Acer Predator Helios Neo 16S AI Review: A Super-Slim Gamer for a Light Price

We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The second pair, Steel Nomad’s regular and Light subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to Solar Bay to measure ray-tracing performance.

Our real-world gaming testing is based on the in-game benchmarks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at the system’s full HD (1080p or 1200p native) resolution—represent competitive shooters, open-world games, and simulation games, respectively. If the screen supports a higher resolution, we rerun the tests at the QHD equivalent of 1440p or 1600p. Each game is run at two sets of graphics settings per resolution, for up to four runs total on each game.

We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Minimum graphics preset—aimed at maximizing frame rates to test display refresh rates—and again at the Extreme preset. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs fully, so we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again at the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 represents our DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems) test, demonstrating a GPU’s capacity for frame-boosting upscaling technologies. The capacity of these frame-rate boosts changes with the version of frame-generation tech available, with DLSS 2 and 3 stitching in one AI-generated frame for every originally rendered frame, and the latest DLSS, DLSS 4, inserting up to three additional frames. (FSR can generate up to four new frames per original, while Intel’s XeSS can only stitch in one new frame per original frame.)

These results make it clear that Acer shaved off some of the RTX 5060’s graphics potential by squeezing it into the Helios Neo’s thin chassis. (It’s more obvious at 1600p resolution.) Using the normal performance settings laid out in our benchmarking regimen, the Helios Neo posted subpar graphics results for an RTX 5060. Noting that, we toggled the power settings to Turbo mode in the Predator app for the Helios Neo to produce the above numbers. The Helios Neo has less internal space than these rival models due to its thin-and-light design, which limits the volume and size of the cooling hardware. That means key components, namely the GPU in this case, must be dialed back to a lower peak power to avoid overheating.

The Helios Neo closely trailed the Aurora laptop in the synthetic 3D graphics tests, whereas the Lenovo laptops battled for first place on all of them. Moving to the gaming tests, we saw the Helios trail the other RTX 5060 laptops in F1 2024 across all resolutions. While the Helios Neo kept pace with the RTX 5060 crowd in Cyberpunk 2077, the game’s killer Ray-Tracing Overdrive preset crashed it at 1600p. (That said, neither of the Neo’s high-res competitors posted anything like playable frame rates on those settings.)

It’s notable that, despite its thin chassis putting a damper on frame rates, the Helios Neo outstripped the Legion in Call of Duty at both resolutions, if not by much. Meanwhile, the Aurora ran away with this benchmark. Overall, the trade-offs necessary to slim down a midrange 16-inch gaming laptop aren’t as big as we expected, but they are visible. It’s also important to remember that, while the Helios Neo features a gorgeous 240Hz display, we haven’t seen the RTX 5060 manage to run demanding games close to 240 frames per second—even at 1080p—in any laptop. This reality makes such a GPU/screen combination a questionable value for many AAA games, though esports hounds are willing to dial things down to extremes to max out frame rates.