The Acer Predator Helios 18 PH18-73 is a laptop that actually claims to be a desktop PC. Under the hood, it has an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX with 24 cores, and the graphics are handled by a mobile GeForce RTX 5080 with 16 GB of video memory. An 18-inch Mini LED display with a high refresh rate, Wi-Fi 7 support, and the ability to upgrade DDR5 to 192 GB make it the most flexible tool for gaming, rendering, and working with large amounts of data. But can this “portable monster” really replace your desktop? We tested the Helios 18 in a variety of scenarios and are ready to tell you if it’s really worth it.
Content
| Screen | 18″ WQXGA (2560 × 1600, 16:10) 250Hz, Mini LED |
| Processor | Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (24 cores: 8 P-core + 16 E-core), 2.7 GHz to 5.4 GHz, AI 13 TOPS |
| RAM | 64 GB DDR5-5600 (2×32 GB) |
| Storage devices | 2×1 TB M.2 SSD |
| Video card | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop GPU, 16 GB GDDR7, TGP 165 W ) |
| Cooling | Two AeroBlade 3D Gen 6 fans (0.05 mm metal blades), evaporation chamber, liquid metal, and graphene thermal interface. |
| Wireless interfaces | Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be), Bluetooth 5.4 |
| Audio system | 4× 2 W speakers 2× 2 W woofers |
| Wired interfaces | 2x Thunderbolt 5 (DisplayPort / Power Delivery 3.1) 2x Type-A USB3.2 Gen2 1x Type-A USB3.2 Gen1 1x SD Card Reader 1x HDMI 2.1 (8K @ 60Hz / 4K @ 120Hz) 1× 5 Gigabit Ethernet 1x 3.5 mm combined audio jack (microphone/headphone) |
| Power supply | 400 W; 20 V, 20 A |
| Battery | 99 Watt-hours |
| Weight | 3.5 kg |
| Dimensions | 401 x 307.9 x 29.55 mm |
| Other | Firmware Trusted Platform Module (fTPM) 2.0; Kensington Lock |
From the first glance at the box, it becomes clear that this is not an office machine for accountants. The black packaging with a massive Predator logo directly hints at its aggressive gaming nature.
The box of Acer Predator Helios 18 is large and heavy — everything is standard for this class of equipment. Inside, the atmosphere is eco-friendly. Acer offers to use the cardboard laptop holders for a dual purpose: in addition to transportation, they can be folded into a headphone stand. But let’s be honest: it doesn’t look very premium and won’t decorate any gaming table.
The charger is — 400W. The power cord is of sufficient length and thickness to match the power of the adapter, without attempting to cheapen the kit. When using it, keep in mind that the adapter itself is massive and will take up a lot of space in your backpack. By the way, there is no branded backpack in the package.
A nice addition is the Memory Thermal Pad Upgrade Kit — a set of thermal pads for RAM that can be installed during an upgrade or maintenance to improve heat dissipation. A definite plus.
Replaceable caps for the navigation and WASD keys, as well as a magnetic tool for their convenient replacement, are also rare guests here. This is nice, because they are the ones that suffer from the fingers of avid gamers in the first place.
The Acer Predator Helios 18 documentation is limited to the warranty and a quick start guide.
In general, the package is quite practical, with a few extra little things that might come in handy during everyday use and maintenance.
The Helios 18 looks exactly as its name suggests — aggressive and massive. And colorful. From the first seconds, this laptop demonstrates that there is no shortage of mobility here, but rather a lot of character. We are looking at a gaming “predator,” and this is no exaggeration.
The lid is made of aluminum. It’s rigid, doesn’t bend, and has a matte finish that still leaves prints. It opens up to about 165 degrees, and then — at your own risk.
The lower part is plastic. The case is about 3 cm thick and weighs almost 3.5 kg. That’s not including the power supply, which adds more than a kilogram. Carrying this around every day is a challenge for your back, but this laptop is clearly not about mobility.
The hinges of Helios 18 are well made, open smoothly and hold the screen without the slightest wobble. The lid can be lifted with one hand, which is impressive considering the weight of the display. At the same time, even at the maximum tilt, the body remains stable, not trying to rise from the table surface.
The top cover has a Predator logo with RGB backlighting. It is not too bright, it is more decorative. The back of the case has a protrusion that hides the cooling radiators.
