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Price Analysis And Conclusion
Until now, we’ve only reviewed two gaming laptops featuring Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1070 GPU: the Asus G752VS OC Edition and the Gigabyte P37X v6. Both delivered excellent performance, but at a considerable price. Enter the Acer Predator.
Not only does the Acer Predator 17 outperform the P37X v6, it also gives the higher end G752VS OC Edition a serious run for its money. In our synthetic and productivity benchmarks, the Predator bests the P37X, especially in graphics-based metrics such as 3DMark and Cinebench’s OpenGL Shading test. Its largest downfall is its storage configuration—consisting of two 128GB LiteOn CV1s in RAID 0—which provides mediocre speeds comparatively.
Gaming is also where the Acer Predator 17 shines. It outperforms the P37X across the board and comes close to the G752VS OC Edition in most cases. Its hot-swap exhaust fan squeezes out the last drop of performance, pulling the Predator ahead of the Asus in a handful of scenarios. In The Division, the Predator actually outperforms the Asus without the help of the exhaust fan.
Speaking of cooling, the Acer expels heat more efficiently than any of the laptops in our test group.
The Predator 17 can spend all day flexing its muscles so long as it's plugged in. But our Predator comes up a bit short in our battery run-down test, just shy of one hour and 45 minutes, whereas the MSI GT73VR Titan Pro and both Gigabyte laptops come closer to two hours.
The Predator 17’s G-Sync-enabled display exhibits solid contrast at low and high brightness levels, although there's room for improvement. RGB balance is an issue, especially at higher brightness settings, and the display experiences a spike in gamma levels at around 90% brightness. The overall color errors were low, however, rivaling those of Gigabyte’s excellent laptop displays; grayscale accuracy wasn’t as impressive, however.
The Predator 17 wouldn’t be able to deliver as well as it does if not for its considerable bulk. With a chassis this large, Acer crams in a ton of performance and an efficient cooling solution without skimping on build quality. The benefits of owning such a large laptop come at the cost of, well, owning a large laptop. The Predator 17 is meant to be a desktop replacement that you can occasionally move around. Traveling or commuting with this 9.26-pound behemoth isn’t quite as ideal.
The Acer Predator 17 comes in at $2,000 MSRP as tested, which is considerable cheaper than either the Gigabyte P37X or the Asus G752. It doesn’t have the brilliant UHD display of the P37X, the CPU of the G752, or the rapid storage speed of either. It does, however, deliver just as much gaming power, and (at the time of publishing) it does so for $200 and $385 cheaper, respectively.
If you’re looking for a solid value in a GTX 1070 laptop, we’d recommend the Acer Predator 17.
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