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My Reviews Of Acer Predator Triton 300 Laptop

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My Context

  • I am no gamer.
  • I got this for my personal projects using Kubernates (requiring better CPU) and resume my journey of learning Deep Learning (requiring better GPU).
Note: Your mileage may vary depending on your context.

Pros

  1. Better looks with minimalist design that you can take it to office/school without it distracting others during your work.
  2. Better pricing than its competitors for its specs. It's closest competitor IMHO would be Dell G-series laptop.
  3. Build quality is sturdy with metal body.
  4. The keys on the keyboard are top-notch in that I like the touch-and-feel.
  5. The touch-pad is too good that you would start to hate other laptops for this purpose. 
  6. This is a gaming laptop with brilliant honeycomb venting for quicker heat dissipation. And it works! 
  7. Acer's Aeroblade technology promises better heat dissipation and so far it has been cool enough. 
  8. It supports Dual SSD plus One HDD. I have my Windows OS in SSD and data on HDD. My OS loads in about 5 seconds today with not many softwares installed and added to startup list thus slowing it down. 
  9. Default backlit keyboard with blue light (that can be customized) is pretty comforting to my hands that does a poor job in typing. 
  10. Higher screen refresh rate of 144 hz. This is not of any use to me though, given that I am not a gamer. 
  11. Full HD screen does come to your favor, for it reduces your eye-strain with its crystal clear clarity of smaller fonts instead of tearing it down. 
  12. It has got a killer wifi router supporting superior bandwidth performance. Should come to your rescue when you do screen sharing for your development work.
  13. The monitor lid is sturdier in comparison to its competitors where the lid might be a bit flimsy shaking. I think it's because of thicker bezels around the screen in this laptop that gives it the desired sturdiness that I wish it has to suit my handling.

Cons

  1. Built-in speaker sound quality is relatively feable and poor. 
  2. Keyboard layout is discomforting when coming from traditional layout experience. More specifically:
    1. Power button is where End button is. Luckily, though, it wouldn't function when Windows has loaded as part of its default configuration.
    2. Because the arrow buttons are compressed within the layout, it eats away space in numeric-pad area. This has 2 implications which irritates me:
      1. Instead of Zero, I end up pressing Right-Arrow :(
      2. Instead of pressing Shift, I end up pressing Up-Arrow :( Note that the Shift-Key is halved!
  3. Power button is positioned as one of the keys in the top right corner, increasing the chances of accidental selection. 
  4. Sharp edges of the metal body, that can tear your skin. You can use it as a weapon of self-defense, when you need it :P 
  5. The Laptop should work on improving the battery span as well. For normal developmental usage like mine it lasts over 3 hours only. This is perhaps a known downside with any gaming laptop and may be Acer is doing a better job over its peers like Lenovo.
  6. Acer India support could do better. Registering the product for warranty is bit of a hassle in India, at least. The constant pop-up from Acer installed app asking to register, when their backend is dysfunctional is just a little too irritating.
  7. Beware! Norton bloatware in the name of anti-virus that comes pre-installed with your laptop is one unwarranted pain. Norton is a notorious rogue software that fails to get uninstalled cleanly. Even their own software meant to cleanse the system post their un-installation, fails to do what it supposed to do. I hate it when a laptop comes with a bloatware that I can't uninstall. Check out the minimally painful escape route to get rid of this disaster.
  8. Acer's pre-installed app Waves MaxxAudio could typically psych you out. Guess why? When you plug your headset into the port, every now and then, the camera turns on for a while before it turns off, leaving you wondering if your newly purchased laptop got hacked. You would be skeptical of Acer wondering if they have pre-loaded with any bloatware that is causing this issue. I spent an hour or so, before I could drill it down to the junk app that comes bundled with Acer laptop - Waves MaxxAudio. Luckily you can turn off this feature in the app as stated in Acer Website.