Acer Helios Neo 16 (2023) Review - Still one of the Best?

Acer’s Helios 300 was one of the best  gaming laptops available last year, but they’ve already redesigned it  as the Helios Neo 16 and made it worse in some ways.. So let’s find out  the good and the bad in this review! It’s got a dark metal finish on both  the lid and interior, and this year they’ve toned down the gamer aesthetics by  removing the RGB light bar on the front, and making the logo on the lid more  subtle, it no longer glows blue. The finish is a big fingerprint magnet, but  it’s e

asy to clean with a microfiber cloth. Overall build quality feels good, there’s a bit  less keyboard flex compared to last year’s model. There’s a groove along the front  which makes one finger opening easy, and the screen goes back about 155  degrees, so more adjustment than last year’s 140. The hinges felt solid,  even when ripping the lid open fast. The Neo 16 is larger in every  dimension compared to last year, partly due to its new bigger 16 inch screen. The laptop alone weighs about 5.7lb

or under  2.6kg, increasing to 8.4lb or 3.8kg with the chunky 330 watt charger included. I’m really  not sure why Acer didn’t use a smaller more portable power brick considering the  Neo 16 maxes out at RTX 4070 graphics. My Helios has Intel’s Core i7-13700HX processor, Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics, 16 gigs of  memory and a 16 inch 165Hz screen, but you can check other configurations  and current prices with the link below. The main difference between the Helios  Neo 16 which we’re reviewing here, a

nd the regular Helios 16 - so without the  Neo in the name, is that the Neo version is meant to be a cheaper option. The Neo  is a little bigger in all dimensions, it’s a little heavier, and its  max specs don’t go quite as high. There’s a 720p camera above the screen, and  there is no IR for Windows hello face unlock. Here’s how the camera and microphones look  and sound, and as you can see the visual quality isn’t very good, and this is what  it sounds like while typing on the keyboard. The ke

yboard has 4 zones of RGB backlighting, and all keys and secondary functions get lit  up. Key brightness can be changed between 4 levels or turned off with the F11 and F12  shortcut keys. Colors and effects can be customized through Acer’s Predator Sense  software under the Pulsar Lighting tab. The keyboard is the same as last year’s  model as far as I can tell. The keys have a clicky feel and I liked typing on it, but  the shorter right shift might annoy some. The power button is part of the ke

yboard, but  an accidental press doesn’t do anything. You have to hold it for a while, and then Acer’s  software asks what you want to happen next. The touchpad is a little bigger than  last year’s model, and it feels great, nice and smooth with accurate clicks. The left has a gigabit ethernet port, USB  3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, MicroSD card slot, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack, while the  right has two more USB Type-A ports, faster 3.2 Gen 2 this time, and a  Kensington lock slot at the back. The r

est is on the back, from left  to right we’ve got the power input, HDMI 2.1 output, and two Thunderbolt  4 Type-C ports with USB 3.2 Gen 2. Instead of having useful port icons on the back,  Acer have instead chosen to spell out “predator” in morse code. I had to constantly turn the  laptop and look behind it to plug stuff in, which was disappointing as there’s clearly  space to make the experience better, but instead they chose form over function. Compared to last year’s Helios 300, the new Neo

16  has an extra Type-C port and a MicroSD card slot, but its missing the Mini DisplayPort, though  I’m not sure how popular that is anyway. Both Type-C ports on the back  can be used to charge the laptop, and both of those as well as HDMI port all  connect directly to the Nvidia graphics, bypassing optimus, and that happens the  integrated graphics are enabled or disabled. We confirmed the HDMI port could run our  4K LG B9 TV at 120Hz 12-Bit with G-Sync. Getting inside requires removing 11 Phil

lips  head screws, all the same length. It was easy enough to open with some pry tools, I’ll  leave a link to the ones I use below. For some reason the battery isn’t screwed in like  other laptops. It’s not missing screws, there just aren’t screw holes for it, so it just sits there.  I suppose this is fine as the bottom panel keeps it in position, but you need to be aware of it if  you open it while holding it sideways like I did. Once inside we’ve got the loose battery  down the front, two memo

