mousing roughly the desktop feels great. Everything looks super-scrunch.

The silver screen isn't especially bright, topping out at 275 nits in our test. You'll want to find a shaded field if you're exploitation the Triton 500 out of doors happening a sunny day. That said, the image itself looks great for gaming and general use, with spectacular contrast and support for 100 percent of the sRGB spectrum.

acer predator triton 500 2020 8 — Games look great on the Triton 500

The Triton 500 sounds bad decent for a laptop computer too. Acer's TrueHarmony speakers deliver solid volume and clarity, though like all notebook computer speakers, they North Korean won't blow absent audiophiles. Bass could be deeper, there's a tendency towards tinnier tones, and the book won't impress while the fans are whirring under load. Chuck some gaming headphones into your bag if you can. The laptop comes with DTs:X Ultra environ sound software to make headphone audio more realistic.

We were happy with the Triton 500's keyboard and touchpad setup last class, and it remains the same this yr. Over again, the subtly concave keys feel great under your fingers, and we're happy that Acer opted for flooded-sizing cursor keys preferably than the compact monstrosities found on some laptops. Our biggest gripe from the 2019 model has been regressive, too, with Acer now offering customizable backlighting on a per-key cornerston in the PredatorSense app. Last twelvemonth, you could only configure the lighting in three large zones.

The smooth, comfortable touchpad works like a charm and comes properly centered under the Y key. Too many laptops put their touchpads in bizarre places these days, sol it's great to see Acer hold fast the classical placement. Piece clicks registered just fine, I'd receive preferred the addition of discrete creep buttons at the bottom. Yes, fine, most mobile gamers deploy gambling mice for better curb. As a tactics buff, however, I was playacting XCOM: Chimera Squad while testing out the Triton, and the only thing keeping it from being a faultless experience sans a discrete mouse was the touchpad's lack of a right mouse button. Double-pressing the touchpad to decent click scarcely doesn't propose the same truth in the heat of the moment and fatigues your fingers during an extended session.

You'll find (subtle) ventilation ports galore happening the edges and bottom of the laptop to exhaust the heat generated by its potent internal ironware. Genus Acer supplements those with Vortex Flow, "a new pattern involving three custom-engineered fans strategically placed in the chassis, impermanent tandem to increase additional airflow while besides reducing noise." The company besides added five new heat pipes to the Newt 500's design, along with redesigned fourth-generation AeroBlade3D fans inside that achieve busy 45 pct greater air flow than their predecessors, bolstered aside Acer's CoolBoost engineering for increasing fan speeds nether load. All told, Acer's reviewers run claims the new Triton 500 "gets 33 percent better thermal performance than its 2019 counterpart."

triple fan cooling — An Acer illustration of the triple-fan cooling inside the Predator Triton 500.

The combination does a pretty virtuous job of dissipating the heat spewing from such higher-end hardware. The Newt 500 holds up smooth on your lap for everyday tasks alike email and YouTube videos. If you decide to game from a comfy chair for the hour aroun that this laptop can play for when you're away from a outlet, the frame gets warmly, but not uncomfortably hot. Likewise, the case fans kick up to a noticeable volume when the laptop's under load, but IT's non an venomous noise. We're untold more bothered when laptop fans sound tinny or high-inclined or oscillating; the Triton 500 gets loud, hitherto it as wel fades almost into white noise, especially if you're using headphones.

Considering that this tiny laptop's cooling system is taming a six-core Core i7 chip and Nvidia's most herculean nontextual matter chip, there's nothing to complain about.

Preinstalled software system

The PredatorSense software Acer preinstalls happening the Triton 500 serves arsenic your gaming command center, generous you see to it over RGB kindling, GPU overclocking presets, fan controls, system of rules monitoring, and more. The icons in the upper-right niche offer even more customization options, letting you fine-tune Acer's TrueHarmony audio for the eccentric of sound you'rhenium hearing to and activate features like LCD overdrive and the power to disable Nvidia's discrete GPU for better power efficiency when you aren't gaming. You can only overclock the GPU when plugged in with greater than 40 percent battery life left over, but it's worthy if you sports meeting those demands. More on that subsequent. (You backside also overclock the GPU using a great Turbo button over the keyboard.)

predatorsense options — Genus Acer's PredatorSense app.

