Acer Predator Triton 500 (2020) - Review 2022

The Predator Triton 500 (starts at $1,699.99; $ii,599.99 as tested) is Acer's flagship 15-inch gaming laptop, at present updated for 2022. We praised it highly on its debut final year, and virtually all of what nosotros loved is back with this year'southward model, merely with updated components. Our test unit is a highly tricked-out configuration (headlined by a GeForce RTX 2080 Super graphics chip), and so your model doesn't take to exist quite so expensive (or as powerful), but it'southward very appealing to those who tin afford it. Given that information technology is a premium laptop, fifty-fifty its starting price is high, but regardless of the configuration this well-fabricated, portable, and feature-packed gaming rig remains ane of our favorites, even if it doesn't unseat the Editors' Choice Asus ROG Zephyrus South GX502 for value.

Sleek Styling, and a Superlative-Tech Screen

At get-go glance, the Triton 500 looks much like 2022's model. Although that means at that place'south no major overhaul, the original version was quite proficient, from both build-quality and design standpoints. The chassis is all metal, giving the system the premium experience y'all'd expect for the price, and the appealing black and lite-blue color scheme remains.

On the less positive side, the screen bezel is however a cheaper, flimsier-feeling plastic, though this isn't an element you need to touch much, or at all. The Triton 500 is non totally identical to last twelvemonth'south model: The word "Predator" no longer appears on the lid, just the logo, which for me is an improvement.

The chassis measures the same 0.7 past 14.1 past 10 inches and weighs 4.63 pounds, also the same as its predecessor. The construction and size put the Triton 500 in the good visitor of some of our other favorite high-end laptops like the Razer Blade 15 and Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX502. The onetime comes in at 0.7 by 14 by 9.25 inches and 4.6 pounds, while the latter is 0.74 past 14.two by 9.9 inches and 4.55 pounds. These are the foam of the crop amid loftier-end gaming laptops for design and performance, and the Triton 500 fits right in.

The design sharing between the new and one-time model doesn't extend to the features and components. The full HD IPS display on this unit features Nvidia G-Sync and a 300Hz refresh rate, something nosotros have started to see (and will keep to see more of) in loftier-end gaming laptops. No, most games won't reach, or even approach, 300-frame-per-second (fps) frame rates on this laptop, just functioning hounds want to become as high as they can for a select few multiplayer titles.

The screen quality is good, with a matte terminate that cuts downwardly on reflections and loftier brightness at maximum level. The 1080p resolution makes sense, even if you may want a college resolution in AAA games. The RTX 2080 Super GPU would be quite capable of respectable frame rates at 1440p, but that's however pretty strenuous, specially on a laptop. Acer opted to maximize frame rates in all cases, and I remember that's the right telephone call on a machine with a 300Hz screen.

Premium Parts: A Top-of-the-Line Configuration

As for those components, our higher-end SKU is packed with some of the virtually powerful options available. This $ii,599.99 model nets you a 10th Generation "Comet Lake" Intel Core i7-10750H processor, 32GB of memory, the GeForce RTX 2080 Super (Max-Q) GPU mentioned before, and a 1TB solid-state drive. That's about equally fully kitted as you'll see a 15-inch gaming rig in 2022. Some 17-inch models may boast Core i9 CPUs, and full-ability rather than Max-Q versions of GPUs, but it'southward hard to fit much more than ability than this in a slim 15-inch chassis.

Our new model carries the 10th Generation chip I mentioned, merely less-expensive configurations employ the previous-generation Cadre i7-9750H. The starting model rings upwardly at $i,699.99 with 16GB of memory, an RTX 2060 GPU, and a 512GB SSD. Between that and our unit, Acer offers multiple models that cover the spectrum of GPU power (RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 non-Super), equally well as RAM and storage capacities betwixt the base and acme stop.

Last simply not to the lowest degree, nosotros come up to the rest of the build. The keyboard is comfortable to blazon and play on, and features per-primal-programmable RGB backlighting. The keys have a dainty bounce, and are neither also shallow nor too mushy, while the individual fundamental lighting allows for fun color and effect customization. The touchpad is a bit small, merely it's responsive and gave me no cause for complaint.

The Triton 500 includes a useful array of ports, starting with an HDMI port, a USB 3.1 Type-A port, audio jacks, and an Ethernet jack on the left flank. The right side holds two more than USB 3.1 ports, a USB-C connectedness with Thunderbolt three back up, and a mini DisplayPort connection. All the bases are covered here (and and so some), so kudos to Acer on this front.

A few extras round out the Triton 500 and help contribute to its high price tag. Acer prides itself on its Vortex Flow fan pattern, which now includes three custom internal fans, 1 of which is the company's advanced all-metallic AeroBlade 3D fan. I'grand paying extra attention to the cooling technology because I think the Triton 500 runs a bit quieter than most gaming laptops while playing, and then Acer's extra endeavour seems to be having an effect.

Y'all can set the fan speed in the included Predator software to run at automatic, or always at maximum speed. The latter is of course louder, merely the auto setting kept games running smoothly and balanced the noise. The software (also equally a dedicated Turbo button above the keyboard) also lets you swap among some GPU power presets (normal, fast, and extreme) in the "overclocking" tab. I normally detect these types of settings add together a few frames per second in game testing, only I didn't notice much improvement in this instance. Your mileage may vary past game, but in any instance, let's cheque out those base numbers.

