Acer Predator Triton 500 SE Review - Top Tier Gaming Laptop

Vemuda Techno - So we have a very special device today, it is Acer’s Predator Triton 500 SE, which is one of their best gaming laptops, and we have some really powerful specs here with some premium touches.

There’s also a premium price tag on this, because at 2.3 lakh rs. Which is around 2800 US Dollars, this is not even the highest end model they have to offer, so let’s check out how powerful this is.

1. Design

Acer has approached the design of this laptop to be quite minimalistic for a gaming laptop, and I actually really like that.

Even though this is a Predator series model, there’s only a small logo on the metal lid, and the body looks really clean in this silver color.

Source: Acer

On its rear side, you will see these nicely designed vents that will tell you that this device has gaming DNA.

At less than 20 millimetres, this is also decently thin for a laptop with this level of performance, though, you will feel its weight of 2.4 kgs while carrying it.

2. Display

We have a really overkill display here, because this 16 inch IPS panel has a QHD resolution of 2560 x 1600, and this runs at a whopping 240Hz with G-Sync, and that makes it look so incredibly smooth.

This also gets nicely bright at 500 nits, and the 16:10 aspect ratio means you’ll also have more vertical space for productivity.

The viewing angles are obviously great here, and the colors also look really nice and vibrant, so watching videos and playing games is just awesome on this.

3. Performance

Let’s talk about the performance now, the top level Triton comes with a Core i9 12900H, with an RTX 3080 Ti, but on this model, we have an Intel Core i7 12700H, which is paired with an RTX 3070 Ti.

The i7 12700H is a 14 Core 16 Thread processor, and the Triton actually performs better than other laptops that also have the same processor, as we got a multi-core score of almost 7000 in Cinebench R20, which is significantly higher than the score of 5500 that we got with the

Acer Nitro 5 model in my last post which also has the same CPU. For reference, my Desktop Ryzen 5950x with 32 threads scores around 10000, so getting 70% of its multicore performance in a laptop is actually really amazing.

We of course have a MUX switch here, which seriously improves gaming performance, and the awesome thing about its advanced optimus implementation is that you don’t need to restart your laptop while switching between the dedicated GPU, and the iGPU, and you can even set it to an auto mode to automatically switch it on while playing games

The overall gaming performance here is excellent, as we got 100 FPS or more in most AAA games at high to ultra settings, and in Esports titles like Rainbow Six Siege and CS GO, we saw figures like 350 and 500 FPS.

So you will be able to take full advantage of this laptops 240Hz screen in these titles, and the Ray Tracing performance was also nice with Control delivering over a 100 FPS.

4. Disassembly, RAM and Storage

Opening up the laptop is relatively easy, but after removing the lower panel, I found the internals covered by this silver sheet which may be there for improving thermal performance.

I wasn’t sure that I’ll be able to put this back in place properly so I didn’t remove it, but I don’t think that you will need to open this anyways, because it pretty much has all the top specs.

We have a whopping 32 GB of DDR5 memory, and the SSD here is a 2 TB Gen 4 unit, so I don’t think you’ll need to change that, but if you do want to add more storage, it is going to be a bit complicated.

But with this super powerful CPU, and GPU, 32 GB of RAM with a QHD display, and even an SD card reader, this is really a dream laptop for video editors, because this will perform amazingly well in apps like Adobe Premiere Pro.

5. Thermals

Coming to thermals, this is a thin gaming laptop with powerful components inside, so the thermals are not outstanding.

After a 45 minute gaming test with God of War, the GPU maintained itself at 76 degrees while the CPU liked staying at a sweet 69 degree celsius.

The GPU wasn’t able to sustain its overclocked state of 1700MHz, so we saw it stay at around 1500MHz, which I would consider to be a good result as that is its default boost clock number.

Now the internal temperatures are not an issue with this laptop, but the keyboard and the surrounding area does get unusually hot, and while the keyboard will not be unusable at 40 degrees, some parts of the keyboard do get even hotter, so for long gaming sessions, I can see it becoming a problem for some people.

This is also the result on its Turbo mode, which can be a bit noisy with its 3 fans running at their maximum 6000 RPM.

It is very easy to activate with just a press of a button, but you may find a better balance of acoustics and thermal performance with one of the other modes in the Predator Sense app.

6. Keyboard, Touchpad and Speakers

The keyboard that we have here is good to type on, but it doesn’t feel anything special. I didn’t have any issues with typing fast on this, but this laptop is kind of thin, so the keys don’t have a lot of travel, or tactile feedback, and the keys are also a bit too wobbly for a high end laptop.

The keyboard on the cheaper and thicker Nitro 5 model was actually a bit better, but this is also going to be fine.

The RGB backlighting is a 3 Zone layout instead of per key RGB, but the zones blend well with each other, and this does look great.

The mousepad feels great though, it has a glass surface, so gliding your fingers on it feels nice, and we also have an integrated fingerprint sensor here, which allows you to sign in with Windows Hello. If you press it down to click, it does feel a bit cheap, but I mostly just tap to click.

The downfiring onboard speakers can get nicely loud, but they sound tinny, so the experience is not that great.

7. Input and Output

On the left, we have an ethernet port , along with a USB port, a Thunderbolt 4 Port, and a combo audio jack, then on the right side, you’ll find another pair of Type A & Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, and we even have an SD card reader here.

The Thunder port ports support USB C Charging, and you can also charge your devices with its USB C port, even when the  laptop is off.

8. Battery

The 230 Watt charging brick is going to add 750 grams of weight to your backpack, but you may not always need to carry it around, because this laptop comes with a 99.9 Wh battery, so you can carry it on a plane.

Now the battery life on this is going to be a little tricky, because when I tried a simple video streaming test on Youtube, this only lasted for a little over 3 hours , even when the screen was at 60Hz.

The reason this performed so poorly here was that it was using the Nvidia GPU to accelerate video playback, even though I had set the MUX Switch to use the internal display.

So unless you try to force it to use iGPU by disabling the Nvidia GPU or by some other way, it’s not going to last long in GPU accelerated tasks.

Then I tried to just run a simple web page by opening up a stopwatch, (text: screen was at 25%, 60Hz), and this time this lasted for around 5 hours and 40 minutes, which is much better.

So even with this 99Wh battery, you may get varying results, but I think that the battery life is fine considering the demanding components that we have here.

9. Conclusion

So in conclusion, the Predator Triton 500 SE is of course a top tier gaming laptop, that delivers a top tier experience, but there are some drawbacks here like an average feeling keyboard that does get a little hot.

But other than that we have a really clean design, an amazing screen, and some really top level specs.

Now the Indian pricing of laptops is all over the place, and I can’t even find most of the models here, but this is a laptop that is generally lower in price compared to other laptops with similar specs.

So even though this model is like 2.3 Lakh Rs., it can be a good value for money, as there’s nothing deal breaking here.

And that will be it for this post, let me know what you think about this in the comments, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you, in the next one.

We have also reviewed Logitech G502 X. 

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