Got a hankering for a laptop that brings the brute force of the desktop-class AMD Ryzen 7 2700, all eight cores and 16 threads of it, and a beefy AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 with 8GB of HBM2 memory packed into one not-so-slim chassis?
Amazon's got you covered on Amazon Prime Day with the Acer Predator Helios 500, which is on sale for only $1,649, a savings of $260 off of the $1,910 regular price.
- Acer Predator Helios 500 Gaming Laptop with Ryzen 7 2700 CPU, Radeon RX 56 GPU for $1,639 (reg $1,910)
The Ryzen 7 2700 comes with a 65W TDP to push its peak 4.3 GHz boost clock speed, but that requires robust cooling. That comes in the form of a dual-fan cooling system with all-metal AeroBlade 3D fans paired with five heat pipes, but when we reviewed the Predator Helios 500, we found it surprisingly quiet.
Acer also managed to stuff in 16GB of DDR4-2666 memory and a 256GB NVMe SSD, so this laptop comes with the full complement of desktop-class features. All of this raw power drives a 17.3-inch 1080p resolution panel that runs from 60 to 144 Hz and supports FreeSync. The 9-pound chassis also has three USB 3.0 Type-A ports and two USB-C ports, separate mic and headphone jacks and HDMI and DisplayPort connections.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that the Helios 500 features shockingly low battery life that we clocked at all of 90 minutes, but that's expected for this laptop/desktop hybrid. You can also update this behemoth with more storage and memory, but unfortunately, you can't drop in a Threadripper processor. That's about the only way you could find more performance inside an AMD laptop at this point, and we'd like to issue Acer a call to action on that front: We want Threadripper.
All kidding aside, the Acer Helios 500 is a surprisingly well-engineered beast of a laptop, and if you need enough raw horsepower for video rendering on the go or desktop-class gaming, the Helios 500 is a good solution. Just don't stray too far from a power plug.
For more savings, check out our list of best Amazon Prime Day deals and best pc hardware deals overall as well as dedicated lists of current sales on ssds, cpus, gpus, gaming laptops and Raspberry Pi stuff.
