The 2021 Acer Predator Helios 300 was a massive step down in performance, which is why you didn’t see it in our recommendations when talking about gaming laptops. Fortunately, the company’s engineers went back to the drawing board, which not only materialized a new chassis design but an improved cooling solution that allows components to run at their maximum potential. On Amazon, it is currently priced at $1,189.
The 2022 gaming laptop is predominantly made of metal and sports a 15.6-inch 1080p 165Hz IPS LCD screen with a 3ms response time. The panel is ideal for the 140W RTX 3060 GPU with 6GB of VRAM. Helping the machine push those frames further is the 14-core, 20-thread Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, giving you a competitive edge regardless of which game you fire up. The Predator Helios 300 is not thin by any means, and that was necessary so that it could be outfitted with capable hardware and a cooling solution to match.
You also get 16GB of DDR5 RAM, along with 512GB of PCIe NVMe storage. This year, thanks to the redesign, Acer has outfitted a large 90Whr battery, but because the Helios 300 features an Intel processor, you will only be able to get between 5-6 hours of runtime, so keep this in mind. Other than that, the powerful internals are sufficient to play anything you throw its way, and the RGB keyboard adds a nice touch to the overall aesthetics, assuming you are into this.
This 2022 Acer gaming laptop also features a MUX switch, which switches from the integrated GPU to the dedicated RTX 3060 to give you more frames in games. Not just this, but additions like Wi-Fi 6E and NVIDIA G-Sync support sweeten its value. Given the lack of effort Acer made with the 2021 model, we can say with confidence that the company redeemed its reputation with the 2022 version. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, there are only 18 units remaining in stock, so you should make a purchase before time runs out.