What to expect: what are you looking for in a gaming laptop? If it’s a huge amount of energy, gorgeous displays and massive screens, take a look at what’s going on ahead of CES. Acer, Razer and Alienware are preparing new laptops with a diagonal of up to 18 inches and the just announced RTX 4000 mobile GPUs.
Starting with Acer, the company has just introduced new Predator Helios models with a screen diagonal of 16 and 18 inches. They are equipped with 16:10 displays, ultra-thin frames and a set of screen options, including a mini LED version with a frequency of 250 Hz.
The smaller Helios model is equipped with a display with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 and a refresh rate of 165 Hz or 240 Hz, and the choice of a mini LED panel increases it to 250 Hz. The 18-inch laptop has an additional option of 1920 x 1200 at 165 Hz.
Acer claims that the mini LED screen has three times the ambient contrast than conventional displays, 1000 local dimming zones and can reach more than 1000 nits at maximum brightness. It also has 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
The maximum use of these displays allows the Intel Core i7-13700HX or Core i9-13900HX 13th generation processor in combination with the just-announced RTX 40-series mobile GPU, which reaches the RTX 4080 GPU (165 watts). They are also equipped with up to 32 GB of DDR5 4800 MHz RAM and 2 TB of PCIe 4.0 NVMe solid-state drives.
Prices start at $1,649.99 for Helios 16 and $1,699.99 for Helios 18. Mini-LED models are expected to cost $2,799 and $2,999, respectively.
Like Acer, Razer is introducing new 16- and 18-inch laptops: the Blade 16 and Blade 18. Razer claims that the latter is the most powerful laptop in its history, while the smaller model has “more graphics per inch than any other 16-inch laptop.” on the market.” The laptops also use the new Intel Core i9 HX 13th generation processors with GPU variants, up to RTX 4090. Razer will reveal additional features as soon as CES officially starts tomorrow.
Finally, there is Alienware. A subsidiary of Dell has announced the return of its 18-inch gaming laptop, which was last seen in 2015, a month ago. Now the company has confirmed the M18, another massive laptop that can be equipped with Nvidia’s 13th generation Intel HX and RTX 4090 processors, although it can also be configured with AMD Ryzen processor and the latest Radeon GPUs.
The M18 has many other additional flagship features: a Cherry MX mechanical keyboard, a 165 Hz or 1080p 480 Hz QHD screen, and up to 9 TB of memory. Cooling of all this equipment is provided by a steam chamber covering the GPU and CPU, seven heat pipes and four fans. It also has a total system power of 250 watts. Entry-level models start at $2,099, and choosing more expensive features increases the starting price to $2,899. The company also produces x14 and x16 laptops with similar hardware options.