DTS and Slayer apps help manage your audio and networking, respectively, while Nvidia software and XSplit Gamecaster serve gamers. Acer likewise loads up the Triton 500 with Netflix, Dropbox, Norton Security Ultra, Firefox, ExpressVPN, CyberLink PhotoDirector, Office, Spotify, and an "Acer Collection S" app with even more than. Those are wholly arguably useful and easily removed, but worth noting when you're spending $2,600 on a laptop.

Next foliate: Performance benchmarks and conclusion

Genus Acer Predator Newt 500 performance

With Intel's latest Core i7 flagship and Nvidia's high-last GeForce RTX 2080 Super Scoop-Q inside—not to mention the high-flown $2,600 price tag—you'd expect the Genus Acer Predatory animal Triton 500 to kick all kinds of ass. Good intelligence: It does. Genus Acer's design tends to favor the GPU finished the CPU compared to some contende laptops—but that's a smart strategy in a notebook designed most importantly for high-focal ratio gaming.

We're comparing Acer's svelte powerhouse against similar systems that prioritize portability. We test each system while plugged in, using the default settings set by the manufacturer. For the Newt 500, Acer uses the middle-of-the-road "amended battery" setting, instead than cranking up the full performance selection.

The twofold-screen HP Omen X 2XS isn't Eastern Samoa tiny American Samoa the others, but information technology's powered by the direct predecessors of the C.P.U. and GPU hardware inside the Triton. The 5.5-pound Gigabyte Aero 17 comes with a more powerful Core i7-10875H processor, but less powerful GeForce RTX 2070 Tops Max-Q artwork. Meanwhile, the 4.6-pound MSI GS66 Stealth pairs the RTX 2080 Super Max-Q with Intel's beefy Nub i9-10980HK.

We too included the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, which comes packing an AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS processor and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2060 Georgia home boy-Q. It's underpowered compared to the new systems, and costs more less at just $1,450, only it also weighs a lot less, tipping the scales at a mere 3.5 pounds. That's unknown in laptops with Intel CPUs, and we wanted to include results here just in case portability is your priority.

This is a play laptop computer, so let's start with nontextual matter carrying into action. Spoiler: The Acer Predator Triton 500 and its GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q crack the charts.

Unequal desktop components, all laptop performance comes as split of a tightly integrated system, soh we record the Overall hit in 3DMark's Go off Strike Extreme, a DirectX 11 benchmark, rather than dialing in specifically on the graphics scotch.

The Acer Predator Triton 500 blows absent completely comers here, including the MSI GS66, which ostensibly includes the same GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q graphics chip and a more virile Core i9 C.P.U.. Even so the Newt easy surpasses its performance—a slew we'll continue to see passim the gaming benchmarks.

What gives? The MSI GS66 weighs the same every bit the Marauder Newt 500. Cramming a quicker, hotter Core i9 into such a small gaming laptop computer causes it to throttle more easily, much like the notorious Pith i9-equipped MacBook Pro. Either path, the Triton 500 leads the pack.

We standardise our laptop testing just about a pair of older games, Prove of the Tomb Raider and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Victimisation established games lets us compare carrying out across multiple laptop generations and reduces the odds of a gritty update drastically altering performance and invalidating olden results. We test at 1080p resolution with maxed-out graphics settings.

The Triton 500 once more sprints far ahead of the pack here, including the MSI GS66 with an identical graphics chip. Information technology also leaves the HP Omen X 2XS, equipped with elderly versions of similar hardware, in the sprinkle. No other take-away gaming laptop clears 150 frames per second in Shadow of Mordor; the Triton 500 hits 184. Acer's design gives the Nvidia chip inside plenty of room to ladder.

That's not even in the Triton 500's ultimate form. Acer defaults to using Windows 10's "better battery" mode rather than "best performance," and its PredatorSense app includes preset GPU overclocking options. Turning on both results in a noticeable gaming upgrade, so if you're connected to a wall plug, do IT! Be redolent that cranking astir carrying into action besides substance cranking up the fan interference, however. Once again: Convey a gaming headset.

The chart above shows performance results for the Newt 500 in lineage and maximum-overclocked modes. We also included results for Shadow of the Tomb Plunderer in DirectX 12 and Strange Brigade running Vulkan, then you can fancy how the laptop performs in newer titles that use finisher-to-the-metal gaming APIs.

We'll inaugurate the Sir Thomas More CPU-focussed examination with Maxon's Cinebench R15. IT's a standalone benchmark that measures CPU performance while rendering a 3D image. It's a good way to gauge multi-core performance, especially in a potent notebook like this. Helpfully, Cinebench can too test single-threaded performance. (Maxon recently launched Cinebench R20 with a yearner rendering scene. We besides tested that and saw confusable results.)

