The new Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 is one of the new breed of RTX 40-series laptops that somehow manages to find the right balance between performance at a price that is actually reasonable. Starting from $2499 for a very well appointed 13th Gen i7-13700HX processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, 16GB RAM, a fast 512GB SSD and a 165Hz, Quad HD, 16” IPS display, you are certainly getting a lot of bang for your buck.
If you step up to the RTX 4080 model with the gorgeous Mini LED display capable of 1000 nits of brightness, prices jump into the common silly realm of $4500-5000 which our usual readers will know that we just don’t condone. So this is why the entry level model of the Neo 16 is just so damn appealing. Sure, you don’t get Nvidia’s best or the state of the art display but its combination of components delivers great productivity and gaming performance — mostly thanks to the wonderous DLSS 3 upscaling and Frame Generation which let the Neo 16 easily run AAA games at 60fps in native 1440p.
Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 Review
Before we get into the all-important performance figures, it’s crucial to talk about the overall package the new Neo 16 offers. At $2500, you get an extremely well built and handsome looking machine. Acer isn’t pretending that this is some sort of business notebook that you can take the boardroom but also slay demons on after hours. This is undeniably a gaming looking machine.
From the distinctive blue exhaust vents on the back to the laser-etched encrypted codes on its abyssal-black anodized cover, there’s no hiding that this is a gaming laptop. Speaking of that lid, it’s a ridiculous fingerprint magnet and worse, absurdly difficult to clean so be warned if you are triggered by this sort of thing. Still, it’s not as chunky as gaming laptops of old, measuring just 36mm which compared to more premium laptops is still pretty thick. But it doesn’t feel that way in real life. The build is solid, with zero flex on the chassis and no wobble in the display.
The thickness is put to good use though, allowing the Neo 16 to better cool its heat generating processors quite well while keeping fan noise to a much more acceptable whine than roar. The added benefit of the thickness is the wealth of ports all around the Neo 16. On the left you get an Ethernet, USB 3.2, 3.5mm audio jack and, a MicroSD card reader which clearly shows Acer’s priority towards gaming focused content creators.
On the right are two more USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, one with Power-off charging of your peripherals. Around the back is where you’ll find two Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C ports which support DisplayPort 1.4 video and Power delivery for those single cable setups. You also get HDMI 2.1 for 4K120Hz video output to compatible monitors and the AC power port. Certainly, I can’t complain about ports on this machine as it has everything I could possibly need.
The keyboard is a fullsize affair with included numpad and a dedicated Predator Sense 4.0 button to quickly launch Acers software hub where you can quickly change profiles, adjust lighting, overclocking and fan profiles. You might not spend too much time in here though, something Acer designers factored in hence the dedicated power profile switcher at the very top of the keyboard deck. Pressing it cycles through the four presets; Silent, Balanced, Performance and Turbo modes. I liked how handy that was to switch the laptop into gaming mode when I want to play and then back to silent for typing up reviews.
Back to the keyboard, it’s…fine. The keys are large enough and well spaced with good travel but they still feel very much your pedestrian, mushy membrane laptop keyboard. The keys work fine during gaming but you’ll miss that snapping feeling only a mechanical switch can offer. It’s here that we also discover another cost cutting feature which is the lack of per-key RGB lighting. The Neo 16 uses a four zone lighting which isn’t the brightest or clearest thing ever but hey, it wouldn’t be a gaming laptop without it, right?
The touchpad is pretty good too, with a fairly good size, smooth surface that is responsive and pleasant to use. There is good depth to the click though I stuck with the tapping rather than clicking which I find much easier. It’s also good at palm rejection but as always, don’t expect to use this to play Apex Legends.
Acer has mercifully avoided the absurd trend of removing webcams from gaming laptops and you do get a 720p webcam which really isn’t saying much to be honest. It’s serviceable and will work for your Zoom and Teams meetings but don’t expect to run a Twitch stream on this thing. The microphones are decent though and your callers won’t have any issues hearing you.
