Acer Predator Triton 500 SE review

Many people know Acer’s Helios and Nitro gaming laptops for being high-value gaming machines. But, fewer people seem to know about the Triton gaming range. The Acer Predator Triton 500 SE is a 16-inch, thin-and-light gaming machine that is less ostentatious than its siblings and feels more like a direct competitor to MSI’s Stealth range – but without the all-black design ethos. So, how does this it stack up?

Table of Contents

• Acer Predator Triton 500 Specs
• Design, Features & Ergonomics
• Performance
• Connectivity & Ports
• Portability & Battery Life
• Conclusion
• Pros
• Cons
• Results

Acer Predator Triton 500 Specs

Screen	16-inch, matte, 240Hz, 2,560 x 1,600, IPS display
Processor	3.5–4.7GHz Intel Core i7-12700H CPU
Memory	16GB LPDDR5 RAM
Graphics	Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti 8GB GDDR6 RAM
Hard drive	1TB PCIe NVMe
Connectivity & Ports	Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.1 2 x Thunderbolt 4 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 3.5mm audio jack SDcard 7.0 reader HDMI 2.1 2.5Gb Ethernet
Speakers	4 x speakers
Microphone	Dual array
Security	Windows Hello via fingerprint
Webcam	Full HD
Battery	99.9Wh
Dimensions	323 x 228 x 19mm
Weight	2.32KG
SKU	NH.QFQAA.001

Design, Features & Ergonomics

The Acer Predator Triton 500 has a dark-silver, plastic chassis that will be familiar to anyone familiar with Acer products. Unlike its siblings, it’s angular and office-like and the Predator logo on the lid has been reduced to a tiny, little beast that will neither upset corporate colleagues nor impress any gamers. But, beauty is in the eye of the holder and a sleeper laptop – that looks business-like but masks devilish performance – will appeal to many. In this regard it’s like a big Acer Swift X.

It’s very well built in that the base is very solid and the wide. The 16-inch screen flexes a bit when a twisting force is applied but it’s nonetheless fairly solid despite its thinness. The hinge is very robust and it can even fold down flat.

Opening it up reveals the RBG keyboard which isn’t per-key backlit, but is capable of displaying a variety of colourful patterns which smoothly blend across the whole. The keys themselves are excellent, light-touch, Scrabble-tile offerings that are very comfortable for extended typing periods and very accurate for gaming. There are full-size arrow keys but, despite the wide chassis, no number keys. Nonetheless, it impressed us.

The trackpad is smooth and accurate and the button areas are well-weighted and create only muffled clicking sounds. There’s also a fingerprint reader built-in to the top-left corner and it’s Windows Hello compatible for quick Windows sign-on.

Above the screen is a Full HD webcam with a dual-array microphone. It’s very impressive with minimal graininess in low-light and crisp and clear audio – excellent for conferencing and streaming.

The Acer Predator Triton 500’s 16-inch, IPS screen itself is very impressive. It has a super-fast, 240Hz refresh rate and a UHD 2,560 x 1,600 resolution. However, it’s worth noting that while the pixel response time is very quick, it’s noticeably not the fastest leading to miniscule blurring in fine details. Still, it supports Nvidia’s G-Sync and all objects in motion are rendered silky smooth and that’s particularly impressive at a UHD resolution.

The screen is very bright (500-nits) and displays a crisp and clear Windows Desktop. UHD videos are bright and have vibrant colours. There can be some banding in colour transitions but this is only sporadically evident. Banding in black-and-white transitions is much more common, but it’s far from the worst we’ve seen. Contrast can be excellent with many details remaining visible in dark areas. However, details can get lost in bright areas when brightness is ramped up. All, in all, banding aside, it has to be said that this is one of the best screens we’ve ever seen on a laptop.

Disappointingly, the Acer Predator Triton 500’s speakers are a real low point. Acer spruiks the ‘DTS:X’ technology behind them but they don’t get very loud and there’s very little bass. That’s not really acceptable on a large, premium laptop nowadays.

All in all, the Acer Predator Triton 500 is a joy to interact with and use. They styling won’t be for everyone, but many won’t care.

Performance

The Acer Predator Triton 500 is the first laptop to utilise our updated benchmarks and scoring system which add new tests to the mix. It’s worth regular readers noting that our new scores are not incomparable to all that have come before it, they just augment them with more detail.