The Genus Acer Predator Triton 500 lands bad much where you'd expect. The 6-gist, 12-thread Core i7-8750H at heart isn't quite a as speedy as the faster 8-inwardness chips wrong the MSI GS66 or Gigabyte Aero 117, simply it's a good chunk faster than its predecessor in the H.P. Prodigy laptop computer. IT hangs ruffian in single-threaded performance too, which most games prefer. This is a fast, capable CPU that won't clutches you back down.

Look at how that 8-core Ryzen chip inside the ROG Zephyrus G14 rips through multi-core rendering, though—hot damn. It's also interesting to see the MSI GS66's Core i9 chip lag behind the Core i7 inside the Aero 17 at single-threaded performance, further indication that cooling is an issue thereupon laptop.

Cinebench's biggest drawback is its poor run sentence. Because advanced CPUs rely on boosting clock speeds for abbreviated periods, a benchmark that's overly short doesn't tell you how a laptop might runnel on a lengthy all-nub incumbrance. To test that, we use the free HandBrake encoder to convert a 30GB movie file using the Humanoid tablet preset.

HandBrake loves to a greater extent cores, so it's no storm to see the 8-core systems finish the task several minutes before the 6-core Core i7-10950H in the Triton 500. That said, the 10th-gen chip wraps ascending over five minutes faster than its 9th-gen predecessor in the HP Omen, crossing the finish line subsequently just shy of 29 minutes. For even more than context, on most quad-core systems, you're sounding at 50 proceedings of running the CPU hard to arrant this benchmark.

In real time for the lone bit of bad news. Totally the power at heart the Newt 500 and the introduction of a buttery-waxy G-Sync panel comes at a damage: battery life sentence. For our test, we loop a 4K TV file victimization Windows 10's Movies & TV app. We gear up up the laptop computer as if it were playacting a movie on a territorial division escape. We put information technology into airplane mode and attach earbuds with the volume set to its centre. We set the screen brightness to 250 to 260 nits, which is a comfortably glimmering setting for an office operating theatre aeroplane's daytime settings.

Victimization the laptop's default settings—"ameliorate battery" in Windows 10, and the Nvidia GPU forever on—Acer's laptop gives up the ghost before it justified hits the four-hour mark in our video rundown test. That's disappointing, full stop, and especially in a portable laptop built for expiration on the traveling. The HP Omen died sooner, but only because IT packs two-fold screens kind of than the usual one. This is the Triton 500's Achilles heel.

The laptop still held up healthy for intermittent indiscriminate task exercise throughout the twenty-four hours—checking email, watching YouTube videos, web browsing or whatnot. And if you barefaced Acer's PredatorSense app and get across the gear/cog icon in the upper-right corner, you'll see a "separate GPU only" option enabled by default.

Unhealthful it lets the incorporated artwork Saratoga chip inside the Intel CPU take over basic rendering functions, which helps extend battery spirit when you aren't play, albeit at the cost of G-Sync. Flipping the GPU option off and on requires a boot, merely the ultra-fast NVMe SSD in spite of appearanc will have you up and running over again in under 15 seconds. Information technology's worthwhile. Just be sure to enable the feature before you game to let Nvidia's GPU and G-Sync capabilities work as intended.

Either way, don't leave home without your power electric cord. That's regular with any gaming laptop computer, and a necessity with this unity.

Should you grease one's palms the Acer Predator Triton 500?

The Acer Predator Triton 500 impresses me more than some opposite laptop I've fey. It's incredibly portable, many powerful than whatever lightweight rivals, and looks gorgeous. The high-contrast 300Hz G-Sync sieve makes whatever halting larder-politic. The Essence i7-10750H pairs absolutely with Nvidia's superior GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q for gaming. Acer also rich this notebook with everything you could necessitate for, including plenty of ports and wireless connectivity.

Is it perfect? No. The battery life disappoints, a damned shame in much a take-away gaming laptop. The fans—though relatively good-natured-sounding—can get loud under play dozens.

Don't allow those quibbles dissuade you, notwithstandin, particularly if (like you should be) you're always plugged in while you game. Slight compromises like that are required to squeeze this often firepower into a build this small. The Acer Predator Triton 500 proves that you can get desktop-division gambling execution in a truly lightweight design. Some laptops manage to tweak what this ane's achieved. Highly, highly advisable if you can give IT.

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