Acer Predator 17 Gaming Laptop Review

Will the Acer Predator 17 catch its prey? We put this gaming laptop through its paces.

By Alexander Quejado
published

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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.

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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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Alexander Quejado
9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Better than Surface Book or Surface Pro.
    Reply
  • jaber2
    Wait what? its not 4K, why bother
    Reply
  • anbello262
    19303029 said:
    Wait what? its not 4K, why bother

    4k notebooks that run games at ultra at high enough fps are quite rare and quite a lot more expensive.
    If you want 4k for stuff that isn't gaming, then you should look elsewhere, as this one is not the best monitor available, and why would you pay for a gtx1070 if not gaming?

    If you game at 1440 or 1080, then no point in getting a 4k monitor, as it will consume more power that will be wasted (ledd battery life).

    So, please elaborate on your statement.
    Reply
  • Papatom
    This one lost me on 17" FullHD panel.
    Aside from that, I didn't see any redeeming feature of this product.
    Reply
  • 19302626 said:
    Better than Surface Book or Surface Pro.
    One is a desktop replacement gaming laptop, the others are convertible ultrabooks with pen support.
    They serve completely different markets.

    Might as well say "a Boeing 737 is better than a Cessna 400"...
    Reply
  • ledhead11
    The interesting thing to see here is that a standard 1070 doesn't quite cut it for solid 60fps even with G-Sync on Ultra. Still, not a bad laptop but needs about $300 off the price tag to be really competitive.

    Edit: I also wanted to say thank you for a nice review but also ask if possible to maybe update the game review suite with some more recent games such as Battlefield 1, Resident Evil 7, Watchdogs or perhaps just slightly older like Doom, Witcher 3. Those first 3 games are often mentioned in threads by either people trying their first builds or looking for gaming laptops. I have a number of the older games, they're awesome and demanding, but it'd be nice to see how new tech matches with more recent games.
    Reply
  • pbug56
    When specifying wifi, please actually specify the wifi; antenna count, top 'speed', etc.
    Reply
  • chenw
    I would see 1080p as a major plus, not a minus (I treat 4k panels on laptops as a minus, because even with an 1080 I would not run it at 4k, let alone a 1070).

    But being only 75hz is a major minus, I would have expected a 120hz panel instead.
    Reply
  • beaulieu80
    With all the new hardware that use less power for cpu and GPU, this makes rethink of what I should buy for my next build. Tower or Laptop.
    Reply