ry slots just above, installed SSD on the left next to the Wi-Fi  6 card, and a spare M.2 slot on the right. The 512 gig PCIe Gen 4 SSD had great read speeds,  but for some reason the writes were much lower. A good Gen 3 drive can almost get 3 times higher in  sequential writes. The MicroSD card was similar, good for the reads and lower on the writes, which  is probably fine as I imagine most people using it are dumping photos and video off the card onto the  laptop rather than the other way. Th

e card clicks in and sits the whole way into the machine, so  you’ll need some fingernails to get it in and out. Wi-Fi speed was fine, but a lower result  compared to other laptops with Killer Wi-Fi, and not as good compared  to last year’s Helios 300. The upgradeability score is good, we  can change both memory slots, Wi-Fi, and both M.2 storage slots, which  can both fit double sided drives no problem - something one of the slots  in last year’s model could not fit. The speakers are found down

the front  on the left and right sides. They sound pretty average for a gaming laptop, a  bit tinny with minimal bass, not great, I thought last year’s Helios sounded a bit better. The Latencymon results were bad, but there is a  known Nvidia driver issue that can increase this. Speaking of sounds, by default it’s  got this crazy obnoxious boot up sound. Fortunately you can disable  it through software or BIOS. The Helios is powered by a 4-Cell 90Wh battery, but there aren’t any software featur

es  to automatically lower the screen’s refresh rate or disable the overdrive  mode when you unplug the charger. It lasted for 4 hours and 41 minutes in  my normal YouTube video playback test, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we could crack 5  hours by manually swapping the screen to 60Hz. I had to cancel the game test despite the battery  still having 31% charge remaining, because the frame rate dipped down to 5 FPS and was unusable.  Last year’s Helios was better in both regards. The Helios also

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y past system administrator life, let me tell you,  I'd much rather let Pulseway take care of it! Make your life easier and start  your free trial with the link below. Back to the laptop. Let’s check out  thermals next. It’s got two fans, one is metal, and a couple of heatpipes shared  between the CPU and GPU along with liquid metal, but Acer doesn’t specify if that's on the  CPU, GPU, or both. The bottom panel has plenty of air intake holes directly over the fans, and  air gets exhausted out of

both the left and right sides, as well as out of the corners on the back.  There are also some vents above the keyboard. Acer’s Predator Sense software allows us to change  between different performance modes, which from lowest to highest are quiet, balanced, performance  and turbo. Turbo mode applies this overclock to the GPU by default with no option of tuning it.  The next fan control tab lets us max out the fans, or set a custom speed as a percentage for each  of the two fans. Fan control i

s not available in quiet mode because it enables Nvidia whisper  mode, and turbo mode needs the charger connected. There’s also this button above the keyboard,  you can change what it does in software to either have it enable or disable turbo mode,  or cycle through all four performance modes. The color of the button also changes based  on the performance mode currently in use, so you can quickly identify what mode you’re  in, and the keyboard flashes briefly at the same time to make it more obv

ious. I didn’t  like that performance and turbo modes were purple and pink, I found it hard to tell  which was which because it was so similar. The internal temperatures were cold when  just sitting there idle. The rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU  stress tests which aim to represent a worst case full load scenario. Turbo mode was  noticeably warmer compared to performance, but there was no thermal throttling so  no problem. The cooling pad I test with, linked below the video, w

as able to lower  temps significantly, but if you instead want to close the lid and dock the laptop you  don’t have to worry about it getting hotter. The clock speeds were pretty much the  same too, so no issues docking the laptop. For some reason performance was actually a  little lower with the cooling pad connected, which would also contribute  to its much lower temperature. We can see here that the CPU was running at  85 watts with the cooling pad connected. I'm not sure why this was the cas

e but I was  able to replicate it multiple times. It’s not really that big of a deal, because  85 watts on the CPU with the GPU maxed out is quite impressive anyway, and  100 watts without the cooling pad is just crazy good. The Nvidia control panel  says the RTX 4060 can run up to 140 watts, but I found it to run closer to 97 in the  real world due to Nvidia’s voltage limit. There wasn’t that much of a performance difference  between the top three performance modes in terms of FPS with an actua