In Predator Helios 18, the engineers (or rather marketers) decided that there is no such thing as too much backlighting, so in addition to the keyboard, the logo on the lid, and the light bar on the front, they added another detail — decorative RGB elements to the right of the touchpad. They look like thin stripes and can synchronize with other zones or glow with their own color.
They don’t add aesthetics to the gameplay, but they create the feeling that even the area under the player’s palm is participating in the overall light show.
Acer Predator Helios 18 has ventilation holes on the sides, back, and top of the keyboard. You can see that engineers have definitely worked here. They knew that this hardware would heat up, and they took care of the mass of air that could be pumped through the system.
The Acer Predator Helios 18 has a full-size keyboard with a number pad, which is rare even for large laptops, as some manufacturers sacrifice the NumPad for the sake of compactness. There’s plenty of room here, so all the keys are in their places, without any strange moves or compromises. There are separate buttons for controlling system functions — PredatorSense, changing performance modes, and adjusting the backlight. It’s really convenient because you don’t have to look for them in the depths of Fn shortcuts.
The keys themselves are large, with a clear stroke and a pleasant tactile response. It’s not pure mechanics, but the keystrokes feel good. The layout is standard, so it won’t take long to get used to it. There are also multimedia shortcuts to quickly adjust the volume or brightness, which simplifies life outside of games.
The backlighting of the Acer Predator Helios 18 — keyboard is another strong point. It uses RGB with addressing of each key, and all this is customized through PredatorSense. It looks cool in the dark, but for those who like restraint, calm profiles are also available.
The trackpad is the same size as a laptop — large, with a matte finish that is pleasant to the touch. In everyday scenarios, the trackpad easily replaces the mouse. If you work on the road or don’t take peripherals with you, it will remain comfortable. It’s certainly not an option for gaming, but as a universal tool, — is more than worthy.
Acer Predator Helios 18 does not skimp on ports. It has almost everything you need to avoid lugging around a spider-like USB hub. The interfaces are scattered on three sides of the case, which adds variability to the connection of peripherals and reduces the risk of getting tangled in wires.
The Helios 18’s port set looks practical and thoughtful: two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 for fast peripheral connectivity, another USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 for less critical devices, a pair of Thunderbolt 5 with full compatibility with docking stations and external graphics solutions, HDMI for monitors or projectors, Ethernet with 5 Gbps bandwidth, an SD card slot, a combo audio jack, and power connector.
In terms of wireless capabilities, the laptop is also on trend: Wi-Fi 7 support provides high bandwidth and low latency, which is enough even for 4K streaming or cloud gaming. And Bluetooth 5.4 is useful for wireless headsets, gamepads, or connecting peripherals that have long since been thrown into the dustbin of history.
The screen is one of the strengths of the Acer Predator Helios 18 PH18-73. And it’s not surprising: An 18-inch Mini LED panel with a resolution of 2560×1600 pixels, a refresh rate of 250 Hz and a peak brightness of up to 1000 nits.
Brightness — is a separate topic. In SDR mode, it’s 600 nits, and in HDR, the brightness reaches the promised thousand, albeit nominally. What this means in reality is that whether you’re playing Gears of War: Reloaded or just watching YouTube, black stays black and explosions stay dazzling.
The color palette is 100% DCI-P3. This means that the display is suitable not only for gaming, but also for professional video or photo work. Designers, editors, and streamers will be happy. Even the calibration out of the box is very high.
The viewing angle is — wide. Even at strong tilts, the image remains clear and colors do not fade. This is important because the screen is large, and you will sometimes look at it at a different angle. By the way, thanks to the anti-reflective coating, you can work with the laptop in a bright room.
G-Sync is another nice bonus from NVIDIA. In combination with a refresh rate of 250 Hz, it guarantees the smoothest possible gaming experience without frame tearing. This is really important here: the laptop’s performance is enough to keep the FPS high in many games.
The response time is about 3 ms. This is quite enough for eSports. Even in dynamic scenes, blurring is minimal.
The 16:10 format is becoming the standard for premium laptops, and it fits the bill here. More vertical space, which is convenient for browsers, is ideal for work, and in games it adds a little more immersion. At 18 inches —, it feels like a wide mini-IMAX screen.
Some Helios 18 models have an alternative display configuration: 4K+@120 Hz. But in my opinion, Mini LED WQXGA at 250 Hz looks like the most balanced option.
