Acer Predator Triton 500 laptop review: Superstar

Among the competitors of the Predator Triton 500 are other 15-inch laptops with a hexa-core CPU and the (old) GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU like the MSI GS65 Stealth 9SG, the Razer Blade 15 and the Alienware m15 R2. These laptops appear in the tables as comparison devices.

Since the chassis has remained the same except for minor details (missing lettering on the lid, a bit less ventilation slots on the bottom), we won't go again into the case, the ports and the input devices in this article. You'll find the respective information in the review of the (previous) predecessor.

While the 2019 models had to make do with a 144 Hz display (also very fast), the new Triton 500 - as mentioned at the beginning - trumps with a 300 Hz display. However, the change from 144 Hz to 300 Hz is subjectively much less noticeable than the change from a 60 Hz to a 144 Hz monitor, which is why buyers of last year's version shouldn't be too sad, especially as there are no advantages in terms of the measured response times.

The color space, on the other hand, doesn't deserve any criticism. 99% of sRGB and 66% of AdobeRGB are more than enough for a gaming laptop.

The Predator Triton 500 clearly belongs to the high-end segment. As long as you don't connect a QHD or 4K display, the 15-incher should have enough (gaming) power for the next few years.

As is known from most laptops, the CPU speed drops a bit with longer use. However, the almost 6% performance loss that the Triton 500 showed in our Cinebench loop is bearable with such a compact and slim device. Other gaming laptops have a much stronger drop in performance here (e.g. the Razer Blade 15).

Depending on the comparison device, the Core i7-10750H sprints a good 10 to 20% past the Core i7-9750H in multi-core benchmarks, which corresponds to the usual performance gains in a new Intel generation.

The Triton 500 showed no abnormalities in system performance. With a total score of 5,484 points, the 15-incher makes itself comfortable between the Alienware m15 R2 (5,374 points) and the MSI GS65 Stealth 9SG (5,725 points) in the PCMark 10 test. The operating system reacts very quickly thanks to the PCIe SSD and keeps loading times and program launches pleasantly short.

An M.2 SSD from Samsung is built into the test device as a mass storage device. The extremely popular PM981a MZVLB512HBJQ 512 GB model cuts a very good figure in both writing and reading. The SSD RAID of the Alienware m15 R2 can only stand out to a limited extent.

The GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q differs from the old Max-Q version primarily in terms of the number of shaders. Instead of 2,944 CUDA processing units, the successor has 3,072 CUDA cores, which slightly increases performance. There are hardly any changes in the clock speeds. The GDDR6 video memory is once again 8 GB in size and uses a 256-bit interface. More details about the graphics accelerator can be found in our performance article and our GPU article.

As expected, the Triton 500 pulls a little ahead of the comparison devices in the graphics benchmarks. While the Alienware m15 R2 can still keep up quite well, the Razer Blade 15 and the MSI GS65 9SG fall behind by more than 10% at times in the 3DMark tests. This is probably mainly related to the Turbo utilization, which varies greatly depending on the cooling system. In the case of the Triton 500, we were able to draw about 1,400 MHz from the RTX 2080 Super Max-Q in 3D applications.

In the sixty-minute test with the role-playing game The Witcher 3 (1920x1080, Ultra settings), there were no nasty surprises. The frame rate remained quite constant the whole time. No performance drops or other problems could be found.

When using the native resolution of 1920x1080, the RTX 2080 Super Max-Q is fast enough to fire up all modern games smoothly with maximum details. Only extremely demanding titles like Anno 1800 and Red Dead Redemption 2 push the frame rate below the 60 FPS mark. Otherwise, the 300 Hz screen usually comes into its own.

By the way, if you want a particularly smooth/clean image, you can go from the Optimus graphics-switching solution to the G-Sync image-enhancing technology within the BIOS or in the Predator Sense tool.

The Triton 500 reveals weaknesses especially in terms of noise development. Analogous to many other gaming laptops, the 15-incher gets very loud under load. An average of 48 dB(A) in games almost forces you to use a headset. For comparison: The competition ranges between 45 and 49 dB(A) here.

In idle mode, the background noise draws little criticism. Although the fans aren't always off, a base sound level of around 33 dB(A) shouldn't disturb most buyers. It's rather rare for the fans to turn up unnecessarily or in an annoying way. 

As usual, it gets considerably warmer inside the case. The sixty-minute stress test with the FurMark and Prime95 tools brought the GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q to just over 70 °C (~158 °F), whereas the Core i7-10750H settled between 80 °C (~176 °F) and 90 °C (~194 °F). As you can see on the first screenshot, the values in The Witcher 3 were similar. Throttling, i.e. a reduction of speeds to below the base clock speed, didn't occur with the CPU or the GPU under load.

In view of the performance offered, the energy requirement is kept within limits. Thanks to graphics switching, the Triton 500 only consumes 11 to 25 watts in idle mode. When the Nvidia GPU turns on under load, the consumption increases to 95 to 211 watts. The power adapter is of sufficient capacity with 230 watts. Typical RTX 2080 laptops (without Max-Q) usually require a 330-watt power supply.

The runtimes are definitely respectable for a high-end laptop. Slightly more than 6 hours of internet surfing via WLAN with medium display brightness don't need to hide behind the competition. The 84 Wh battery manages over 8 hours under ideal conditions (no load, low display brightness). Meanwhile, you can only expect a runtime of about 1 hour at maximum brightness in everyday gaming use.