Acer Boosts Its Nitro And Predator Gaming Laptops For 2024: Here's What's New

Acer may just be the most prolific exhibitor at CES 2024. Besides coming up with updated editions of its Swift and Aspire-series laptops, the Taiwanese company is also using this year's CES as a launchpad for its updated lineup of gaming-focused notebooks from the Predator and Nitro series. 

Because Acer already has a wide variety of Predator and Nitro-series laptops in its existing lineup, the newly announced machines with similar sounding names might be confusing for several users. Acer has introduced a total of five new gaming laptops as part of this product refresh: Of these five gaming machines, four products — Predator Helios 18 (PH18-72), Predator Helios 16 (PH16-72), Predator Helios Neo 16 (PHN16-72), and Acer Nitro 17 are upgrades to already existing machines with the same names (but different model numbers). What is entirely new with this lineup is the Predator Helios Neo 18 model, which did not exist prior to 2024.

In case you haven't already guessed, the single most important change to the brand-new and four updated models is the addition of Intel's newest 14th generation Intel chips as processor options.

The Acer Predator Helios 18 (PH18-72) is the top-of-the-line, feature-loaded, and priciest of the gaming notebooks announced by Acer at CES 2024. While it shares a lot of components from its predecessor, this machine gets the newer Intel Core i9 14900HX processor, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, support for 4TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs, and an 18-inch mini-LED display.

Moving on to the Helios 16 (PH16-72), this one is identical to the aforementioned Helios 18 model in all aspects save for the smaller 16 inch display. There's also the option to opt for a more affordable Intel Core i7-14700HX processor, as well as the NVIDIA RTX 4080 GPU instead. Both the 18-inch and 16-inch variants look almost identical to their predecessors from 2023. One difference is the 2024 models thanks to a bigger and RGB illuminated Predator logo on the lid of the machines.

The displays on both machines share the same 16:10 aspect ratio, boast a resolution of 2560x1600 pixels, and support a 250 Hz refresh rate. They also come with a 90 Wh battery and support up to 32GB of DDR5 memory.

The Helios 16 (PH16-72) will be the first of these two gaming notebooks to go on sale in North America — available across the U.S. starting later this January, with a starting price of $1,899.99. Those looking forward to buying the Helios 18 (PH18-72) will need to wait until March 2024, and is slightly more expensive at $1,999.99.

Until 2023, Acer only sold the Predator Helios Neo series in a 16-inch form factor. That changes in 2024 with the arrival of the new Helios Neo 18 models, which makes its debut alongside the 2024 edition of the 16-inch Helios Neo models.

For 2024, the 16-inch models get several upgrades, including the option to upgrade to Intel's Core i9-14900HX processor, support for up to 32GB of memory, 2TB of NVMe SSD in RAID 0, and better graphics with an RTX 4070. In addition to the top of the line Core i9-14900HX option, the Predator Helios Neo 16 will also be offered with a plethora of Intel's 14th Gen Core i7 and Core i5 processors. These machines also feature a 16-inch, 16:10, 240Hz, IPS LCD panel.

Acer

As for the Predator Helios Neo 18, it gets the same display specs as its 16-inch counterpart, with the only difference being the size of the display itself. The processor options for the Helios Neo 18 are identical to that of the Neo 16 models, and the supported 14th Gen chips include Intel Core i9 14900HX, i7-14700HX, i7-14650HX, i5-14500HX, and i5-14450HX. These machines also support up to 32GB of DDR5 memory, the option of an NVIDIA RTX 4070 graphics card, and up to 2TB of storage using a PCIe Gen 4 SSD in RAID 0 configuration.