Performance Testing: Enthusiast-Form Power

I've put together a list of relevant gaming laptops to requite some context to the Triton 500'south operation; you can run across those models in the table below.

In addition to the previous version of this laptop, I've included the flagship machines from several competitors. These are similarly priced and equipped 15-inch laptops—check out the nautical chart to see what they're packing.

Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests

PCMark x and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC criterion specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark x test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content cosmos workflows. We use information technology to assess overall organization operation for office-axial tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark viii, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that nosotros use to assess the speed of the system's kicking bulldoze. Both tests yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.

Every bit you'd hope, the Triton 500's 10th-generation processor performed ameliorate in this test than its predecessors. The gulf isn't huge, but it is noticeable, peculiarly because we don't often see much separation between gaming laptops. The multimedia tests below will provide deeper detail. As far as the storage examination, all of these snappy SSDs provided fast boot and load times, which benefit gaming profoundly.

Side by side is Maxon'due south CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 exam, which is fully threaded to brand use of all bachelor processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.

Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing trial, some other tough, threaded workout that'southward highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on examination systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open-source Blender demo picture show Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file. It's a timed test, and lower results are better.

We too run a custom Adobe Photoshop epitome editing benchmark. Using an early 2022 release of the Artistic Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a serial of x complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG examination image. Nosotros time each operation and add up the total execution time. As with Handbrake, lower times are improve here.

The results on these tests are a bit of a mixed bag. The Triton 500's CPU is certainly fast, especially if you look at the Photoshop results, just it wasn't superior across the board (every bit you'd hope because it's newer than most of them). I could get into the nitty gritty with each result, but information technology doesn't ultimately matter too much: If the gap between other laptops was significant, I'd recommend one over the other for multimedia work, but they each excel in different areas. More crucially, none volition meridian a specialized professional workstation. Instead, they'll all exercise in a pinch for hobbyists who demand to edit photos or video. This 6-cadre, 12-thread CPU is upwardly to the job in that context, and it makes multitasking (even while gaming) more efficient.

Graphics Tests

3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-manner 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Burn Strike, which are suited to unlike types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more than suited to midrange PCs while Fire Strike is more than enervating and made for high-terminate PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores.

Next upward is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Similar 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the arrangement copes. In this case, it's rendered in the eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario for a 2nd opinion on each laptop'due south graphical prowess.

The Triton 500 performed well if not spectacularly in these tests. The scores are objectively loftier, but expectations were merely as high given the components. The MSI GS66 Stealth was the first laptop we reviewed with this GPU, and when I was testing that laptop, I was a scrap underwhelmed as information technology trended a flake too shut to theoretically less powerful GPUs.

At the time, I was unsure if the functioning was due to MSI's execution, simply the Triton 500 falls right alongside it, or even lower. The GeForce RTX 2080 Super is the most potent mobile GPU bachelor, so it should easily acme the charts, just in that location wasn't much separation in either case. It seems the tuned-down Max-Q version takes a meaningful hitting compared to the unrestricted RTX 2080 Super, bringing it shut to the RTX 2070. This same trend held truthful in the next tests.

Existent-World Gaming Tests

The synthetic tests above are helpful for measuring full general 3D bent, but information technology'due south hard to beat full retail video games for judging gaming performance. Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider are both modern, high-fidelity titles with built-in benchmarks that illustrate how a arrangement handles real-world gameplay at diverse settings. We run them at 1080p resolution at the games' medium and best paradigm-quality settings (Normal and Ultra for Far Cry v nether DirectX 11, Medium and Very High for Ascension of the Tomb Raider under DirectX 12).

Once again, these are very high frame rates, and many gamers would be pleased to get this operation from their laptops. But the price tag is loftier, and you lot're paying extra for the RTX 2080 Super. There is some gain over the 2022 Triton 500 (part of which can be attributed to two generations of CPU improvements and double the RAM), simply the gains are pretty small-scale compared to the Razer Blade 15. The not-Max-Q version of the RTX 2080 Super probable has the power to impress, but here, it'due south only for those who want to squeeze every possible extra frame out of their laptop.

Bombardment Rundown Test

After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (equally opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where bachelor and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We besides plough Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop in airplane mode.) In this examination, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the same Tears of Steel curt we apply in our Handbrake exam—with screen brightness set at l per centum and volume at 100 pct until the organisation quits.

Acer did amend the Triton 500'due south battery compared to the original model, but it'south nevertheless pretty brusk. Iv hours will buy you some time off the charger, merely even among notoriously brusque-lived gaming laptops, the Triton doesn't quite endure.

Summit-End Gear for the Hardcore Crowd

From a design and build standpoint, I'm a large fan of the Predator Triton 500. It gets a bit trickier one time I discuss our rather expensive test configuration.

The top model goes for broke, packing in all the high-end features a gamer could want, and it's no uncertainty impressive. The RTX 2080 Super Max-Q GPU stumbles somewhat compared to Nvidia's other options, and then I wouldn't recommend our detail model for anyone looking for a bargain—lesser configurations volition give you better bang for your buck. It's a different story if toll is no object.

Regardless of your budget and which configuration you lot cull, the laptop itself is bonny and feels loftier quality, giving the Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX502 and Razer Blade 15 a run for their money once again this yr. The former remains our Editors' Choice, as a superior value, just we tin definitely recommend the Triton 500 if y'all similar its design and feature set.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/netbooks-products/37725/acer-predator-triton-500-2020

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