You on the other hand should also hear them loud and clear thanks to the built-in speakers on the Neo 16. They get reasonably loud with great imaging and stereo separation. The Neo 16 supports Dolby DTS X with a number of EQ profiles for gaming available on tap. Like most normal gamers, I use headphones though so laptop speakers aren’t a deal maker or breaker for me.
Display and performance
The display on the Neo 16 is the now trending, 16” WQXGA resolution of 2560 x 1600 in the taller 16:10 aspect ratio which gives you a couple of more pixels of vertical viewing space. The panel is IPS with 500nits of brightness, 165Hz refresh rate, a 3ms GtG response time and sRGB coverage of 100%.
It looks good with vibrant, clean colors but contrast is lacking causing blacks to appear washed out and some very clear edge lighting bleed. It’s not HDR capable and I wouldn’t be too comfortable doing color accurate work on this but overall, it’s a good display. If you want something with better contrast, color accuracy and HDR, then look to the model with the Mini LED panel.
For sure, games looked good on this display and more importantly, felt good thanks to that 165Hz refresh rate. There was no ghosting or stuttering during any of my testing which is really what matters in the end. And thanks to that RTX 4060 under the hood, the Neo 16 easily delivers smooth framerates averaging 60-80fps at native resolution and over 100fps at 1080p.
Throw in DLSS 3 and Frame Generation in titles that support it like Dying Light 2 and CyberPunk 2077, and you can have a whale of a time playing ray-traced games at over 100fps. It’s really remarkable what Nvidias AI upscaling is capable of doing for framerates and is one of the biggest selling points for a gaming laptop with these cheaper, low powered 40-series GPU’s.
Additionally, for more productivity centered tasks and video editing, the combination of the i7-13700HX CPU and Nvidia optimisations in software like Adobe Creative Suite make this a very good workhorse too. The i7-13700HX is a massive improvement over the 13700H variant thanks to its increased core count. Its single core performance is excellent for gaming and it’s multicores allow you to render your content even faster.
Acer didn’t skimp on the RAM either — giving us 16GB of DDR5 RAM running at 4800 MT/s— admittedly not the fastest but still fast enough for most things. However, the base model Neo 16 only comes with a measly 512GB NVMe SSD that will get swallowed up the instant you install some software and like two games. Acer really should include a 1TB drive as base since game files are just too big these days. That said, it’s a wicked fast drive with Read speeds in excess of 7000Mbps so games and apps load super quick.
And for all that performance, Acer has managed to keep temperatures quite reasonable for a gaming laptop. I saw an average of low 80’s on both GPU and CPU while gaming in Performance mode. Turbo mode can lower those temperatures but at the cost of greatly increased fan noise and very little improvement in overall performance — so not really worthwhile. Still, the Neo 16 is much quieter than previous gen laptops while outperforming them so, win-win.
Which of course brings us to battery life where the Neo 16 like most every other laptop still struggles. In my testing I was able to get just about 4 hours from the battery. Acer claims 6-7 hours of video playback but I wasn’t able to get anywhere near that in my own testing. It’s certainly much better than the 2.5 hours I got on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i but I’d really like to see modern gaming laptops average 6 hours of light use in the real world.
What’s interesting is that the Neo 16 comes with Nvidia Optimus which can automatically switch between the RTX 4060 and Integrated graphics on the fly. It even gives you a handy notification when it switches between the two. You can also manually change which GPU you’re using in the Predator Sense software. Even then, I wasn’t able to get much improved battery life though.
Verdict
So, at under $3000, the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 is definitely one of the best midrange gaming laptops you can but this early in 2023. It looks great, runs games fantastically at highest settings and can help you get a great deal of intensive work done thanks to that 13th Gen Intel CPU. It’s built great and runs relatively cool and quiet for a gaming laptop. It has a wonderful breadth of ports for peripherals too.
That’s not to say it’s perfect and you do have to accept some compromises at this price. The keyboard is average with underwhelming RGB and the display has no HDR and pretty middling contrast. The battery life is better than some but we really should do better and it’s a nightmare to keep the laptop fingerprint free.
Overall though, I really like the Predator Helios Neo 16 in its base configuration. At $2500, this is easily one of the best built and performing gaming laptops of 2023 and a very recommend.
