Acer Launches New Predator Helios Neo 18 with RTX 5080 and Ultra Efficient Panther Lake Helios Neo 16S Alongside Budget Friendly Nitro V 15 Refresh
Acer has refreshed its gaming laptop line up in Europe and the UK with several hardware upgrades. There is a high end version of the 18 inch Predator Helios Neo, an ultra efficient 16 inch Intel Panther Lake, and a 15 inch Nitro V refresh. New silicon from Intel and Nvidia appear in models across the laptop market aimed at portable gamers.
The Predator Helios Neo 18 Flagship Configuration
The Predator Helios Neo 18 receives an upgrade and a step up in performance over previous versions in this line up with the arrival of the Core Ultra 9 290HX+ from Intel. Performance data benchmarks that these latest CPUs deliver roughly 7% more CPU performance than the 275HX found in prior models. Graphics handling is up to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU, with a TGP of 115 W and 140 W possible via Dynamic Boost.
The Predator Helios Neo 18 display lacks Mini LED found on higher spec versions but is a 18 inch fast IPS panel with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 and refresh rate of 240 Hz. It boasts a 3 ms response time, 100% DCI P3 color coverage, and a peak brightness of 500 nits. The configuration has 32 GB of RAM and 1TB of solid state storage. This specification is listed on the UK website for £3,499.
High Efficiency Predator Helios Neo 16S
Users looking for something more power efficient will want to consider the refresh to the Predator Helios Neo 16S. First shown at CES the model now has Intel's Panther Lake CPUs as an option and available in certain European countries. Users will have the Core Ultra 9 386H CPU in this model. The latest benchmarks showed the Panther Lake chips are no match for the powerful Core HX variants on the CPU front but they offer considerable power efficiency in return.
Acer says the battery in the laptop gives up to 15 hours under light usage using the 76 Wh battery capacity which is over double the amount given by previous models with Intel Core HX chips. The Official Acer websites in France showed the model in two variants, the base model with a 165 Hz OLED display and a RTX 5060 graphics chip and 32 GB of RAM, costing 2799 euros, while the more expensive model at 2899 euros came with an RTX 5070 and a 115 W TGP, both having 1 TB of solid state storage.
Budget Friendly Nitro V 15 Refresh
Entry level gamers get an updated Nitro V 15 notebook with Intel's Raptor Lake Refresh chip generation. The CPU used is the Intel Core 9 270H chip and this represents a significant upgrade from the previous chip used as its a 14 cores, 20 thread design with 6 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores compared to the older, 8 cores, 12 thread design. Graphics will come in the form of a RTX 5050 or RTX 5060 with both being 75 W TGP graphics cards.
The display will be the same as previous versions, an 18 inch IPS screen with 1920x1080 native resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio. The refresh rate on the display will be 165 Hz. The refresh has an outdated DDR4 RAM and has been kept cheap in the configuration by the inclusion of 16GB of memory, a 512 GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, and a 76 WH battery. The price in the UK for this specification starts at £1699, while the price across Europe is between 1799 and 1899 Euros depending on what country you are buying it from. Buying the more expensive GPU, the RTX 5060, adds 100 Euros to the total cost resulting in a final price of 1999 Euros in select parts of the EU.
