A revamp of last year’s model, the 2024 update to the Helios Neo 16 ($1,699.99 as tested) upgrades almost every component inside the chassis of this 16-inch gaming laptop. An Intel Core i7-14700HX processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics chip, and 32GB of memory make this a consummate midrange gamer, but some trade-offs found in the original have grown more noticeable here. The Helios Neo has sacrificed even more battery life and portability for a higher-fidelity experience, which may concern gamers on the go. While the Helios Neo 16 falls short of an Editors' Choice award, it's priced competitively with the award-winning, 16-inch Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 9, and is a solid alternative to that machine if you'll work and play mostly plugged in.

Design & Configurations: The Screen's the Thing

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 comes in the single configuration we tested, though you'll find a different model that uses a screen with a lower resolution and refresh rate. The laptop is priced reasonably well at $1,699.99, almost half the cost of the larger Acer Predator Helios 18 we reviewed two months prior. This price includes the aforementioned Intel Core i7-14700HX CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU. Buoyed by that generous 32GB of RAM, both components should be capable of running modern titles at the laptop's 1600p display resolution.

The Helios Neo 16 was built to be imposing, much like its namesake. It stands at 1.28 by 14.1 by 11 (HWD) inches, weighs just shy of 6 pounds, and has a 16:10 display ratio. I have trouble carrying it in a standard laptop bag, a more common gripe as more laptops adopt the 16:10 display ratio, and it might be a concern if you’re gaming on the go.

After seeing this display, you might be willing to ignore the laptop's reduction in portability, as the 2,560-by-1,600 IPS display is beautiful. The screen hits the perfect balance for gaming, with decent color coverage and a 240Hz panel for higher frame rates in competitive games. While an RTX 4070 isn’t today's top-of-the-line mobile GPU, it can run games at the 2K resolution the monitor allows.

The Helios Neo 16 was built with gaming in mind down to its port selection. Along the left edge, you'll find an Ethernet jack, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, a microSD card slot, and a combo microphone/headphone jack. The right side has two USB 3.2 ports, one supporting charging while the laptop is on. You'll also find a Kensington cable-lockdown slot by the far corner of the housing.

The laptop's rear edge has a charging port, an HDMI out, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports. Massive exhaust vents that keep the internals cool flank these ports.

Acer claims its fifth generation of internal fans (which the company has dubbed AeroBlade) keeps the laptop 55% cooler than ordinary fans. You can see the fans from the bottom housing of the laptop, as practically half of the surface area is an intake grille.

Sure enough, I didn’t notice excessive heat from the laptop, even under heavy load. Exhaust fans on each side of the laptop blow a decent amount of hot air, a concern if you use an external mouse. Although you'll still hear a decent amount of noise from the internal fans, it isn't enough to distract from gaming, and the included software can adjust fan speeds.

Using the Acer Predator Helios 16: Fine Enough Inputs, But Bring Along a Mouse

The keyboard shares a standard layout with the Alienware m16 R2, a truncated 100% layout. But Acer uses a standard scissor-switch membrane-style design, whereas the m16 R2 uses a Cherry MX keyboard. My quick Monkeytype typing speed test yielded a score of 71 words per minute, so you'll have no trouble typing on the keyboard, but using it while gaming is a different story.

While the touchpad is responsive, I found that the pad sits a little too close to the left side of the lower frame, making gaming with the WASD keys a tad awkward. Since you need to bring your arms in close to use both the keyboard and touchpad simultaneously, this can lead to some muscle strain, which wasn't comfortable in my day-in, day-out trials.

If you’re gaming on a 240Hz display, you’d want to use an external mouse with the precision to take advantage of higher polling rates, anyway. A mouse with a higher polling rate (the number of signals a peripheral sends to the host computer per second) will feel more responsive on a monitor with a higher refresh rate.

Software: Move Over, Spider-Sense, I Have 'PredatorSense'

Acer’s software utility, PredatorSense, is a comprehensive program that can control more system functions than you might think. While many users consider control utilities like these simple bloatware, you'll find some neat uses for PredatorSense.

