Acer Predator Triton 500 SE 2022 Review

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE Review

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Table of Contents

8.2 TOTAL SCORE

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE 2022

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The Acer Predator Triton 500 SE is a great gaming laptop that is just almost near perfection thanks to it's minimal and clean design and decent battery life along with an amazing display. However its top of the line components are hampered by poor power management that hold the Triton 500 SE 2022 back.

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Performance 7
Build Quality 9
Display 10
Battery Life 7
Ports & Connectivity 8
PROS
  • Amazing display
  • Decent battery life
  • Great build quality and clean design
CONS
  • GPU is not performing at their fullest
  • Speakers are just average
  • Expanding storage and RAM is a bit of a chore

Specs at Glance

CPU: Intel Core i9 12900H | GPU: RTX 3080t 16GB 125W  | RAM: 32GB LPDDR5 | Display: 16” 2560×1600 240Hz | Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD | Battery: 99.9Wh | OS: Windows 11

The Acer Predator Triton 500 SE means business with its hefty price tag and maxed-out configuration. And it’s made for someone who wants a laptop that is powerful, similar to a high-end gaming PC but with the added advantage of portability and convenience. Making the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE perfect for a businessman that travels frequently and can comfortably carry this machine into business meetings thanks to its minimal design.

However, that certainly does not mean that the updated Acer Predator Triton 500 SE is flawless by any means. It manages to fall behind in comes cases compared to the competition, which we will discuss in detail as we go further with this review.

Sleek Chassis of the Predator Triton 500 SE

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE Metallic Chassis

 

Though this is an Acer laptop, the simplistic design language reminds me of the Dell XPS and Inspiron series. With its minimal silver chassis with a small logo on the upper middle side of the lid, the Predator Triton 500 SE prefers to be stealthy,

This design choice helps the Predator Triton 500 SE stand out from the competition, which often opts for a bold, gamer look that often features a sharp design dipped in the bucket of RGB. Like we said earlier in the beginning, the design of the Predator Triton 500 SE makes it perfect for someone who wants to use this laptop in a formal setting.

When it comes to weight, the Predator Triton 500 SE proves to be the lightest out of all the performance gaming laptops on the market. Coming at 2.9 kg (5.07lbs), the Predator Triton 500 SE beats the MSI Raider GE76 and ROG Scar 17, which weigh around 2.9 kg (6.39lbs) and 3.1 kg (6.84lbs), respectively. Moreover, it weighs  0.14 kg (0.31lbs) lighter than last year’s Triton 500 SE.

Although it’s slightly bigger than last year’s model, it still has a smaller footprint compared to 17-inch laptops like the ROG Scar 17 SE or the MSI Raider GE76, which are similar in price. The Predator Triton 500 SE is 14.11 inches (358.5mm) in length and 10.33 inches (262.4mm) while also being 0.78 inches (19.9mm) thick. Overall, the Triton 500 SE has a very usable form factor.

The I/O Ports on the Predator Triton 500 SE are Unsurprising

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE I/O Ports

 

The I/O Ports on the Predator Triton 500 SE are on par with the gaming laptops

with similar specs. On the left side, it features an SD card slot, USB 3.2 Type-A port, USB C 3.2 Thunderbolt 4 port, and HDMI 2.1 port. On the right side, it has a charging port. An ethernet port, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, a USB C 3.2 Thunderbolt 4 port, and an audio combo jack.

The I/O ports cover everything. The thunderbolt 4 ports can come in handy when connecting multiple displays or high-speed networking NICs and the SD card slot is great for photographers who don’t want to carry a dongle with them.

Predator Triton 500 SE’s Acceptable Keyboard and Touchpad

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE Keyboard and Touchpad

Keyboard

The keyboard isn’t the greatest thing about the Predator Triton 500 SE. Though the keys are big and well spaced out, the low travel makes them feel shallow. And if you are someone like me who types with a little more force than usual, you would feel that you are mashing your fingers against a hard surface, which could potentially lead to your fingers fatiguing. I prefer the much more tactile and moderate travel keys of the ROG Scar 17 and the MSI Raider GE76, which made the typing experience quite fun.

