Gaming laptops have followed the Razer Blade on its way towards thinner designs. What once seemed rare is now commonplace. Buying a thick, bulky laptop now feels unusual. Even gamers have to go out to buy such a beast.
Few laptops really show this kind of shift better than Acer’s Predator Triton 500. If you scan the spec sheet, it almost looks like it’s a clean cut successor to the Acer Predator Helios 500, the one that’s roughly an inch and a half thick. The Triton 500 is just seven one-tenths of an inch thick, and it tips the scale at 4.41 pounds. So it’s only a little roomier, and about half a pound more, than the Dell XPS 15 or the Apple MacBook Pro 15. Still, you don’t just get the slimmer chassis thing, you also get Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics, which is basically the top tier option for gaming laptops right now.
It’s an incredible achievement, but it also raises the question – what has been sacrificed? Is modern hardware really this efficient or did Acer, you know, end up down sizing the battery and throttling the GPU just to squeeze everything into Triton 500s small chassis ? Lets figure it out together.
Hiding in a clear sign
Some predators stalk their prey quietly out of sight. Acer’s Triton 500 Predator takes a different approach. It hides on your desk and relies on its nondescript style to help it pass unnoticed.
That doesn’t mean it’s bad. No – that will attract attention. Triton 500 is just generic. Its flat, dark green exterior offers a few flourishes. A repeating pattern of geometric shapes and the speaker, repeated on the rear fan vents, is almost Laptop-like to make a statement. I can easily imagine this laptop being sold with the Asus, MSI, or Gigabyte badge.
While the Acer Predator Triton 500 might not have that big style vibe, the whole setup is still pretty workable and it ships with a lot of the modern niceties gamers usually ask for. It is thin , and yeah, pretty light too like they said, and you get that slim-bezel display layout which keeps the footprint kind of small-ish. The webcam is up at the top where it belongs, and the keyboard , well it gives you plenty of breathing space.
It’s only a hair bigger and weighs half a pound more than the Dell XPS 15.
Connectivity is also a high point. You might expect a slim profile to mean fewer options, but the Acer Predator Triton 500 has three USB-A 3.1 ports, a USB-C 3.0/Thunderbolt three jack, mini-DisplayPort, HDMI, and headphone and audio jacks. There’s even a full-size Ethernet port. It’s a bunch of great options that put most laptops today to shame.
The gentle appearance and abundance of ports make me wonder if Acer is trying to please gamers who also want a workstation. The Razer Blade features popular laptops that can last all day and play all night, and this new Predator Triton 500 can fill that role too. It would look ridiculous in a meeting and have the connectivity needed to replace a desktop workstation.
An important ingredient
This quaint professional vibe continues with the keyboard. With the LED backlighting, it still feels like it misses that usual gaming laptop vibe, you know, like per-key LED color tuning , or mechanical key switches. Instead, the Acer Predator Triton 500 only gives you basic three-zone lighting, sort of plain, kinda flat, and honestly thats about it. Many gamers will likely find that a disappointment, and we think that, considering its hardware and price, the Predator Triton 500 should include a more sophisticated, and honestly more eye catching keyboard backlighting setup.
However, if you can get past that, you’ll come to enjoy a simple and comfortable keyboard. A spacious layout and multi-travel and bottom-up trigger keys feel instantly soft and defined. I immediately felt comfortable using it. The only quirks include small function keys (didn’t bother me) and a small right Shift key (did).
Touchpad-themed so far. It’s functional and interesting but doesn’t stand out from the crowd in size or features. Competitors like the Razer Blade seem to give a better touchpad situation overall, mostly because the touchpad surface is bigger, but i personally thought the Triton 500 stayed perfectly responsive. It even runs with Windows Precision Touchpad drivers, so multi touch gestures are actually used properly
A display that is honestly not that surprising
The Acer Predator Triton 500 comes with a 1080p G-Sync panel set to 144Hz, instead of opting for a higher resolution screen with a slower refresh rate. Whether that choice lands well or not depends on what you actually play. If you’re into first person shooters, you’ll likely enjoy the extra flexibility, but if you’re more of a Civilization player, you might prefer the sharper presence and feel you get from 1440p, or heck even a 4K panel.
Resolution is only one part of the equation, however. Quality is at least important.
The Triton 500 didn’t blow us away. It looks good and does so while providing a dim display that’s easy to enjoy even in a brightly lit room.
Our test results show that the Predator Triton 500 is at least on par with its main rival or maybe even a bit more, who knows. The contrast ratio comes in at 910:1 , which is better than the Razer Blade 15 we reviewed, and it sits just behind the Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX701. Color gamut and color accuracy also match the competition.
I’ve noticed a strange result – the gamma is 2.5. That means the image is a bit darker than it should be. That resulted in noticeable shadowing in some scenes. It can even be a problem for competitive gamers because you may not see enemies in the dark visible on other laptops. However, gamma can be adjusted in software or most games, so that’s not an unsolvable problem.
My impressions sorta match the test results. Acer’s Triton 500 Predator didn’t really blow me away, but honestly, the picture quality feels solid. It seems to shine most in colorful, lively games like Fortnite, where good contrast and accurate color help everything pop, you know. Graphics stand out more in those moments.
Acer Predator Triton 500 PT515-52-73L3 Gaming Laptop, Intel i7-10750H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, 15.6″ FHD NVIDIA G-SYNC Display, 300Hz, 16GB Dual-Channel DDR4, 512GB NVMe SSD, RGB Backlit KB: Buy it now
Acer Predator Triton 500 PT515-52-73L3 Gaming Laptop, Intel i7-10750H, 15.6″ FHD 300Hz NVIDIA G-SYNC Display, 64GB DDR4 RAM, 2048GB PCIE SSD, RGB Backlit KB, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER, Woov Sleeve: Buy it now
Did you hear anything?