Inside the Acer Predator Triton 500 is a 12^th Gen, 3.5 – 4.7GHz Intel Core i7-12700H with its 6 Performance cores and 8 Efficiency cores. It’s flanked by 16GB of low-power LPDDR5 RAM, which suggests that the Triton is putting some portability aspirations ahead of raw performance. There’s also a speedy, 1TB, NVMe hard drive.

In the general-computing PCMark 10 test it scored 6,877 which is good but noticeably lower than other, premium rivals. Its scores of 2,610 and 16,815 in the Cinebench rendering tests (R15 and R23 respectively) are also a little lower than rivals. Still, overall it’s no slouch.

3D Performance comes via the tasty Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti GPU which has 8GB of GDDR6 RAM. In the 3DMark ray-tracing tests it scored 6,708 in the difficult Port Royal (average 31fps) and 2,737 in Speed Way (average 23.4fps). These are impressive scores but it might struggle playing the very latest games at UHD resolutions with full detail settings turned on. It’s worth noting the 8GB graphics RAM isn’t enough to cope with the likes of Far Cry 6’s 12GB texture pack.

Still, it managed 11,145 in Time Spy (average 66.7fps) and 13,217 in Fire Strike Extreme (average 60.5fps) which illustrate it’s still great for playing AAA games. It also managed to run the basic Night Raid gaming test at 380.8fps (score 47,226). All in all, it’s no slouch at gaming.

We also ran our ‘new’ CS:GO tests to find out both the average FPS and 1% Low FPS score while stressing the laptop’s entire system. It managed an average of 246fps for the main test and this only dropped to 54fps when under intense stress in the 1% Low test. It shows that the Acer Predator Triton 500 will be able to play this demanding, competitive game at a competitive level.

Despite the relative thinness, the Acer Predator Triton 500 tends to stay quiet most of the time. When fans do ramp up they sound more like a quiet, industrial machine ramping up in the background rather than whirring fans. This is down to the bespoke, 5th-Gen Aeroblade cooling technology which Acer describes thusly, “Custom-engineered 5^th Gen AeroBlade 3D Fan Technology, Vortex Flow airflow guidance (with tactfully-placed thermal foam) and the chilling effects of liquid metal thermal grease on an already industry-leading 12^th Gen Intel CPU.”

Just remember that hitting the Turbo button on the keyboard, or in the PredatorSense app, ramps everything up to maximum and which means a noisy, background swoosh.

Connectivity & Ports

Inside there’s Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity – it’s a top-tier collection of connectivity ports.

Portability & Battery Life

The Acer Predator Triton 500 weighs 2.32KG which is relatively light for a powerful laptop this size even though it’s just 19mm thin. The thin PSU and cables add an extra 785g which is significant but it’s still smaller than many rivals. The build quality is impressive and it should survive life on the road, but you wouldn’t want to bash the robust-but-thin lid too hard.

There’s a max-size 99.9Wh battery but it ran our PCMark 10 Modern Office test for 6 hours and 44 minutes which is still just shy of a full day out of the office. Still, it’s not terrible for a powerful gaming laptop.

Conclusion

At $4,499 the Acer Predator Triton 500 is Acer’s most expensive gaming laptop by a significant degree. However, it can also be found for $1,000(!) less at $3,499 which is the same price as the bulkier but more-powerful (and difficult to find) Predator Helios 300. That significantly boosts the value proposition, but we don’t know how permanent this price drop will be.

It’s thinner and more business friendly than its other gaming siblings and it offers good performance, great features, excellent connectivity and is a joy to interact with (apart from the speakers). The Acer Predator Triton 500 will be exactly what many design and multimedia professionals (who want to use a gaming laptop for work) have been looking for.

It’s significantly cheaper than its MSI Stealth rivals but not quite as alluring in terms of looks and ergonomics. Still, if you want a wide, 16-inch gaming laptop that’s thin, robust and can fit into a corporate environment without raising too many eyebrows, the Acer Predator Triton 500 is well worthy of consideration.

Pros

Excellent screen
Good 3D Performance
Impressive features

Cons

Poor speakers
Mediocre 2D performance

Results