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Acer Predator 17 G9-793-76Z1

Specifications

Acer Predator 17 G9-793-76Z1
Acer Predator 17 G9-793-76Z1 (Predator 17 Series)
Processor
Intel Core i7-6700HQ 4 x 2.6 - 3.5 GHz (Intel Core i7)
Graphics adapter
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile - 8 GB VRAM, GDDR5
Memory
16 GB 
, DDR4
Display
17.30 inch 16:9, 1920 x 1080 pixel 127 PPI, IPS, glossy: no
Storage
512 GB SSD
Connections
4 USB 3.0 / 3.1 Gen1, 1 HDMI, 1 DisplayPort
Networking
802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (a/b/g/n = Wi-Fi 4/ac = Wi-Fi 5/), Bluetooth 4.1
Optical drive
DVD +/- RW Double Layer
Size
height x width x depth (in mm): 40 x 423 x 321 ( = 1.57 x 16.65 x 12.64 in)
Battery
6000 mAh
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
Additional features
Keyboard Light: yes
Weight
4.35 kg ( = 153.44 oz / 9.59 pounds) ( = 0 oz / 0 pounds)

 

Pricecompare

Average Score: 80% - good
Average of 2 scores (from 2 reviews)
price: 45%, performance: 100%, features: - %, display: - % mobility: - %, workmanship: - %, ergonomy: - %, emissions: - %

Reviews for the Acer Predator 17 G9-793-76Z1

80% Acer Predator G9-793-76Z1 [TEST]: Rovdyr med fart på
Source: Alt om Data DA→EN Archive.org version
Single Review, online available, Very Short, Date: 05/31/2017
Rating: Total score: 80% price: 50% performance: 100%
80% Acer Predator [TEST]: Et rovdyr med taster og skærm
Source: Alt om Data DA→EN Archive.org version
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 02/23/2017
Rating: Total score: 80% price: 40% performance: 100%

Comment

Model:

As written on Hardware4All, Acer introduced their first gaming notebooks from the Predator family, which have been very successful on the gaming laptop market in 2015: “Now the Taiwanese manufacturer puts a line in the new generation of graphics card NVIDIA Pascal.” We are mentioning the Acer Predator 17 which is powered by the Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor in combination with the NVIDIA GTX 1070 discrete graphics card. Its name is fitting, since it actually is a monster: “Of all the big, red monsters that are the Acer Predator series of gaming laptops, this might be the biggest and reddest yet. The Predator 17 is a gargantuan top-of-the-line machine that, while sharing a broad design with the Predator 15, makes it look like a whelp” (TechRadar).

DESIGN

According to Hardware4All, the time when gaming laptops were thick and cumbersome lies in the past, and the design of modern gaming models is not aggressive: “Like MSI, Gigabyte and Clevo, Acer has chosen a relatively simple housing without frills.” LaptopMedia remarks that the overall appearance is largely the same with some little tweaks here and there, and because most of the connectors are positioned on the right side, it is a bit difficult to use the mouse on the right, especially when space is scarce. Starting from the top cover, TomsHardware writes in their review that the Acer Predator 17 features a matte-black rubberized plastic finish that is satisfying to the touch: “Although this sort of preference is subjective, the rubberized texture has the added bonus of being fingerprint and smudge resistant.” In addition, as UltrabookReview comments, the Acer Predator 17 is a massive and thick notebook with a soft plastic finish, similar to the older Asus ROG laptops of 2013 - 2015, which you might have seen around, as they were very popular in those days and still are today. Meanwhile, ComputerShopper says that the 16.7-inch width of the Predator 17’s body is normal for a notebook with a 17.3-inch screen, but its depth of 12.7 inches is almost two inches deeper than the average of its class. The reviewer considers that the 1.6 inches thick chassis is also formidable. This means Acer was not trying to keep the weight or the size of this notebook down. Following a remark of Hardware4All, as for the material, Acer has chosen plastic, but it is coated with a soft-touch material : “As a result, the plastic feels nice and expensive, and the strength of the body is good.”

DISPLAY

The Full-HD 17.3-inch IPS display outputting at 75Hz of the Acer Predator 17 “also features Nvidia’s G-Sync Technology, which should make lower frame rates more bearable. Additional displays can be connected from the HDMI and DisplayPorts” (quote from TomsHardware). Hardware4All reports that the Acer Predator 17 has a display with an IPS panel with a maximum brightness of about 326 cd/m2, which can be considered a good value. But illumination uniformity is not ideal. LaptopMedia also can not say anything bad about the almost flawless panel, since it inherited all the excellent properties they have seen in the previous version: “It covers all the colors from the sRGB and Adobe RGB color space, it’s extremely bright, it has high contrast, high resolution.” PCMag remarks that the display is also different: The Acer Predator 17 has a 17.3-inch IPS screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, which remains the best resolution for gaming right now. “The panel is bright and rich enough, with deep blacks and good contrast, the color coverage is excellent and the colors are quite accurate out of the box, plus the viewing angles are solid,” says UltrabookReview. ComputerShopper writes that they were by no means disappointed by the Predator 17’s 1080p display: “We would, however, like to see a 1440p display option available at some point, as the GeForce GTX 1070 is more than capable of driving that resolution.”

KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD

According to Hardware4All, the Acer Predator 17 has nice, large 16 x 16 mm keys and the distance between the keys is ideal - 4mm: “Of course, the course could be deeper but the switching point is well palpable. On this keyboard, you cannot only play, but also comfortable to type long texts.” The reviewer for TomsHardware thinks that the Predator’s scissor-switch keyboard features RGB backlighting that can be adjusted via the PredatorSense software: Most of the keycaps have plain white text, but the WASD and arrow keycaps are red. They also add: “There’s nothing special about the keyboard that sets it apart, but there isn’t anything to complain about either.” In UltrabookReview’s opinion, the keys are backlit with RGB lights and the layout is split in four different parts that can be backlit independently. There is still only one level of brightness intensity, though, and the overall brightness level is rather low. Meanwhile, ComputerShopper complains that their biggest nitpick is that the keyboard deck has Caps Lock or Num Lock LED indicators: “When you press either of those keys, however, an onscreen icon pops up to indicate the status.”

Hardware4All shows their evident opinion that the Acer Predator 17’s touchpad is not great: “It has highlighted the right and left mouse buttons, but they are too easy to press and with play, creating a feeling of sponges. The finger glides over the surface of the touchpad is not as easy as we would like. But the touchpad determines the movement exactly the same concerns and gestures multi-touch.” In contrast, TomsHardware does not have any complaints about the touchpad: The smooth, matte surface has very little friction, making for a comfortable tracking experience, especially with its multi-touch functions. Besides, the separate left and right click button have a bumpy tactile feedback and are also comfortable to use. According to UltrabookReview, the LED frame around the trackpad can be switched off by turning the keyboard illumination off or by deactivating the trackpad completely, but there is no way to just simply kill it independently. “That’s rather stupid if you ask me, but given this a gaming laptop and most of you will probably have a mouse connected anyway, let’s just say it is not a deal breaker,” says UltrabookReview’s reviewer.

PERFORMANCE

Inside the version of the Acer Predator 17 PCMag reviewed, there is a 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU, a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 GPU and 16GB of RAM. This is considered a potent mix for a mid-range gaming system. “Compared to last year’s Predator with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 chip, the Predator 17 shows a 30 to 70% boost in graphics related scores, which is also visible in games. Some of the test games are fairly demanding and you can see that the 1070 chip is going to offer an excellent 1080p experience and will handle 4K gaming quite well too, but you will have to lower details to some extent to get to 60 fps results” (UltrabookReview). Also, ComputerShopper comments that the Predator 17 has built-in GPU overclocking via the pre-installed Acer Predator Sense software and that the differences were not small for an automatic overclocking feature. Particularly, this page reports: “Using 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme, we measured a baseline overall score of 7269, which increased to 7666 when overclocked. That’s a respectable performance increase of just over 5 percent, all from a couple of mouse clicks.” As the results of Hardware4All’s performance tests show, the Acer Predator 17 does not have any problems with new games like “Grand Theft Auto 5”, “Dirt Rally”, “The Witcher 3” or “Shadow of Mordor” when the native resolution is limited to Full HD: Depending on the test, they received from 40 to 200 fps. “That said, there’s nothing wrong with having extra power, the GTX 1070 might be overkill for 1080p now, but we predict it won’t be a year or two down the line” (ComputerShopper).

THERMAL, AUDIO AND NOISE

Talking about heat issues, Hardware4All shows that under extreme load, the Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor reaches temperatures of up to 96°C, but they have not perceived any throttling when the CPU was at its maximum performance. The surface temperature of the top panel was 27°C, the temperature of the lower panel was 28°C. In LaptopMedia’s opinion, the temperatures remained relatively low considering the nature and the duration of the stress test: “This right and middle side of the notebook can get a little warmer but nothing that will take away the pleasure of long gaming sessions for sure.” Furthermore, according to UltrabookReview’s reviewer, the fans can ramp up significantly under load. He measured a maximum noise level of 52 dB at head level when pushing them to their maximum speeds, but we should only expect 48-50 dB in daily use while gaming, which is still loud and will probably push users to use headphones. “When it comes to the audio, Acer went with a 4.2 system here with a total power of 12W, and although the two subwoofers (placed on the belly, behind that red metallic shield) don’t really push a lot of bass, the overall sound coming out of the Predator is significantly nicer than most other laptops can provide,” remarks UltrabookReview.

