When buying a gaming laptop, there are always compromises to be made. Some laptops have the components you want, but have mediocre displays. Others have the power you need but weigh 14 pounds; the Acer Predator Triton 500 tries to offer the best of both worlds with an RTX 2080 Max-Q in a lightweight chassis and a 300Hz IPS display that rivals the Razer Blade 15 The company is trying to offer the best of both worlds.

That said, aside from a few component updates, there are no major design changes from last year's model. To be fair, it is a heck of an upgrade. This review sample is an absolute beast with a 10th generation Intel Core i7 10750H CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and an Nvidia RTX 2080 Super with Max-Q design.

At about $2,600, the Triton 500 is touted as a powerful premium laptop that doesn't weigh as much as a cement block to get the job done. You can opt for a less expensive model starting at $1,700 with a 512GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, and an RTX 2060, but with the CPU performance and 300Hz display intact, it's not a bad option, although the GPU may seem a bit lacking at this price. [At just 0.7 inches thick and weighing less than 5 pounds, Acer manages to pack a lot into this thin and sleek chassis, including three USB 3.0 ports, USB-C, HDMI, and DisplayPort Acer's Triton 500 is always fresh and It walks the line between fresh and professional, but if you're seen using it in public, the Predator logo will let you know you're using it to play video games, not to write reports or talk shit on Twitter. It would.

I would have liked to see a model that offered a 1440p (or even 4K) display, but the 15.6-inch, 1080p IPS panel itself is a gorgeous, bright screen, incredibly fast, and more importantly, capable of 300Hz refresh rates. 300Hz screen may seem a bit overkill, but don't let anyone who plays Valorant or Call of Duty: Warzone competitively tell you otherwise.

It's hard to tell the difference over 240Hz, but given the hardware capabilities, it's nice to have this option. That said, it was hard to go back to playing Call of Duty on a 120Hz monitor after living in a buttery smooth world at 300Hz. The IPS panel technology also provides a good color gamut, which is useful for those who edit photos and videos and need proper color accuracy.

The Triton 500's battery lasted about 77 minutes for just over an hour of gaming. While not surprising considering the hardware under the hood, this is a bit disappointing due to the extremely portable nature of the Triton 500. While it has the scale and power required of a high-end gaming laptop, all of that is moot if the uptime is less than 90 minutes. For this reason, keep the power adapter within easy reach.

The Triton 500 is packing heat in terms of gaming performance, both figuratively and literally. At Metro Exodus, we recorded 61 fps at high settings with DLSS and ray tracing turned on. This is higher than its closest competitor in size, power, and price, the Razer Blade 15. It also outperformed many gaming benchmarks, hitting nearly 100 fps in Far Cry New Dawn and 112 fps in Gears Tactics. Thus, playing most of your favorite games at their highest settings should not be too much of a problem.

However, this is going to be loud, so invest in a good pair of headphones; it's still quiet compared to a workstation like the MSI Titan, but it gets crazy hot while running. You can feel it getting hot while typing, which is an odd but concerning sensation. You can fight the high temperatures by pressing the laptop's Turbo button (essentially an overclocking button).

In terms of performance, games such as "Resident Evil 2 Remake" and "Gears Tactics" showed a slight increase in frames per second, while "Tom Clancy's Division 2," which normally runs at 75 fps, jumped to 87 fps jumped up to 87 fps, a significant performance improvement. A more important application was heat reduction, which was especially powerful when temperatures reached triple digits Fahrenheit.

The Acer Predator Triton 500 is a decent gaming laptop that won't disappoint if you only want power and plug-to-plug portability. However, the Triton 500 is not a perfect gaming laptop due to its short battery life, loud fan, and high heat.