The keyboard options four-zone colour backlighting, tunable by Acer’s in depth PredatorSense system, which controls every little thing from battery charging particulars as to whether you wish to customise the emblem displayed because the laptop computer boots. It’s obtainable by way of a devoted key above the slim numeric keypad. The opposite bespoke key on the machine is the Mode key, discovered above the highest left of the keyboard. This shifts amongst 4 totally different efficiency/fan operation modes when plugged in; two of those modes can be found when operating on battery energy.
Due to the numeric keypad, the keyboard and touchpad are shifted fairly far to the left. This is likely to be a case the place you may adapt to the format over time, however I discovered it powerful to work comfortably when pushed this far to at least one aspect, particularly when utilizing the arrow keys, which spill over into each the keyboard and keypad areas.
Ports are distinctive and may be discovered on each side and the rear of the system. These embody two USB-C ports (one with Thunderbolt 4 help), three USB-A ports, a full-size HDMI port, a full-size Ethernet jack, and a microSD card slot. You’ll want to make use of the separate energy jack and 230-watt A/C adapter to energy the system. (The adapter itself is heavy however not significantly massive, weighing 1.1 kilos.)
The display screen is among the brightest I’ve seen in years, and whereas the audio system aren’t significantly nuanced, they’re not less than a lot loud. Sadly, they have to be, as a result of when the fan kicks in, which is commonly, this can be very noisy.
Laptop Crash
{Photograph}: Chris Null
Put collectively the entire bundle, and also you’ve bought efficiency to spare on just about something you may throw at this method. The Helios set data practically throughout the board on my battery of benchmarks, together with (by far) the perfect GPU-related scores I’ve seen so far, handily beating the MacBook Professional M4 Professional by 50 % on the Geekbench 6 GPU take a look at whereas practically doubling graphics efficiency over programs outfitted with the final era of GeForce laptop computer GPUs.
