Acer's decision to combine an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 with a 12th generation Intel chip may seem a bit unhinged; it's not often we recommend a laptop with an RTX 3060 for more than £1,000, and we're not sure we'll be able to find a laptop with a GeForce RTX 3060 for that price.

Happily, the Predator Helios 300 (PH317-56-79UB) we were sent has an impressive 140W GPU under the hood, and the 14-core, 20-thread Intel CPU Acer chose from Intel's 12th-generation lineup The Predator Helios 300's strong hardware tag didn't quite convince us of its allocated price, but the addition of a fast, high-capacity SSD, 16GB of dual-channel DDR5 memory, and a smooth 1440p screen makes this configuration more attractive than the price.

Some tweaking of settings will be necessary to get the most out of the 165Hz refresh rate panel, especially at 1440p. Even out of the box, it is clear that this laptop has the potential to push frame rates well into 1080p gaming.

For our tests, we chose a similarly priced Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (open in new tab) gaming laptop and an Asus TUF Gaming A15 (open in new tab) to compare with the Helios. Both have AMD Ryzen 9 5800H CPUs and Nvidia RTX 3070s, and the TUF's GPU is only 95W. the Razer Blade 14 (open in new tab) comes in a bit more expensive than the others, but it has a Ryzen 9 5900HX with 1440p panel and 100W RTX 3060 because it is somewhat similar to the Helios configuration.

"Conclusion" Despite being between the TUF and Blade in terms of price, Helios manages to beat all three in both synthetic and real-world GPU benchmarks.

As for slightly older games like F1 2020, it manages to break the 165 fps barrier even on Ultra settings. With a few tweaks, it is easy to achieve frame rates above 165 fps and get the most out of the panel in many of today's games.

When it comes to ray tracing, Helios dominated all three of the 3DMark Port Royal synthetic performance benchmarks, nearly doubling the Razer Blade's score, but falling behind the Legion in the ray tracing test. [But even with Nvidia's DLSS turned on, it's clear that the 140W RTX 3060 has a hard time matching the RTX 3070 in real-world ray-tracing performance, especially when faced with an intensive game like Metro. [As for the Intel Core i7 12700H's contribution to gaming performance, a CPU-focused Dartmoor benchmark of Hitman 3 revealed that it outperformed the Legion 5 Pro by 30 frames per second. 3DMarkTimespy's CPU score was 13,. 452, well ahead of the list of comparable laptops, and the CPU also shows its performance in rendering: the Core i7 12700H's multi-core performance is spectacular, and it does a great job in video encoding, averaging 55 fps, which is 41 to 44 fps, which was higher than the competition's 41-44 fps.

Unfortunately, however, the Core i7 12700H is not the most efficient mobile CPU in Intel's 12th generation lineup, and coupled with the 140W RTX 3060, battery life is put under considerable strain.

What is impressive, however, is that the power has not reached its thermal limit: the CPU maxes out at 85°C and the GPU at less than 80°C. It's not bad at all compared to other laptops in this price range, and if you feel it's getting a little too hot, you can always hit the turbo button in the upper left corner of the keyboard. Suddenly it rises to between 68 and 75 decibels, but if you put your hand on the bottom for half a minute, you can feel the chassis cool down. Perfect for that moment of panic when you realize you've covered the exhaust and need to remedy the accumulated heat.

And it's not just the CPU/GPU combo that's banging, Acer's decision to add a 1TB Gen4 Samsung NVMe SSD (opens in new tab) is much appreciated. In terms of speed, the actual load time is just over 10 seconds, which is far better than the laptops I'm comparing it to; loading Cities Skylines, along with 10,000 mods, didn't take as long as it did to go make a cup of tea.

As for RAM, the Acer has 16GB of dual-channel DDR5 memory, and in our SiSoft Sandra tests we found a whopping 41.52GB/s of bandwidth. This provides a lot of leeway when it comes to multitasking and is practically supersonic compared to comparable laptops.

The machine is relatively chunky, but not so much that it takes up a desk. It's easy to lift with one hand, but a bit of a challenge to fit in a backpack; it's not as slim as the Razer Blade, but its thickness makes it a good conductor of heat. With a slight upgrade to the backpack, it could happily be carried to and from work.

The only problem with using it at work is a problem the Razer Blade also suffers from. It has a tacky, gamey logo (sorry Acer) plastered on the back of an otherwise gorgeous chassis. The metallic blue is nice and subtle. The edges are a little sharp to sit on your actual lap, but it's still a nifty, very portable machine.

As for peripherals and ports, the addition of Thunderbolt 4 and a USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 port is nice. I am very pleased with the high position of the included 2.1 MP camera and the fact that it runs at 60 Hz. For once a high quality webcam on a gaming laptop is not right up my nose.

I don't like the feel of the keyboard, but at least it's full-sized; having spent a lot of time checking out press samples of US keyboards and laptops, I'm also happy to use a lappy with a UK keyboard layout. But there is one major drawback: availability in the US.

The closest configuration I could find in the US comes with only a 144Hz 1080p screen and half the SSD storage, and generally sells for around $1,800, which I don't understand. Basically, I would not recommend this machine to anyone in the US. Sorry, but if you are looking to buy a decent gaming laptop in the UK, this machine is a killer. What makes this machine worth buying is the 1440p panel and the powerful configuration, everything else is just icing on the cake.