BATTERY LIFE

The battery life Hardware4All measured does not live up to Acer’s claims in some tests: the battery lasted just over two hours. Using the machine for office tasks was better, the Predator 17 lasted for nearly five hours. As LaptopMedia writes, it is quite unlikely that we will start a gaming session without being close to a power source, but it is good to know that we can play for more than two hours and 7 minutes. Notwithstanding: “While no one would expect excellent battery life from a gaming laptop, the Predator 17 did fairly well. On our video rundown test, it lasted an impressive 4 hours, 44 minutes” (PCMag). Also, on a positive note, ComputerShopper comments that the Acer Predator 17’s large battery has helped it get a spot at the top of the charts: “Just shy of five hours is a good number for a 17.3 inch gaming notebook. The Nvidia G-Sync support on the display of our test unit mandates its GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card be in use the whole time, making the result even more notable.”

SUMMARY

“At the end of the day, the new Predator 17 with GTX 1070 is all about meaningful upgrades making the laptop more refined and delivering the ultimate user experience. There’s some still work to be done for the next generation but we hope Acer keeps up the pace and learn from its mistake,” LaptopMedia concludes. Regardless of some unexpected flaws, such as a not very good trackpad, heaviness, or even no internal graphics card, the Acer Predator 17 is still regarded as a great laptop. Some of its advantages include good performance, good hardware, a good keyboard, a simple but stylish design, and decent battery life. However, we still expect much more evolution or improvement of later versions of this series from Acer. Finally, in PCMag’s verdict: “This is a laptop for gamers who want the world to know that they are not ashamed of a strong, bold, red-and-black gamer aesthetic - but would rather not take out a mortgage to get a system that can deliver high-quality gaming or handle a VR headset.”

 

Press review by Capuchino Saber

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Mobile: Pascal based high-end mobile graphics card based on a cut down GP104 (like the GTX 1080) and GDDR5 graphics memory. Successor to the GTX 980M with a 10 Watts higher TDP. Similar to the desktop GTX 1070 performance wise, but with more shaders and lower clock speeds.

With these GPUs you are able to play modern and demanding games fluently at medium detail settings and HD resolution.

» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Graphics Cards and the corresponding Benchmark List.


Intel Core i7: The Intel Core i7 for laptops is based on the LG1156 Core i5/i7 CPU for desktops. The base clock speed of the CPUs is relatively low, but because of a huge Turbo mode, the cores can dynamically overclock to up to 3.2 GHz (920XM). Therefore, the CPU can be as fast as high clocked dual-core CPUs (using single threaded applications) but still offer the advantage of 4 cores. Because of the large TDP of 45 W / 55 W, the CPU is only intended for large laptops.  


6700HQ: Skylake-based quad-core processor for notebooks. Offers an integrated HD Graphics 530 GPU and is manufactured in 14 nm.» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Processsors.


17.30": This display size is a standard format for desktop replacements (DTR). The DTR laptops are heavier to carry, need more power, but texts are easy to read and high resolutions are no problem. DTR are mainly intended for stationary desk use, where weight and energy hunger don't matter. In return, you enjoy the advantages of high resolutions (more details, better legibility).» To find out how fine a display is, see our DPI List.


4.35 kg:

A laptop in this weight range is a heavyweight that you rarely carry around. This is meant for desktops and the devices tend to score with a large display and high performance and replace desktop devices.


Acer: In 1976, the company was founded in Taiwan under the name Multitech and was renamed Acer or Acer Group in 1987. The product range includes, for example, laptops, tablets, smartphones, desktops, monitors, TVs and computer peripherals. Since 2007, the group has merged with Gateway Inc. and Packard Bell, which also market their own laptop product lines.

Acer computers are designed for a variety of purposes, including ultrabooks for mobile use, gaming laptops for gamers, affordable options for everyday tasks, and 2-in-1 convertible laptops for versatility. Acer's product portfolio also includes tablets that offer portable computing and multimedia capabilities.


80%: This rating is not earth-shattering. This rating must actually be seen as average, since there are about as many devices with worse ratings as better ones. A purchase recommendation can only be seen with a lot of goodwill, unless it is about websites that generally rate strictly.


» Further information can be found in our Notebook Purchase Guide.

 

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Current Prices
Stefan Hinum, 2017-03-14 (Update: 2017-03-14)