I have looked at a lot of different laptops over the past few months to find the one that would be best for me and this one is definitely it! I am a college kid who was looking for a nice portable machine for schoolwork, but also that had the grunt to get some gaming in every now and then. It came down to this one and the Asus G14 with the Nvidia 2060 max q and literally everything I read online said that the G14 was way better and I would be getting ripped off buying this one but there are a few key advantages that this laptop has over the G14: 1) It is MUCH quieter than the g14 in almost every situation. It seems like this laptop was engineered and tuned to have quieter fan noise. It is even pretty quiet while gaming which surprised me! (unless your using turbo mode or something but that is unnecessary IMO) 2) The CPU and GPU temps are very respectable! Most of the time they were both well under 70 degrees Celsius while playing apex legends for about an hour or so! This is much cooler than the temps I was getting with the g14! 3) This laptop chassis stays pretty cool as well! The G14 chassis would sometimes get so hot that it actually kind of started to hurt my fingers. This laptop hasn't gotten anywhere near that hot - of course it still gets warm because of the smaller form factor but it stays comfortable during the few gaming sessions I have had. 4) This is more of a personal preference, but I really like the understated design of this laptop - even more so than the asus g14. That one was bright white and while it still looked cool, was a little too flashy for my taste. 5) This is a small one, but this trackpad is super sweet - it has a really solid click and there is no wobble at all, and tracking is super smooth. I can't say the same about the g14. 6) The keyboard is great! It doesn’t have as much travel distance as the g14 but it still has a satisfying snap to the keys and is much quitter than the keyboard on the g14 as well. It also has pretty good backlighting and 4 zone rgb if you’re into that (I just keep mine defaulted to white). 7) It has a webcam! I am a student, and this was a major pain for me while using the g14 to have to always remember to bring my external webcam along for online classes and other meetings for work. It is 720p but I would say it is pretty good for your average laptop webcam. Of course, the laptop isn't perfect (none are) and it does have some downsides: 1) The four core intel cpu is the main reason everyone says this one is trash compared to amd's 8 core processors but I don't really utilize multicore programs so this doesn't really matter to me much as the single core performance on this thing is great. essentially you are trading four cores (a lot of multicore performance) for a cooler, quieter computer here and that is a welcomed tradeoff, at least for me and my computing situation. If you are using programs that are more multicore dependent (video editing, CAD, modeling etc.) and need that performance, then this laptop probably isn’t the one to get. 2) The speakers on here are mediocre, especially comparing them to the g14's. They aren't awful like some people have said but they basically don't have any bass and don't get terribly loud. 3) battery life seems to be right around 7 hours for normal everyday use which is less than what I was getting with the g14 but it is plenty for what I need. 4) The laptop lid does not have any magnets as far as I can tell to secure it to the body of the laptop when you close it. I know it is kind of a nitpick but the g14 does and I liked that feature. The lid/screen is also a bit more flimsy than the g14. 5) There is a bug that the brightness up button turns the brightness down and visa versa which is a little annoying but I’m sure it will be fixed in a software update. To conclude, I am very pleased with this laptop and think it was well worth the 1300 I payed for it. I hope this review helped inform someone to make a better purchase decision!

Unfortunately this gaming laptop comes with an Intel Core i7 11375H, which is a complete bottleneck for the strong graphics card they put in here. I wish they put in a 35W AMD 5000 series cpu so that this machine could have been a productivity powerhouse. However for casual gaming the specs are more than enough. The benefit of getting an Intel system is the Thunderbolt 4 port. In benchmarks provided by other reviewers, this system is only slightly better than the 2020 Asus G14 with the AMD 4000 series and 2060 max-q graphics. However that system lacked a webcam, so as an overall package the Acer Triton 300 SE is a better ultrabook experience that happens to have some gaming capability. The one thing that caught my eye about this machine is the design. With a thin all-metal body this laptop makes a very compact gaming machine. This computer has an Nvidia RTX 3060 (Max-Q) running at 75W. Compare this to Asus TUF Dash F15 that runs at 80-85W. You are trading off gaming performance here for portability. Runs Minecraft for Windows 10 RTX very smoothly out of the box. Display - Perfect. 1080p provides good pixel density and scaling for this size of display. Very responsive 144hz for gaming too. Viewing angles are poor, so don't expect to be sharing a video or movie. Sound - Awful. The audio comes out the bottom. The grills at the top are actually for air ventilation. Speakers sound worse than other 13" ultra portables. Not a deal breaker for me as I use headphones anyways. Fan Noise - The fan noise is average and has a lower sound profile compared to some other thin gaming laptops that have a high pitched fan noise. This makes the fan noise better but still not great. Turbo mode makes the fan noise ridiculous, so I would not recommend using that mode. The PredatorSense software allows for silent mode as well, which is good. Keyboard - It's very cramped. I don't know what is up with Acer computers but they have some poor layout on their smaller notebooks that has a very cramped experience. If you are in the market with a very travel-friendly portable laptop that offers a casual gaming experience, this is a decent option. Another $100-200 off MSRP would make this much easier to recommend.

