Acer - Predator Helios 18 Gaming Laptop - 18" 2560 x 1600 IPS 240Hz – Intel i9-14900HX – GeForce RTX 4090 - 32GB DDR5 – 1TB SSD - Abyssal Black

I own a desktop with a 4090 and 5800x3d, hooked up to an LG C2 42 inch TV, but sitting too long in my chair at my desk hurts back my after sitting for long and I wanted something more portable. This is my first time using a Mini-LED screen and I'm pretty impressed, coming from OLED the blacks obviously aren't as good, but they're still really good. I would say the brightness and no risk of burn-in is a positive that mini-LED has over OLED. I really love the Panel, it looks amazing. I'm a big fan of the touchpad and keyboard. The touchpad is really big and smooth. It hasn't taken me long to get used to and it's pretty comfortable playing Paradox games like CK3 and Victoria 3 with it. The Keyboard is also a good size. The swappable WASD keys are pretty neat and I like the full size arrow keys. I haven't played too many games yet, but I've tried Crusader Kings 3, Victoria 3, and Yakuza 0, all of them have been perfectly smooth and I can almost get to steady 200 fps in Yakuza 0 at ultra settings. I've added a 2TB SN850X SSD and upgraded the RAM to 64GB, it was a very easy process, just make sure you get a hex screwdriver if you don't already have one. The only downside, and the reason I'm giving it four stars instead of five, is that the cooling in turbo mode isn't the best. The 14900HX constantly throttles when playing games in turbo mode. I ended up buying a IETS GT600 cooling pad and that solved the issue completely. No more thermal throttling and the temps have dropped by more than 20 degrees Celsius when running the GT600 at full speed. The fans of the laptop and cooler are both pretty loud at high speed, but I don't care about the noise. I play games with headphones on and I always have a fan and an air purifier running in my room so it doesn't bother me. I bought this laptop on sale for $350 off, it's a great deal for having such a nice screen, a 4090, and a 14900hx, other laptops with the same specs and often worst screens are 1000-2000 dollars more. I would definitely recommend this laptop, as long as you don't mind buying a cooling pad and don't care about loud fan noises it's been perfect so far.

This laptop not gonna lie is nice the screen is really good and bright. However I had to return it do to a major issue. I had this for a total of 5 days and only played 2 games on it before it stopped working. I had upgraded the storage with 2 Samsung 990 pros. So the pc was working great I played a game and decided to shut it down so I could take it upstairs to transfer some files to it later. Once i went to boot it back up it wouldn't power on. Im not a novice when it comes to trouble shooting so I tried a hard reset and did get it to boot fine. Once i shut it down it did the same thing. So i did a drive swap back to the original and another reset and it did the same exact thing. Updated the bios same issue. So as a last resort i let it set overnight with both motherboard batteries disconnected ram and ssd removed with the same result. Over all i was happy with the performance but was not happy about having power issues. Maybe i just got a lemon it happen. I had an upcoming 3 week work trip and had to leave without my entertainment not happy. I ended up buying a razer blade 18 but wouldn't arrive until i already left

Got this beast to have some portable power on par with my desktops. Was surprised to find that it beat my 4090 even beat my dekstops rtx 3090 as laptops 4090 is weaker than the desktop 4090. So far, it's chewed through everything I've thrown at it. It couldn't keep up with my i9 13900k desktop cpu though. Sound is just okay, not a lot of bass. Plenty loud enough though. Haven't tested the battery life much as it'll be plugged in most of the time for gaming, but you don't buy these for battery life. Posted my 3dmark comparisons. Cooling is an issue though. I bought a laptop cooler for those scores, as without the CPU will cook itself. And I want this system to last a few years. I bought a Llano cooler, but there is another competitor out there at about the same price. Basically, this is a great laptop for the price that I got it. It was on sale for 2,399 when I got it, which is what prodded me to pick it up.