RTX 4070-powered gaming laptop with 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a hi-res 3072 x 1920 display on sale for only $1,249

(Image credit: Future)

If you're a gamer who likes to take your gaming away from the desktop setup occasionally, this deal provides you with a mobile gaming platform that can still run the latest games, is easily transportable, and has a high-resolution screen and powerful components.

You can find this deal at B&H Photo, where the 14.5-inch Acer Predator Helios Neo is reduced to $1,249 — a $600 reduction from the original $1,849 list price. You might not be able to easily get your hands on a desktop graphics card of any type, but if you're desperate to upgrade, a gaming laptop is the next best thing.

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 14 is a powerful little bundle with high-end specs and plenty of pokes to add longevity to this gaming laptop. The 14.5-inch IPS screen boasts a 3072 x 1920 pixel count with high pixel density, and inside the chassis of the laptop are the following components: An Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU, Intel Core Ultra 9-185H processor, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

We've tested and reviewed the Acer Predator Helios Neo 14 and found it to have solid gaming performance, quiet fans while gaming, and good battery life - important for a portable gaming machine. Negatives of this laptop include weak speakers, a lack of tactile feedback on the keyboard, and non-upgradable RAM. Luckily, this model comes with 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and should be adequate for some time.

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Stewart Bendle is a deals and coupon writer at Tom's Hardware. A firm believer in “Bang for the buck” Stewart likes to research the best prices and coupon codes for hardware and build PCs that have a great price for performance ratio.

20 Comments Comment from the forums

Roland Of Gilead

Definitely worthy of a spin. The 4070 is woefully inadequate at native, but dropping back a little would get good FPS, and with DLSS 4 and FG, it's still a great gamer.
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Alvar "Miles" Udell

It's been on deal for the last couple of weeks at that price, I've been tempted to get it but I'm waiting to see if it dips under $1000. You can also chalk up a fairly middling battery life number as well, think THs review said about 8 hours, and only a single M.2 slot so storage upgrades will come at a higher cost.
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Notton

FYI, the RTX 4070 mobile is an 8GB card and performs like a desktop 4060Ti/8GB.
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Alvar "Miles" Udell

Notton said:
FYI, the RTX 4070 mobile is an 8GB card and performs like a desktop 4060Ti/8GB.
It's 8% slower than a desktop 4070Ti per notebookcheck, it's closer to a Radeon 6650XT
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Pierce2623

Alvar Miles Udell said:
It's 8% slower than a desktop 4070Ti per notebookcheck, it's closer to a Radeon 6650XT
A 4060ti with a lower TDP is exactly what it is. With 16GB it’s be fairly impressive as a laptop part. The big L2s on ADA go a long way to reduce pressure on the memory bus just like the “infinity cache” does on AMD’s last few generations.
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mikegtx

I don't understand why Tom's keeps pushing "deals" that don't seem that great. $1,249 for an 14" screen, medium performance CPU and memory than can't be upgraded?

For the exact same price that this 14" 16-core no-RAM-upgrade laptop cost, I bought a few months ago from B&H the 18" version of this same laptop family with the much faster 24-core 14900HX. It has an 4060 instead of 4070, but Acer is running it at the same TDP as the 4070, so the performance is fairly close and VRAM is identical in size. The 18" screen has a lower dpi than the 14", but the memory in the machine is upgradable! Officially it can be upgraded to 64 GB, unofficially to 96 GB using 48 GB SODIMMs.

PassMark CPU scores:
Intel Core Ultra 9 185H - 3,706 single core / 29,470 multi-core.
Intel Core i9 14900HX - 4,300 single core / 45,500 multi-core.

Sadly, B&H is no longer selling the 18" version I bought, but it might still be available from other retailers.

Only advantage I can see for the 14" model is you will definitely get better battery life with the smaller screen and more power-efficient CPU - and of course it is several pounds lighter.
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Alvar "Miles" Udell

mikegtx said:
I don't understand why Tom's keeps pushing "deals" that don't seem that great. $1,249 for an 14" screen, medium performance CPU and memory than can't be upgraded?

For the exact same price that this 14" 16-core no-RAM-upgrade laptop cost, I bought a few months ago from B&H the 18" version of this same laptop family with the much faster 24-core 14900HX. It has an 4060 instead of 4070, but Acer is running it at the same TDP as the 4070, so the performance is fairly close and VRAM is identical in size. The 18" screen has a lower dpi than the 14", but the memory in the machine is upgradable! Officially it can be upgraded to 64 GB, unofficially to 96 GB using 48 GB SODIMMs.

PassMark CPU scores:
Intel Core Ultra 9 185H - 3,706 single core / 29,470 multi-core.
Intel Core i9 14900HX - 4,300 single core / 45,500 multi-core.

Sadly, B&H is no longer selling the 18" version I bought, but it might still be available from other retailers.

Only advantage I can see for the 14" model is you will definitely get better battery life with the smaller screen and more power-efficient CPU - and of course it is several pounds lighter.

They're targeting different markets. This Acer is targeting people who value portability, battery life, and acoustics.

Meanwhile they are also selling the Lenovo Legion 5i with the higher performance 14900HX and RTX 4060M for $1199.99, that's only 1lb heavier, has upgradable RAM and a second M.2 slot, bigger and brighter screen with a higher refresh rate,

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1811269-REG/lenovo_83dg00agus_16_legion_5_laptop.html
But the tradeoff is a lower battery life, higher weight, and ~12% slower GPU.

PC World rated the Lenovo at just over 5 hours of battery life, Laptopmag rated the Acer Helion for near 9 hours of battery.

So yeah, in a rare case of me defending TH I'd say TH is right to promote this Acer as a deal at $1250 even though it is 21% slower single core and 42% slower multicore (Cinebench 2024) than a 14900HX powered laptop like the Lenovo Legion 5i.
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mikegtx

Alvar Miles Udell said:
So yeah, in a rare case of me defending TH I'd say TH is right to promote this Acer as a deal at $1250 even though it is 21% slower single core and 42% slower multicore (Cinebench 2024) than a 14900HX powered laptop like the Lenovo Legion 5i.

Sorry to disagree, but TH is clearly not "right" here. The sub-headline of the article is "This small build hides big power!" - which it certainly does not. The CPU is anemic compared to what you can get in other laptops for the same money and the memory is non-upgradable. It should be noted here that the Intel CPU in question supports both non-upgradable and upgradable memory configurations - Acer unfortunately chose to use the consumer-unfriendly no-upgrade version with this model. They also chose to include only one Thunderbolt port - in this price range, you usually get at least 2.
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Alvar "Miles" Udell

mikegtx said:
Sorry to disagree, but TH is clearly not "right" here. The sub-headline of the article is "This small build hides big power!" - which it certainly does not. The CPU is anemic compared to what you can get in other laptops for the same money and the memory is non-upgradable. It should be noted here that the Intel CPU in question supports both non-upgradable and upgradable memory configurations - Acer unfortunately chose to use the consumer-unfriendly no-upgrade version with this model. They also chose to include only one Thunderbolt port - in this price range, you usually get at least 2.
Journalistic hyperbole aside, how many other laptops for this price, on sale or otherwise, have this kind of performance, battery life, and display specs? The MacBook Air maybe.
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DingusDog

14.5 is an odd size personally I wouldn't go lower than 16 on a gaming laptop. Nice specs for the price though.
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