The webcam in the Acer Predator Helios 18 — is not something that a laptop can surprise you with. This is a standard 2 megapixel module with Windows Hello support. Normal picture, normal clarity. For video calls in Zoom or Discord — it will do, but no more.
The light sensitivity is mediocre. In the evening with room lighting, noises are visible, like on a soapbox from 2008. But the microphones are a pleasant surprise. The volume is good, the sound is quite clear. They beat most competitors in the same segment, especially when it comes to voice chats in games. It’s not suitable for recording a podcast, but it’s fine for Discord.
Acer Predator Helios 18 has six speakers. In stereo mode, the panorama is well felt, so in shooters you can roughly understand which side the enemy is sneaking up from, even without headphones. The volume has a solid margin: at 60-70% of the maximum, you start to doubt whether your neighbors will hear your game, and at 100% — Helios can easily ruin someone’s viewing of a TV series in the next apartment.
The headset is connected via a 3.5 mm jack. The output quality is good, there is a volume margin. I connected Logitech Lightspeed G335 — plays cleanly, without wheezing, with noticeable depth.
Sound is transmitted in wireless headphones without any problems. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 work stably. There were no drops, breaks or lags during testing. Audio streaming — no complaints. Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube — everything is on the level.
| Benchmark | Result |
| Speedometer 3.1 | 39.4 |
| WebXPRT 4 | 390 |
| Octane 2.0 Plus | 121195 |
| Octane 2.0 Plus (Multi) | 1138192 |
| CPU-Z Single | 810.9 |
| CPU-Z Multi | 18152.1 |
| 3DMARK Steel Nomad | 4550 |
| 3DMARK Speed Way | 5146 |
| 3DMARK Port Royal | 12550 |
| 3DMARK Time Spy Extreme | 9800 |
| 3DMARK CPU Profile (Max threads) | 14874 |
| PCMARK 10 Extended | 10901 |
| Cinebench 2024 Single | 131 |
| Cinebench 2024 Multi | 1889 |
| Blender CPU 4.4.0 | 440.04 |
| Blender GPU 4.4.0 | 7228.76 |
| Corona 10 Benchmark | 10727112 |
| RAM read MB/s | 66806 |
| RAM write MB/s | 64751 |
| SSD read MB/s | 10805 |
| SSD write MB/s | 7620.47 |
In synthetic benchmarks, the Acer Predator Helios 18 behaves like a machine that is not afraid of challenging tasks. In Internet benchmarks, a Speedometer 3.1 score of 39.4 and a WebXPRT 4 score of 390 mean that even heavy web applications and tabs with heavy JavaScript animations can’t slow it down. Octane 2.0 Plus scores 121,195 in normal mode and an impressive 1,138,192 in multithreaded mode, so browser performance is a cinch for this laptop.
The CPU-Z clearly shows the potential of the processor: 810.9 in single-core and 18,152.1 in multi-core put it in the big league of mobile chips, where even heavy rendering or video encoding doesn’t seem to be a problem. Cinebench 2024 confirms this trend, with a score of —131 in single and 1889 in multi indicating consistently high performance in both single and multi-threaded scenarios.
The 3DMark benchmarks show that Acer Predator Helios 18 is ready for demanding graphics tasks beyond gaming. PCMark 10 Extended with a score of 10,901 paints a picture of “office workflow without limits”. In Blender 4.4.0, the laptop scores 440.04 on the CPU and 7228.76 on the GPU, which means that rendering can be done with both the CPU and the graphics card — both are fast.
Acer Predator Helios 18 comes preinstalled with Windows 11 Pro. For a powerful mobile workstation, this is a logical choice — the laptop is ready to work in both home office and corporate environments.
A key element in setting up and monitoring the device is Acer’s proprietary PredatorSense utility. It allows you to monitor the temperature of the processor and video card in real time, adjust fan speed, switch between performance profiles, and control the RGB backlight of the keyboard.
For convenience, a separate hardware launch key is provided on the keyboard, and the program interface is as simple and clear as possible. Thanks to PredatorSense, you can quickly switch from quiet office mode to turbo mode with maximum performance from all components — useful for both gaming and heavy creative tasks.