If you're looking for a small, lightweight, and thin laptop that can be a great work/school machine as well as a good gaming laptop, this one's for you. It could run the majority of recent titles, even at higher graphics settings. Turbo mode is recommended if you're doing this frequently. I haven't used any programs that heavily rely on the CPU yet, but I think it'll do a good job for single-threaded applications since it only has 4 cores. I'll be using this laptop for college, so I upgraded the storage to 1 TB so I won't have to worry about it later or get an external storage device. Upgrading storage is very simple and I assume upgrading the RAM would be too, even though I didn't do so. Just make sure you get an external m.2 NVMe enclosure. I haven't had the chance to fully test the battery life, but if I unplug and use it for a little bit with chrome running a couple of tabs I'll get estimates anywhere between 7-9 hours. The keyboard layout is very comfortable and the trackpad works very well. No need to fully press down on it, a light tap is a click, a double-tap is a click and hold, and a two-finger tap is a right-click (this is probably a common feature but I haven't had a laptop with this yet so I thought it was worth noting). It's on the smaller side if you care about that sort of thing, but I've never really liked using trackpads in general so I use a wireless mouse. Like many of the other reviews state, the brightness buttons are mismatched for some reason, it may or may not be fixed eventually but it's not that hard to get used to. The fans are very quiet with general or non-gaming use, the turbo mode can be loud but I never really care as long as I'm using headphones. Idle temps are usually between 40-50 C, temps while playing a decently demanding game like DOOM Eternal are 70-90 C. Speakers aren't great but, again, I use headphones so I never use them. I've never found any laptop speakers that good in the first place. The port selection is pretty good. Thunderbolt 4 is amazing to have. Wish it had an ethernet built-in but there are plenty of adapters on the market. Believe it or not, it can run vr ONLY if you use a Windows Mixed Reality headset. Since the one I have (Samsung HMD Odyssey+) utilizes HDMI that connects to the GPU (i think) and not displayport or usb-c it can actually work. I was able to get Half-Life: Alyx to run well if that says anything. I don't think this should be a deciding factor and I don't see myself using it anywhere other than my desktop, but it is possible. To finish this off, if you're looking for a powerful laptop that can easily pass as a standard notebook then this is what you want.

A solid low-profile laptop with good gaming performance. Disclaimer: I upgraded to 2Tb of storage and 24Gb of memory pretty much right out of the box, so my review will not consider the stock SSD or RAM. Quick ratings: Display - 5/5 Aesthetics and design - 5/5 Touchpad - 5/5 Keyboard - 4/5 Noise level - 4/5 Temperature - 4/5 Speakers - 3/5 Battery - 3/5 Overall, this is a solid 4-star laptop. I would expect most users would be pleased with it, but those who are used to the most premium laptops might be disappointed. I'm a textbook casual gamer, so having the latest hardware and best graphics is hardly a priority. That said, this laptop has exceeded my expectations. The display, though slightly dimmer than I prefer, otherwise shines, offering crisp and colorful graphics with a smooth 144Hz refresh rate. The bottom-facing speakers are definitely a weak point of the gaming experience. Though they offer clear and crisp sound, the bass is noticeably lacking. My iPad mini produces much better audio. I knew this going in, so it wasn't a big deal. Popping in your favorite headset is probably the best remedy here. The overall look and design of this laptop is what first drew me in. So many gaming-ready machines look like alien spaceships ready for takeoff. I generally hate the gaming aesthetic, so this laptop proved to be a nice compromise. It still has a bit of flare, but I could also take it to my next business meeting without drawing too much attention. The RGB lighting on the keyboard, if that is your thing, is blasé. I keep all three of the zones set to white, so I don't have a strong opinion on it. While we're on the subject of the keyboard, it's worth noting that my space bar actually broke under what I would consider to be fairly normal use. Since it was still within the year warranty, Acer replaced the entire keyboard at no cost and had it back to me within a few days. Kudos for the excellent customer service. When it's not broken, the keyboard is quite nice to type on. I haven't had any complaints while gaming either, though it's not going to give you the feedback that a premium external keyboard offers. Perhaps my only real complaint is the battery life. Even right out of the box, I don't think I've ever come anywhere near the 9 hours claimed by Acer. During general use (web browsing, word processing, etc.), I maybe get 4-5 hours. This was slightly higher before upgrading to Windows 11. Not a deal breaker for me, but don't forget your charger at home. On a side note, if you have a 65w (or higher) USB C charger (or dock), you can charge this laptop through the USB C port. Note that Turbo mode cannot be used without the OEM power adapter plugged in.

Pros: - excellent design. Lools great - can camoflauge the gaming design of the device when working or in class - quiet and didnt overheat - turbo mode whirls up but the noise wasnt as loud as reviewers say they are (other laptops sounded louder wifh their fans) - very portable (comes with a sleeve) - power cord brick is small - thunderbolt 4 port is nice - not difficult to replace the ssd or memory slot - excellent packaging compared to other gaming laptops - can handle just about any game on FHD at 60fps or more (no ray tracing enabled. Some aaa games might not) Those are the Pros. Here are the Cons Cons: - i7 is a quad core and wont handle intense applications as well as other that require more cores. - 8gb memory soldered (this isnt a big deal considering 32gb memory doesnt help the performance of this laptop due to its cpu and low tdp gpu) - ray tracing was ok but many games will not get to 60fps - during cyberpunk car theft scene at the beginning of the game, with ray tracing medium on, i was getting 40-50fps. That is not the part of the game that uses the most resources, but i was somewhat impressed this laptop could get that fps at that level. Minecraft in the other hand (and this was the reason i did not go with this laptop) got to 60fps with no ray tracing on. But with ray tracing, it was at 35-45fps. That is unacceptable for a 30 series card (even if the weakest tdp version). Verdict: If you need a laptop that is very portable, fir everyday use, and are a casual gamer who will not use ray tracing, get this one. Ray tracing gamers and developers, look for something with more tdp and at least a 6 core cpu. One other thing, the price is not worth it for this laptop. Wait until it is on sale if youstill want it.