l game though. Meanwhile  silent mode was still hitting 60 FPS at this above 1440p resolution while running  around 39 decibels, relatively quiet. The CPU can use more power and hit thermal  throttling when the GPU is idle, like in Cinebench. There’s no difference in single core  performance with the different modes, while higher modes mean better multicore performance thanks  to more power, faster fans and better cooling. This is the first time we’ve ever  had an i7-13700HX, and it has the same

amount of P and E cores as a  12th gen i9 HX chip from last gen, though some of those were able to do better. A  lower tier i7-13700H in the MSI GP77 was able to perform about the same, slightly better  actually, despite having two fewer P cores, because that laptop design was able to feed the  CPU more power to make up for its lack of cores. Performance lowers if we unplug the charger  and instead run purely off of battery power, and we’re limited to balanced mode without  the charger. Perform

ance lowers significantly, it’s now one of the slower results out of  the same selection of laptops previously. Most laptops I test are in the low 30 degrees  Celsius range on the keyboard at idle, but the Helios was quite a bit below this. It’s  still fairly cool with the stress tests running, the warm spot near the arrow keys was hardly  warm. The higher balanced mode wasn’t really much different, still cool on the areas you  need to touch. Performance mode was very cool, I was quite impressed

when I tested this, and  then the highest turbo mode was much the same, but it is very loud now, let’s have a listen. The fans were audible when just sitting  there idle, and then get louder in the higher modes when under load, as expected.  Turbo mode was only ever so slightly louder if we manually set the fans to max, so they’re  basically maxed out in this workload anyway, and the cooling pad did not  help lower the fan speed. Like a lot of laptops this year, the Helios  moves to a bigger 16

inch screen with a 16:10 aspect ratio, so it’s got more pixels vertically  than before and little less of a bottom chin. Color gamut is fine for a gaming laptop,  but nothing amazing for creators. It gets quite bright though, above 500 nits at  100%, and it lowers at a steady rate, unlike Lenovo laptops which dip  harshly at higher percentage levels. The Predator Sense software has LCD Overdrive  enabled by default, which lowers response time. We’re looking at 4 and a half milliseconds  for ave

rage grey-to-grey response time with overdrive on, which is below the  6.06ms needed for transitions to occur within the 165Hz refresh window, a good  result. It’s slower with overdrive off, as expected, but this removes  the overshoot and undershoot. It’s a good result when compared against  other laptops, and more than 3ms faster compared to last year’s Helios 300 - one of the  few ways this year’s model is actually better. The total system latency is the amount of time  between a mouse click

and when a gunshot fire appears on the screen in CS:GO. This time  it was more than 4ms faster compared to last year’s model, not much, but the newer Neo 16  may provide a subtle edge for competitive gamers. There is a MUX switch, but it can only be  changed through the BIOS. You won’t need to do that though, because it’s got advanced  optimus too, so you can disable the integrated graphics through Nvidia’s control panel, and it’s  got G-Sync too, but only when optimus is off. Backlight bleed wa

s minor, I never  noticed it during normal use, but this will vary between laptops. Now let’s find out how well the Helios  Neo 16 with RTX 4060 actually performs in games! It costs 22% more money compared  to last year’s Helios 300 with RTX 3070 Ti, so surely it’s going to do better, right? Well, no. Cyberpunk 2077 was tested the same on  all laptops, and I’ve got the Helios Neo 16 shown by the red highlight. At 1080p it’s right in line  with the other RTX 4060 laptops tested so far, though wit

h a better 1% low, which may be  due to the higher CPU power limit. That said, last year’s Helios 300 with a lower tier CPU  was better in that regard. At the higher 1440p resolution it’s still near a number of cheaper  RTX 3070 Ti options from last year, including Acer’s own Helios 300, which was actually  performing better despite costing $280 less. Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the  game’s benchmark, and last year’s cheaper Helios was ahead at 1080p too. All 3070  Ti results shown wer