An upward-facing speaker system is located above the keyboard of the Acer Predator Triton 500. It provides a direct, unobstructed path to your ears. The sound quality is crisp but severely lacking. The maximum volume is low, which is fine. External speakers or a good gaming headset will be your best bet.
Core i7-8750H is expected to be fast.
Acer ships the Acer Predator Triton 500 with the usual Intel Core i7-8750H, it’s a 6 core, 12 thread chip with a top turbo burst clock of 4.1 GHz. A lot of gaming laptops seem to lean on this exact processor, with the obvious holdouts showing up mostly under $1,000 and also over $2,500. Our review unit came with 16GB RAM, though Acer also offers a 32GB version. But honestly, you really don’t need 32GB for gaming, not most of the time anyway.
The Predator Triton 500 has benchmark results for the processor that kinda fade into the background, like other laptops. For example, the Geekbench multi-core score of 19,263 (from four multi core results) is behind the Lenovo Legion Y740 or Asus ROG Zephyrus S. Still, it edges out the Razer Blade (2019), so it’s not totally bleak.
When we ran Handbrake for video conversion, it didn’t really just flip the whole narrative. The Acer Predator Triton 500 took 155 seconds to transcode a 4K trailer from h.264 to h.265. That’s slower than Asus and Lenovo, and still it manages to stay ahead of the Razer Blade.
In gameplay, the Acer Predator Triton 500 cleared 60 frames per second in basically every title except Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. So there’s that.
Overall this is kinda disappointing, sure. But it also helps to remember the Triton 500 is a more compact machine than the Legion Y740 (which is thicker), and Asus ROG Zephyrus S, packs a 17 inch panel. So it feels less bulky, even if the results aren’t perfect. The Razer Blade is the closest match here, Acer still managed to beat it, at least in this group.
We also ran a 512 GB SSD through Crystal Disk Mark and yeah it landed at read speeds of 1,337 megabytes per second (MB/s) and write speeds around 1,058 MB/s. Most competitors feel a little quicker , mainly because they lean on Samsung 970-series NVMe parts. On this one Acer went with a Western Digital SN720 NVMe drive and honestly it doesn’t keep pace. It is still speedy, just not in the same league as the better setups.
(Almost) 60 FPS in each game
The base Acer Predator Triton 500 typically starts at $1,800, and it ships with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU. But in our upgraded review model we got an RTX 2080 Max-Q instead. That pushes well past the price tag, going up to as much as $2,500, though thats kind of expected for a laptop carrying Nvidia’s flagship graphics chip. So lets see how that translates in 3DMark.
In Time Spy, the Acer Predator Triton 500 cleared a score of 6,930. That’s pretty solid , and it easily outmuscles other 15-inch laptops with RTX 2070 Max-Q silicon, like the Razer Blade and Lenovo. 15-inch Y740 Cors.
Still, the Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX701 pulled ahead with a score of 7,944 compared to the Acer. So, it’s a minor snag, since it too uses RTX 2080 Max-Q. Acer is going to have to sharpen its real-world gaming performance if it wants to stay competitive and not fall behind.
The Acer Predator Triton 500’s Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q, did turn in a powerful output, although it can be a bit muddled at times when you look at the benchmarks. Its main rival during our testing session was the Asus Zephyrus S GX701, a 17-inch machine using the same RTX 2080 Max-Q, but with a higher $3,300 price… so, yeah, not exactly apples to apples. Still, the Triton 500 kinda keeps up with it, landing a small win in games like Battlefield V, and Civilization VI but then falling short in Fortnite , and ending up in a virtual draw in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. Overall that’s a pretty good outcome for Acer since it sells for a shocking $700 less than the Asus Zephyrus S GX701.
So, the main takeaway is this: the Acer Predator Triton 500 hit an average above 60 frames per second in every title except Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey set to extreme detail, where it came in just under the mark at about 57 fps. Obviously this means you may not fully exploit the 144Hz G-Sync display, but the gameplay still feels fluid, even when you’re pushing through the most demanding games currently on sale. For a thin laptop that’s (relatively) affordable too, that’s honestly impressive.
G-Sync and battery life, it really does reduce it.
With the Acer Predator Triton 500 , the presence of G-Sync cuts battery life during everyday use , mainly because G-Sync does not play nice with Optimus switchable graphics. So the Nvidia RTX 2080 Max-Q chip is basically always awake and drawing power. Similar to a few other models, like the Asus Zephyrus, a software toggle can be used to turn off G-Sync and bring Optimus back. It works, but you usually need a system reboot first, so in practice it’s not exactly convenient.
Battery life in stock settings (Optimus off) is pretty bad. Even the video loop doesn’t take a four-hour break. Most modern laptops easily exceed eight hours in that test.
With that said, the battery life is better than the worst laptops we’ve seen. Our Acer Predator Triton 500 kinda managed about three hours, in the web browsing benchmark only , but the Lenovo Legion Y740 15-inch and the Asus Zephyrus S GX701 didn’t quite reach an hour and a half, honestly it was even under that.
The Optimus switch exists, but it’s a real hassle to use. It’s nice to see Acer offering an alternative display option that lowers G-Sync but increases resolution. Even a 4K display is capable of delivering battery life results that beat what we see here.
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Tech Reviewer & Product Analyst
Định Bia has spent over 10 years testing consumer electronics with a focus on smart technology. He work as a product advisor at Biareview where he helped customers find the right devices for their needs. He personally tests every product featured on this site using a consistent evaluation framework covering quality, durability, and value. All reviews are based on experience, not influenced by the manufacturer.