Acer’s Predator Helios Neo 16S AI is a Windows 11 gaming laptop featuring a 16-inch WQXGA screen. The device is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5000-series GPU.
We were sent a top-of-the-range review sample with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX NPU-equipped processor and a 12GB Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti laptop GPU. It also features 32 GB of Samsung DDR5-6400 memory and two 1TB Micron M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSDs. As standard, this model (PHN16S-71-9871) usually comes with 1TB of storage, but, obviously, there’s room for expansion.
First impressions count, and what you get with the Helios Neo is a fairly thin, but sizable, laptop with a bit of weight to it. The screen is massive, and it has almost a full-sized keyboard. This is great if you are used to a desktop (like me) and find other laptops/notebooks a little too small to work comfortably with.
The laptop was running the latest build of Windows 11 Home (25H2). The Windows Hello-compatible camera means that it can be set up for facial recognition, so no more passwords or PINs.
The 2560 x1600 Nvidia G-Sync OLED display has a refresh rate of 240 Hz with 1MS response times and is VESA rated to HDR500. The large screen is a decent resolution for the size and has nice, deep blacks.
The laptop has plenty of connectivity options. There’s an RJ-45 socket for wired 5 Gigabit Ethernet on the left side of the laptop, complemented by Wi-Fi 6E wireless network support. The left side, alone, has a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) Type-A port, a MicroSD slot and a headphone jack. The right side has two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-A sockets, one with power-off charging. At the rear is the DC power jack, an HDMI 2.1 port, a Thunderbolt 4 (Type-C) port and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port with DC-in.
There is a mode switch at the top of the keyboard. This can be used to easily switch between quiet, balanced, performance and turbo modes when plugged in, or balanced and eco modes when on battery.
The laptop weighs in at 2.3 kgs, which is pretty average for a decent spec gaming laptop. It may be only 18.9mm thick, but with that wide screen, the laptop is just shy of 36mm x 27.5 mm in size.
The Arrow Lake Intel Core Ultra 9 (Series 2) 275HX is Intel’s flagship mobile processor. As well as being a high-performing CPU, the energy-efficient processor’s NPU (neural processing unit) provides back-end AI optimisations and conducts routine tasks, such as noise reduction in video calls. This leaves the CPU and GPU to do other things. But unless you are using software specifically designed to use the NPU, it’ll just be doing those background tasks.
The Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti GPU’s AI is another thing entirely. Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) has been a game-changer, giving games a performance boost that’s especially noticeable in otherwise underpowered gaming laptops. DLSS 4 brings even more to the table with RTX 5000-series exclusive features. Again, the RTX 5070 Ti is a top-tier mobile GPU that’ll bring your games to life.
Regardless of the above, this is a gaming laptop. Neither the mobile version of the Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU nor the RTX 5070 Ti perform at the same level as their desktop counterparts, so you need to be realistic when it comes to game performance. Still, I was pretty impressed by the device’s gaming performance, both in the benchmark score and the actual gameplay performance.
The laptop’s 3D Mark results were pretty good, performing slightly above what you’d expect for a decent gaming laptop when plugged into the mains, on par with a gaming desktop PC from 2023. With the laptop set to turbo mode, the Time Spy Extreme, Steel Nomad, Speedway and Port Royal benchmarks garnered scores of 7990, 3635, 4151 and 10378, respectively. Compare those with that of the new Asus ROG Xbox Ally X handheld gaming PC: 1912, 603, 594 and 2003, and you can see that the Predator laptop is a comparable gaming powerhouse.
The actual gaming performance backed up the decent 3D Mark benchmark scores. Sony’s Ghost of Tsushima ran smoothly with all the settings maxed out. The more recent Mafia: The Old Country performed very well, even with the settings cranked up. Revenge of the Savage Planet, another recent game, also performed very well on the laptop.
If you subscribe to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass and you have a decent Internet connection, you can also stream games via Xbox Cloud Gaming, just as you can on a mobile phone. This means you don’t have to install the game, nor do you have to worry about performance, with the game running on a remote server and the laptop just displaying the images. With a good connection, gaming this way works really well on the Helios Neo 16S AI.
Armed with an Intel Core Ultra 9 and an Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti, the laptop will not only sort out your gaming needs but also productivity applications, including video and image editing. Adobe Photoshop and Premiere both performed extremely well, and you’ll have no problems with MS Office apps like Word and Excel, either.
Acer’s Predator Helios Neo 16S AI laptop is a device that I’d happily use as a portable gaming platform and home-office PC. The large screen, comfortable keyboard and thin chassis all come together to provide versatile desktop PC performance at a size that easily fits in your bag.