e for that matter, which wasn’t the case in the last game. This  continues at the higher 1440p resolution, where last year’s Helios  now has a larger 12% lead. Again in Control, there’s not much difference  between all 4060 results tested so far at 1080p. The 4060 in the Helios is 14% faster compared  to a 3060 laptop, but cheaper 3070 Ti options are still ahead, and then it’s the same sort of  deal at 1440p. Last gen 30 series really isn’t too different to the new 4060/4070 options. It’s only 

when you spend more for a 4080 or 4090 laptop that you start seeing the big gen-on-gen improvements,  which I’m sure is exactly how Nvidia planned it. Here are the 3DMark results for those that find  them useful, now for some content creator tests. Adobe Photoshop was tested with  the Puget Systems benchmark tool, and it’s not too different to last year’s Helios, though considering that has an older CPU I  expected the newer Neo 16 to come out ahead. I’ve got less results in DaVinci Resolve beca

use  we’ve finally swapped over to a newer version. Anyway the Helios is the best 4060 result so  far, and the 4070s weren’t much ahead. No Adobe Premiere for a while, as the benchmark tool had  a big update and we need to collect fresh data. The 4070 and 4060 laptops are  even closer together in Blender, which is weird considering this is a GPU bound  workload. At least with the older Blender 3.2, we’re going to swap to the  newer 3.4 going forward, and in this one there was a bit more of a gap

  between the 4060s and 4070s, but not much. We’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests  out various professional 3D workloads. Acer’s BIOS looks cool, but there  isn’t a whole lot of customization available through here compared to other  brands like Lenovo, and especially MSI, who let you change almost  anything you can imagine. Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu 23.04  live CD. By default the keyboard, touchpad, speakers, ethernet and Wi-Fi all worked fine,  but the camera was not recogn

ized. Keyboard shortcuts for adjusting screen brightness,  volume, and keyboard brightness worked too, but the keys are all static blue, you can’t  change the color or effect without software. Pricing and availability will change over  time, so check the link below the video for updates and current sales. And if this laptop  does go on sale, we’ll be sure to add it to our gaminglaptop.deals website. We update that  every day to include all of the latest sales, so check that out regularly to get

the  best deal on your next gaming laptop! At the time of recording, the same configuration  of Helios Neo 16 that we’ve tested here goes for $1580 USD, which seems a bit pricey for  an RTX 4060 laptop compared to others. Especially last year’s Acer Helios 300  with 3070 Ti, as I mentioned earlier. This thing frequently goes on sale  for $1300, so if you just care about getting game FPS for the dollar, it’s  difficult to recommend the newer 4060. So the main differences between this year’s  Heli

os Neo 16 and last year’s Helios 300 are that this one has a bigger 16 inch screen, and  that newer screen also has a faster response time and it gets brighter. The color gamut isn’t  quite as good compared to last year’s version, but it’s still plenty for gaming. Content  creators might want to look elsewhere though. The Neo 16 can fit double sided M.2 drives  now, and it’s got a bigger and better touchpad, but last year’s Helios 300 lasted longer  on battery, had better sounding speakers, it h

ad per key RGB control on  the keyboard instead of 4 zone, and of course, most importantly of  all, it had a light bar on the front. All things considered, Acer’s new Helios  Neo 16 is a pretty good gaming laptop, the main problem is that Nvidia’s new  mid-range RTX 40 series GPUs just make it difficult for them to compete against their  own models from last year with RTX 30 series. Is it worth spending 22% more money to  get the 4060 instead of the 3070 Ti for frame generation? Maybe, maybe not

. You have to  decide how much that feature is worth to you, and for the record I do think that frame  generation is a nice feature in supported games. It just makes them feel smoother to play.  But it’s not in a whole lot of titles just yet. I’m sure that will change in the future and  the 4060 price will probably get lower too, but for now, it’s just kind of hard to  justify compared to the cheaper 3070 Ti model. You can see how the RTX 4060 laptop GPU performs  in games with features like fra

me generation, DLSS and ray tracing in this video next.  I’ve tested it in 25 games at 1080p and 1440p resolutions to show you what sort of performance  is on offer. So I’ll see you in that one next!