Acer Predator Triton 500 SE review: A refined powerhouse for work and play

Acer is one of those laptop manufacturers that often tries too hard to stand out. Consider the Predator Triton 900, a wild machine with a 360-degree rotating screen that I found mostly useless. Earlier this month, Acer also announced plans to bring its SpatiaLabs glasses-free 3D technology to gaming laptops. Ambitious swings are fun and all, but these days I’m more interested in notebooks that are subtle about their gaming prowess. And after testing the Predator Triton 500 SE for the past week, I’ve learned that Acer can do that pretty well.

The Triton 500 SE has all the power you’d expect from a large gaming notebook, in a sleek metal frame that wouldn’t look out of place in a stuffy office or lecture room. There’s little need for bright LEDs (other than the keyboard backlight, which you can always turn off), or other annoying bling. It is ready to go to work. And sure, it’s not the only subtle gaming notebook out there, but competitors like the Razer Blade cost more than the Triton’s $2,300 starting price.

What sets the Triton 500 SE apart from your typical productivity laptop, aside from the powerful hardware, is its glorious 16-inch display. It has a 16:10 aspect ratio, making it slightly larger than typical widescreen displays and more convenient for handling documents. Our test device came with the 240 Hz WQXGA model (at 2,560 by 1,600 pixels), which in my book is the ideal balance between sharpness and silky refreshment. There’s no HDR support, but at least it offers a relatively high brightness of 500 nits, as well as full coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut. And while the screen is a major reason the Triton weighs a whopping 5.3 pounds, that’s still better than most 17-inch gaming notebooks (the Razer Blade 17 clocks in at 5.5 pounds).

That glorious display is powered by Intel’s 12th-generation processors and NVIDIA’s latest RTX 30-series GPUs, all the way down to the drool-worthy RTX 3080 Ti. The unit we received featured that GPU, as well as Intel’s top-of-the-line Core i9 12900H, 32GB LPDDR5 RAM, and a fast 1TB NVMe SSD. Frankly, it was that configuration that inspired me to review the Triton 500 SE in the first place. I was wondering if this humble notebook can really satisfy gamers? Turns out, Yes†

Halo Infinite, for example, reached a solid 85 fps at the Triton’s native resolution at ultragraphics settings. While I missed the HDR and expansive view I’ve become accustomed to on the Alienware QD-OLED ultra-wide monitor, I was amazed at how immersive the game felt on a 16-inch screen. You can thank the higher aspect ratio of 16:10 for that – at times it felt like I was about to dive in with my head Halo Infinite’s Cards. (That could also be a sign that I need to make my desk a bit more ergonomic for laptops.) The 240Hz screen also sparkled when I lowered the game’s graphics settings to achieve higher frame rates. I’m still not completely sold on such a fast refresh rate, but it’s nice to see laptop makers pushing for smoother and more realistic gameplay.

Gearheads will likely appreciate the Triton 500 SE’s built-in overclocking capabilities. Acer’s software makes it easy to adjust clock speeds and thermal profiles. Personally, however, I was just happy with a simple “Turbo” button on the keyboard. It turns the fans all the way up and overclocks the system automatically. In Halo Infinite and all the benchmarks I ran usually resulted in an 8 to 10 percent improvement in performance. The big downside? It’s so loud you probably wouldn’t want to use it without headphones.

Even without overclocking, the Triton 500 SE destroyed any benchmarks we threw at it, delivering performance that was largely on par with the Razer Blade 15. There were a few instances where the Razer advanced, such as in PCMark 10 and Geekbench 5’s Compute test. (which mainly emphasizes the GPU). But in others, including Cinebench R23 and 3DMark’s Port Royal ray tracing benchmark, the Triton had a commanding lead. In part, that’s because our review unit has a slightly faster 12th-generation processor. Hit that Turbo switch and the Triton’s numbers go up even higher.

NVIDIA’s Advanced Optimus feature, which intelligently swaps the Triton’s GPU between integrated and discrete graphics, also worked flawlessly during my testing. I haven’t seen a single performance issue with older Optimus machines, where discrete GPUs had to be squeezed through integrated graphics. There’s also a MUX switch that allows you to manually switch between both GPUs without rebooting the entire system.

After a few hours of benchmarking and playing several games, the Triton 500 SE stayed relatively cool. The CPU typically hovered around 78 Celsius under load, while the GPU reached 83 Celsius. It never felt warm, although it’s worth noting that I was testing in my cold basement. Fan noise was about what I’d expect with the Triton’s default performance settings – audible, but not nearly as annoying as cranking them all the way up with the Turbo button.

But while Acer got the cooling and overall performance good, it’s a shame some of the Triton 500 SE’s hardware holds it back. The keyboard is fine for gaming, but I’d like more feedback for long typing sessions. And while I appreciated the large and smooth trackpad, the actual click mechanism felt stiff – it was particularly bad at registering right clicks. I’m also not a fan of having a fingerprint sensor right on the trackpad, as it often gets in the way as I swipe around. Just stick that sensor on the power button or throw in a Windows Hello webcam already! I’d also like to see Acer bundle more than just a pair of tinny stereo speakers, especially since Razer, Dell, and others cram a lot more drivers into their notebooks.

Battery life is another disappointment, although I suppose we’ve gotten used to that in high-performance gaming laptops. The Triton 500 SE lasted five hours and twenty-five minutes in our benchmark, looping an HD video. That’s 17 minutes less than the Razer Blade 15. During my normal workday, it usually took about five hours to recharge. Unfortunately, that’s typical of large screen gaming laptops. You never want to be too far from a plug.

Still, I can imagine that most people want to keep their workstations plugged in for the best performance. Acer has also included all the ports you need to turn it into a true workstation, including two USB 3.2 Type A connections, dual USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, Ethernet and an SD card slot. And thankfully, Acer hasn’t ditched the headphone jack, which is something more laptop manufacturers are doing these days.

The Acer Predator Triton 500 SE starts at $2,300, which is $200 less than the Razer Blade 15 with 12th Gen Intel chips and $400 less than the most recent Blade 17. Be prepared to spend $3,000 if you have all the hardware from our review unit (still cheaper than comparable machines from Razer and others). But if you can live with last year’s 11th-gen Intel chips, you can also find older Triton 500 SE models for $2,000 and less. However, we recommend doing whatever it takes to get a 12th generation chip as the performance difference is huge.

In any case, the Triton 500 SE proves that Acer does more than just chase gaming. After years of being known for producing cheap and straight forward laptops, it’s nice to see that Acer can make a sophisticated gaming notebook without unnecessary bling.