But if your typing style includes light taps, then I guess you should be fine with its keyboard. What’s unusual about this laptop is that it took away your usual pg up and pg down buttons and integrated them into the arrow keys via the Fn key to saving some space. 

I like this approach as I have never used the pg up and down keys. However, if you use those keys frequently, you will probably have a worse typing experience.

Usually, you would find media keys placed on the top row. However, Acer opted to put them on the right column of the keyboard, so that will takes some getting used to. Also, the dedicated Predator Sense button is a bit unnecessary, in my opinion, but it’s whatever. It features 4 zone RGB backlit, we would have liked to see per-key RGB backlit similar to the ROG Scar 17, but it’s serviceable nonetheless.

Touchpad

The touchpad is as good, if not better, compared to the likes of the ROG Scar 17 and the MSI Raider GE76. It features a simple smooth silver finish that blends well with the rest of the chassis while feeling smooth to the touch. The touchpad feels great to swipe on with its accurate tracking, and it also manages to track all the swipes and gestures perfectly, we have no complaints here. It also features a fingerprint sensor on the top left side of the touchpad that is compatible with Windows Hello, which is a nice addition.

Great Webcam but Meh Speakers on the Predator Triton 500 SE

Upward firing laptop speakers

Webcam

The Predator Triton 500 SE webcam is one of the greatest in a gaming laptop. The 1080p webcam captures details fine and has excellent color reproduction. Though, like every webcam, it gets a bit grainy when you don’t give it enough light. 

The existence of a webcam is not something you can take for granted these days, especially considering some high-end laptops like the ROG Scar 17 don’t even bother including one.

Speakers

The speakers, on the other hand, are a different story. Considering the DTS logo on the top right side of the keyboard deck, you would expect some mind-blowing sound. However, the Predator Triton 500 SE speakers are as average as it gets. 

They lack bass and highs and only mids, which to their credit, sound crystal clear. Though what’s disappointing is that they don’t get loud enough. You will often reach for the volume slider only to find that they are maxed out. This is disappointing, considering laptops like the Razer Blade 17 provide excellent sound with decent bass and clear highs.

The Excellent Display on the Predator Triton 500 SE

Amazing display of Triton 500 SE

 

The display on the Predator Triton 500 SE is nothing but beautiful. The display can easily open up to 180 degrees and has solid hinges, so there’s no wobble when typing on the keyboard. The display is buttery smooth at 240Hz, which makes playing any FPS game delightful.

I also appreciate that Acer went with a 16:10 aspect ratio that helps cut down the bezels while giving more screen real estate, making the Predator Triton 500 SE great for working on Word documents.

As for the display color reproduction, it’s excellent. The display produces vibrant colors while having excellent contrast, allowing the blacks to be deep (though not as deep as an OLED panel) and making colors pop out. This is further backed up by it’s amazing brightness, allowing the display to max out at around 480nits.

It’s also excellent for color-sensitive creative work with its amazing color accuracy. It covers 100% of sRGB and 97.3% of DCI P3, and 84.9% of Adobe RGB. This is on par with MSI Raider GE76 color accuracy. However, the ROG Scar 17 SE falls a bit short compared to Triton 500 SE. 

Though, if you really want the higher 360Hz of the ROG Scar 17 SE, you would still be fine with it’s color accuracy.

Performance is good but not great enough on the Predator Triton 500 SE

CPU

The Core i9 12900H is a solid CPU that improves upon the last year’s Triton 500 SE’s 11th gen i9. The Alder Lake architecture gives this year’s i9 12900H a significant boost in performance compared to last year.

In Geekbench 5, single-core it got a score of 1748, which is 17% faster than last year, and in multi-core, it got 12460 which is 57% faster. Making this laptop great for any multi-threaded workload. 

A similar story can also be seen in Cinebench R23, where it scored 1743, 17% faster than last year, and in multi-core, it got 16887 which is 32% faster than the last year’s Triton 500 SE.

