Acer Predator Helios 500 PH517-52 Review

The Acer Predator Helios 500 PH517-52 is powered by the 8 Core/ 16 Thread processor the 11th Gen Intel Core i9 11980HK and 16 GB VRAM. Other key specs include 64GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, 2TB of SSD and a 17.3 Inch 60 Hz display.

Design and Build Quality

The Acer Predator Helios 500 (PH517-52) is on the far heavy side of the spectrum weighing at around 4 kg which could have been lighter but we do not see any issue with that given the fact that the laptop is made of durable material and it is surely bulky and thick but is quite sturdy. It has thin bezels, the hinges are smooth and you can open the lid with one hand. The Acer Predator Helios 500 (PH517-52) is full of RGB lights on the keyboard and on the backside of the display, even the logo of The predator along with two stripes on each side has RGB lighting.

Keyboard and Trackpad

The Acer Predator Helios 500 (PH517-52) has a really nice backlit keyboard, a separate num pad, and large arrow keys. The key travel distance is decent and the keys have great clicky feedback to them. Acer has introduced something called ‘MagForce’ keys with linear switch technology for this particular laptop. With 256 levels of pressure detection, you can gradually increase your movements in the game depending on the pressure you put on keys, which is great for gamers as not only it would increase the response time but also has great feedback as an analog trigger from the gamepad would have.

Ports

The Acer Predator Helios 500 (PH517-52) supports Thunderbolt 4 connectivity and has not 1 but 2 power plugs on the rear side of the laptop. You will find two Thunderbolt 4 connectors, a USB type-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, a mini-display port 1.4 and an HDMI 2.1 connector on the left side of the laptop. On the right-hand side, you can spot 2 audio jacks for input and output, a Gigabit LAN port and two more USB type-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports.

Display

The Acer Predator Helios 500 (PH517-52) comes with a 17.3-inch Full HD 1920×1080 IPS panel with a refresh rate of 300Hz, a brightness of 300 nits, and a pixel density of 127 PPI. The display has 97% sRGB coverage which not only makes it great for gamers but also great for content creators.

Upgradability

When it comes to upgrading RAM, the laptop has two SO-DIMM DDR5 RAM modules. The device also has good options for upgrading storage, it has two M.2 PCIe x4 Gen 4 slots and a 2.5-inch SATA Slot for SSD/HDD Expansion.

Battery Life

The Acer Predator Helios 500 (PH517-52) comes with a 74Wh battery pack which is fairly decent for gaming laptops in this price range and can provide enough power to this beast.

What in the box?

The Acer Predator Helios 500 (PH517-52) comes with not one but two 330W power adapters, a set of WASD and Arrow keys along with a manual for the device.