acer Predator Helios Neo 18 Gaming Laptop | Intel Core i7-14700HX | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 | 18" WQXGA 2560 x 1600 165Hz G-SYNC Display | 16GB DDR5 | 1TB Gen 4 SSD | Killer Wi-Fi 6E | PHN18-71-77JT

I bought this laptop back in October of 2024 - waited awhile to see how it would go before I left a review. I'm an Apple guy so I was a little nervous going back to Windows. This laptop is very nice. Windows 11 is very nice also. Windows supplies its office suite as a test drive with limited time before they want you sign up for longer periods of time. I'll probably just buy the 1 time deal for 150.00 and then I'll have what I need. I really don't need the 365 suite. The screen is very bright and does not disappoint. It's very crisp with excellent detail and colors and is 18". I have not noticed any backlight bleed whatsoever. I only had 16" on my MacBook Pro. The screen size was a major reason why I wanted this laptop. The keyboard is backlit and you can change the color to whatever color you want the back light to be. It mainly sits on my desk. I moved it upstairs the other day for a bit on the battery. Battery life is not Apple battery life. It drains fairly quickly compared to my older MacBook Pro, but I'm not travelling with it much and it sits primarily on my desk. The power supply is rather large for it. Some people were complaining about the fans being too loud. Well, its a gaming laptop and some fan noise is expected. If I were a gamer the fans would be louder I'm sure, but I'm only using it for daily activities and I can here the fans but I'm not bothered by them as they are fairly quiet. The fans are adjustable via the Predator software they provide with the laptop. McAffee suite comes with it as a trial. The laptop is quick, grant you I'm not pushing to hard, but I have noticed no waiting when it comes to using it, so the processor speed and memory are fine for me. I do watch movies on it and the 18" screen is exceptional. All in all I'm very pleased with it. My only complaint is that at first the trackpad was a bit touchy. There is however an adjustment for this in Windows 11 to adjust the sensitivity. I noticed it's on sale for Black Friday that is a better deal than what I paid for it by probably 100 bucks or so back in October. If you want a big laptop, just buy it - you won't be disappointed.

About a minute into initial setup the screen suddenly got distorted. I did not drop or let anything impact this computer or spill anything on it. opening and closing the screen causes the distortion to fluctuate. I think the screen video connection wires are loose near the hinge. I'm returning this but I will get a replacement. Update, I sent back the broken laptop the day after requesting refund. Refund took 10 days to be deposited in my bank. Replacement laptop works great.

This laptop works amazing! I have not had issues with overheating in the slightest with the ability to toggle between the different modes. The screen quality is so so clear and glorious, I was shocked when I first loaded up a game that takes a lot of graphics. The colors are so vibrant you would think you were using a high end monitor instead of a laptop screen. I have yet to find a game that lags this beast, so I would say the gaming capability is great! The keyboard feels the same as just about any other laptop keyboard. Even setting this thing up was a breeze! I highly recommend this over the neo i9 because I feel like the ability to change and upgrade is one of the most important parts of this laptop. There are two M.2 slots, one taken by the main drive which is 1 Terabyte, the other open and free to add another one, which I took my 2 Terabyte one from my previous laptop and put it in it. The ram is accessible and as long as you use DDR5 and get the correct size, you can upgrade it from what I can tell. You can't upgrade the CPU or GPU but honestly I don't feel like you need to. Unless you are on the drop for brand new games as they are coming out, this beast has plenty of gaming power to go around.

Overheats way too easily and locks up for a long time. I have a laptop cooling device and it still overheats. It doesn't alert you either. It waits until you start a game and the demand increases, then it just stops responding. I 100% regret buying this.

Very easy to use and set-up from the box. Runs the online games I play very well with great graphics. My BIGGEST complaint is the CHEESY power supply cord ! ! ! It falls out constantly ! VERY POOR DESIGN !

This machine is big, bulky AND very powerful. If you want raw power, then those systems will be heavy. It's a fair price to pay for the raw power. If you want something super light, they will be much less powerful but will have better battery life. So far, I like everything except the sound. With a body as big as this, Acer should be able to provide decent audio right out of the box. Unfortunately it doesn't even match some high end Phone (apple, pixel, samsung) speaker audio. I bought to reduce clutters on my desk, replacing monitors and old workstation. And it does a fine job in that department due to raw cpu/gpu power. The base storage is decent at 1TB but great thing is that you can add a secondary storage and additional ram with two physical slots. Many companies are forcing onboard RAM which prevents you from upgrading. Other than speaker audio, this laptop is excellent. You can use a headphone or connect to external speakers but for this price, audio should have been better. Again, this is a very minor issue because I didn't have anything else to complain about. Happy otherwise.