Acer has unveiled a pair of new gaming notebooks, including a super-thin laptop which packs an impressive amount of power for its size.
The Predator Triton 700 is the first in a new series of laptops designed to be nice and thin, yet without compromising on the power front thanks to some clever cooling technology.
Indeed, at today’s Next@Acer event, the company showed a slide which claimed that the Triton hit a 3DMark score of 17,000, compared to the Razer Blade 2016’s score of 11,139 (although the precise spec of the Triton notebook benchmarked wasn’t mentioned).
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So how portable is the Triton 700? We’re talking 18.9mm thin (that’s Ultrabook slim, albeit 1mm thicker than the aforementioned Razer Blade) with a weight of 2.6kg, and this is a 15.6-inch notebook with a smart-looking black chassis and a minimalist design.
You get a Full HD display, Intel Core (Kaby Lake) processor, Nvidia GeForce 10-series graphics, along with up to 32GB of DDR4 (2400MHz) system memory. And for storage, how does a pair of NVMe PCIe SSDs in RAID 0 configuration sound? Pretty fast? It should certainly be…
Acer is really talking up the newly refined twin AeroBlade metal fans, which along with five heat pipes helps ensure that all these components stay cool despite the thin form factor.
That 15.6-inch display is an IPS panel, meaning it will have great viewing angles, and Acer promises bright and vibrant colors. It’s also equipped with support for Nvidia’s G-Sync technology (which avoids stuttering and tearing) when connecting to an external monitor.
There’s Acer TrueHarmony audio for crisp sound, and on the connectivity front you get Thunderbolt 3 alongside the usual array of USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports.
The Predator Triton 700 also benefits from an RGB backlit mechanical keyboard, which oddly enough, nestles at the bottom of the chassis – with a large touchpad above it.
We're not sure about this design quirk, but it's certainly different – and said touchpad is actually fashioned from Gorilla Glass to let you see that funky cooling system below it.
All this power doesn’t come cheap, though, and the gaming notebook is expected to be on sale in August with the price starting at €3,399 (around £2,860, $3,695).
Happiness is a Helios?
If your budget can’t stretch that far, then the Predator Helios 300 (pictured above) is likely to be a much more cheerful prospect for your wallet.
The Helios will be available in 15.6-inch or 17.3-inch models, with a Full HD IPS display driven by a Kaby Lake Intel Core i7 (7700HQ) processor or a Core i5 (7300HQ). For the GPU, there’s a choice of either the GeForce GTX 1060 or 1050 Ti.
Backing that up is 16GB of DDR4 memory, alongside an SSD (of the SATA variety) and a 1TB traditional spinning disk.
An access door on the underside of the Helios is designed to make it easy to upgrade both storage and memory, and speaking of the latter, you can double the system RAM up to 32GB should you wish.
As with the Triton, you get the twin AeroBlade fans for nifty cooling, and there’s a USB 3.1 Type-C port among the connectors.
The Predator Helios 300 also goes on sale in August with the price starting of €1,199 (around £1,010, $1,300).
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