Whether you search for it through the Windows taskbar or use the dedicated utility key, you’ll open a control utility that lets you monitor fan speeds, control the keyboard RGB, and set power settings.

The laptop has a set of preconfigured power settings for different use cases. Say you're working on some schoolwork at a coffee shop or the library; enabling the Quiet setting will lower fan speeds. When you're done with work for the day and want to play some games at max settings, set the laptop to Turbo and let the fans roar for optimal frame rates.

Testing the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16: Narrowly Missing the Bull's-Eye

The Helios Neo 16 has some fairly decent specs powering it, which are all but the standard for midrange gaming laptops nowadays. Below, we’ll compare the Helios Neo 16 with similar-size laptops, specifically the Alienware m16 R2 ($1,849.99 as tested), the HP Omen Transcend 16 ($2,959.99 as tested), and the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 9 ($1,999.99 as tested). The Lenovo is our current Editors' Choice award holder for 16-inch gaming laptops.

We've also included the Razer Blade 16 ($4,199 as tested) in our comparisons, the only system in our lineup with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 (versus the RTX 4070 in our other comparison systems). We include the Blade 16 to compare its chip with the 14th Gen HX CPU in the Helios Neo 16; otherwise, we only have the Legion 7i as a 14th Gen HX example.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.

Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene. At the same time, Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. (Lower times are better on that test.)

Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems. It uses Adobe's famous image editor, Creative Cloud version 22, to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes various general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks, from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

If we’re talking strictly numbers, the Helios Neo 16 held its own, ranking second in most of our productivity tests. The HandBrake test saw the Helios Neo 16 rank first place just behind the HP Omen Transcend. Although the Helios Neo 16 has a lower-grade CPU than the Legion and the Blade, it also features some intense cooling (and more thermal headroom due to its size) to help push the CPU a bit harder than usual.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We run both synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks for gaming laptops and other mobile gaming hardware. The former includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark suite: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). 

The cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5 comes next, which we use to gauge OpenGL performance. These GFXBench tests are rendered offscreen to accommodate different native display resolutions; more frames per second (fps) means higher performance.

Our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege. These three games—all benchmarked at 1080p resolution—represent simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive/esports shooter games, respectively. Valhalla and Siege are run twice (Valhalla at Medium and Ultra quality, Siege at Low and Ultra quality). In contrast, F1 2021 is run once at Ultra quality settings and, for Nvidia GeForce RTX-based systems, a second time with Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing turned on.

The Helios Neo 16 returned some respectable numbers in our graphics tests, but not enough to excite us. The Helios Neo 16 is game-worthy, easily surpassing 60fps in most games we threw at it, as did every other system. But the Helios Neo 16 barely surpassed or equaled the HP Omen Transcend.

Ultimately, the Helios Neo 16 is a midrange system meant to play most games decently, but it will struggle to run anything more. In practical tests, we got stable performance running Starfield at 1080p, hitting more than 100fps in Akila City, one of the denser worlds available. When we bumped the resolution up to 1600p, we hit around 50fps on ultra settings. That's undoubtedly playable but not optimal, considering the screen's high refresh rate.

Battery and Display Tests

We test laptop battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. Before the test, we ensure the battery is fully charged, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

Additionally, we use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the panel can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

The Helios Neo 16 was not the brightest of our selected systems, but it held its own against the other IPS screens listed here. Color coverage was also expectedly decent here, second only to the HP Omen Transcend 16. Battery life took a significant hit in the Helios Neo's move to 1600p and a more power-hungry GPU, though, with the laptop lasting only a bit longer than three hours on our battery tests. Expect that already short runtime to be brief and brutal if actually gaming on battery. The battery brevity could be down, in part, to the laptop's high-intensity cooling solution, but the combination of a high-powered CPU and a high-resolution screen surely contribute, too.

Verdict: Less Predator, More Loyal Hound

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 isn’t marketed as a performance beast of a gaming machine, although its name and build might suggest otherwise. Its battery life is lacking, and its performance is just on par for its components. But if we consider the price-to-performance ratio, it’s possible to recommend this year's Helios Neo 16 as an alternative to the Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 9—as long as you don't take it very far from a power outlet.