The Acer Predator Helios 18 delivers decent gaming power at 2560×1600 resolution, which is native to its large 18-inch display. Even the most demanding projects keep a stable FPS within the limits that provide a comfortable gaming experience without hesitation or friezing.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl on Epic’s maximum settings with DLAA and Frame Generation delivers about 99 frames per second. For a game that was released with high hardware requirements and without Multi Frame Generation support, this is a solid performance.
DOOM: The Dark Ages in Ultra Nightmare mode with Path Tracing, DLSS Quality, and Frame Generation demonstrates 140 FPS — enough to enjoy the maximum settings and high refresh rate.
Avowed was tested in a version of the game without Multi-Frame Generation support, with only classic Frame Generation, and delivered 88 FPS. This is a “pure” performance indicator without additional optimizations, which allows you to evaluate the real capabilities of the hardware.
Cyberpunk 2077 with Ray Tracing Overdrive, DLSS Auto, and Frame Generation demonstrates about 168 FPS, which was unattainable for mobile systems until recently. Here you can safely experiment with graphical modes and not be afraid of dropouts.
Atomfall on Epic with DLAA and raytracing delivers 141 FPS — an excellent result for a post-apocalyptic shooter.
The Witcher 3 Next-Gen with Ray Tracing Ultra, DLSS Quality, and Frame Generation delivers 108 FPS — a solid performance for a game known for its high hardware requirements.
A laptop with such hardware cannot be called a long-lasting one. In a typical office scenario (Wi-Fi, 50% brightness, browser, documents), the Helios 18 lasts about 4-5 hours, which looks mediocre for a gaming monster.
In games, the situation is much more severe: without recharging, Helios 18 lasts only 1-1.5 hours even in relatively light projects on low settings. It’s obvious here — the charger should always be nearby. Its power reaches 330-360 watts, and the video card itself can consume up to 165 watts in turbo mode, which explains the system’s appetite well.
Acer Predator Helios 18 has a sophisticated cooling system that combines two 6th generation AeroBlade 3D fans with ultra-thin (0.05 mm) metal blades, a large evaporation chamber, a liquid-metal thermal interface on the processor, and a graphene thermal pad for the video card.
Under load in turbo mode, the coolers overclock, but the temperatures remain controlled: the processor under stress keeps around 90 °C, the — graphics at 75 °C. However, there was some throttling. At peak loads, when the CPU exceeded 100 °C, performance dropped by about 13-15%.
In light tasks, coolers often stop completely, and then the laptop can be called quiet. In general, the energy efficiency for this level of hardware is — good, but not exceptional: if you need silence and autonomy, this format is definitely not for you.
After a few weeks with the Helios 18, the conclusion is pretty obvious — it’s a portable stationary device that lives on a table and only occasionally travels in a backpack (plus a charger that weighs like a brick).
Working on Acer Predator Helios 18 is convenient thanks to the large display and really cool keyboard. Its backlighting is not just for decoration. In the dark, it’s easy to find the keys you need, and the individual zone settings allow you to quickly mark WASD and other important buttons.
The touchpad is large and responsive, but I still want a mouse for games. It’s out of the question.
Thanks to its loud speakers and beautiful screen, Helios is also suitable for multimedia evenings — TV shows, YouTube, or even video editing.
During long work sessions, the heat from the body is noticeable, but does not burn your palms. But it’s uncomfortable to hold it on your lap, because the weight is noticeable. And the heat from the body, of course.
Price Acer Predator Helios 18 AI PH18-73 ranges from 174,440 to 213,149 UAH, making the laptop an interesting offer in the segment of large gaming laptops with a good balance of power and price.
MSI Titan 18 HX Dragon Edition Norse Myth — ultimatum is a flagship laptop with an 18-inch screen aimed at maximum performance and a more aggressive, recognizable design. The price of this model is much higher at almost UAH 267 thousand.
Gigabyte AORUS MASTER 18 offers a similar configuration, but with the top-of-the-line 5090 and Mini LED display, but with an emphasis on a more restrained design and a price starting at UAH 189,899.
Alienware m18 R2 is still a relevant player with a starting price of about UAH 142 thousand.
ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 18 offers one of the best screens in its class — 2560×1600, 240 Hz, HDR10 and Dolby Vision, as well as powerful hardware.
MSI Raider 18 HX AI — another premium 18-inch laptop with prices ranging from UAH 167 to 209 thousand. Here, every hryvnia is justified by high-quality build quality and high performance.
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