However, these scores get annihilated by the Asus ROG Scar 17 SE that packs in 12950HX, which is 16 core 24 threads beast that gets 2010 in single core and a staggering 23395 in Cinebench R23. which even beats the MSI Raider GE76 that has a Core i9 12900HX which has two more cores than the Core i9 12900H and hence is slightly faster.

GPU

The RTX 3080ti in the Triton 500 SE may look like the most powerful component; hence, you might expect it to outperform anything else available on the market. However, that is not the case here. The GPU is severely held back by its poor power budget, which prevents it from performing to its fullest.

Though the Triton 500 SE has a quad HD screen, we tested the games at 1080p to utilize the 240Hz display as much as possible. On 1080p at high settings, GTA V ran at 180 FPS, Witcher 3 ran at 255FPS, and SOTR ran at 143FPS while newer titles like RDR2 got 107FPS and Cyberpunk got 110FPS. This performance is quite impressive on paper. However, like we said earlier, the lackluster power budget old the RTX 3080ti back.

Due to this, competing laptops like the ROG Scar 17 and MSI Raider GE76 have the edge over the Triton 500 SE in some games. To give you an idea, the MSI Raider GE76 with a 170W RTX 3080ti got around 121FPS in RDR2, and in SOTR, it also got ahead of the Triton 500 SE slightly with 112FPS. So it’s sad to see that the power of this GPU is hampered by a poor power budget.

Predator Triton 500 SE’s Disappointing Battery Life

Despite having the biggest battery possible in a laptop, the 99.98 Wh battery is simply not enough to make this behemoth a full-day laptop. The Predator Triton 500 SE almost last 6 hours in basic usage, which is the price you have to pay for carrying a laptop with high-end components inside.

And the Predator Triton 500 SE is not alone with this sort of result. Gaming Laptops like the ROG Scar 17 and the MSI Raider GE76 have similar or worse battery life. That even struggles to reach the 5-hour mark in some use cases. 

Though if you want a high-end gaming laptop that can last you almost the entire day, you might want to consider something like the Gigabyte Aorus 5 SE4 that lasts around 8 hours while also packing great hardware inside.

Lackluster Expandability on the Predator Triton 500 SE 

Considering that the Predator Triton 500 SE is such a premium gaming laptop, you would come to expect the great expandability you can get. However, Acer completely disappoints us here by having both the 32GB RAM soldered. However, you can upgrade the 1TB SSD.

Although we should mention that getting to these components is hard since even after removing the base, they are covered under the metal sheet, so you would have to remove that too. Though the RAM is more than enough for games and productive work, I would have loved to see SODIMM slots instead of soldered RAM. 

And since being a high-end laptop, especially a gaming one, I would like to see all the options and features I could get for paying the premium.

Should you buy the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE?

Overall, this machine is solid, but compared to the competition, it does fall short in benchmarks and gaming performance due to the limited hardware. 

But suppose we were to look at the Predator Triton 500 SE as an entire package. In that case, it’s a great option to consider, especially if you want a crispy display and a simplistic chassis along with its respectable battery life.

 

Other options to consider

Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 SE

Asus ROG Strix Scar 17

Compared to the Triton 500 SE, the Scar 17 SE provides great performance thanks to the maxed-out specs and ample power budget that allows it to perform to its fullest. However, it suffered in providing great battery backup, as you would expect from a maxed-out gaming laptop. If you prefer the simplistic design of the Predator Triton 500 SE, you might find the RGB on the Scar 17 SE a bit too excessive. Also, it lacks a webcam so keep that in mind if you do zoom sessions frequently. But as long you prioritize performance over anything, the Scar 17 SE won’t disappoint you.

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MSI Raider GE76

MSI Raider GE76

Similar to the Scar 17 SE, the Raider GE76 is better in performance compared to the Trinton 500 SE, and unlike the Scar 17 SE, it even has a color-accurate and crispy display. And similar to the Scar 17 SE, it also features a bit excessive RGB lighting. The only gripe we have is the lackluster battery life. But overall, you can consider the MSI Raider GE76 if the Trinton 500 SE is out of stock.

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