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00:00That is a lot of laptops. So I've teamed up with NVIDIA and Acer for the very
00:05first time to have every single RTX 40 series laptop GPU in the studio here at
00:11once. We've got everything from the Acer Nitro 5 with the RTX 4050 all the way up
00:16to this guy the Predator Triton 17x with an RTX 4090 and everything in between.
00:22And later in the video I'll show you side-by-side benchmarks so you can get an
00:26idea of the relative performance. Now this is a sponsored video to be clear
00:29it's not a review but all my tests all my opinions are my own and hopefully by
00:34the end of the video if you are looking to upgrade to a brand spanking new
00:38laptop this year you'll have a better idea which one is right for you. And if
00:42you do find it helpful a cheeky like and subscribe would be amazing. Okay so
00:46before we get to benchmarks let's find out what we're dealing with here.
00:49Starting with a slightly more affordable option this is the Acer Nitro 5. It'll
00:53set you back around a thousand pounds or so and it comes packing an RTX 4050
00:59GPU. We also get 12th generation Intel processors, 1080p 15-inch screen, 144Hz
01:04high refresh rate, a little bit dimmer, the screen quality isn't quite as good
01:08as some of the higher-end models but still very good. Lovely keyboard, nice big
01:12trackpad, really good range of ports including HDMI 2.1 which you don't see
01:16very often at this price point and also Thunderbolt and RJ45. It's a little
01:20chunkier and heavier and it uses less of the fancy materials that you'll see
01:24on the more expensive brothers of the Nitro 5 here but I think for that price
01:27with that GPU this is still definitely worth considering. So the RTX 4050 gets
01:32you around the 3060 level of performance but we do get all those extra 40 series
01:37goodies like DLSS 3 with frame generation, much better efficiency and an
01:41AV1 encoder. Plus with Nvidia's dynamic boost this 4050 has a 140 watt max TGP or
01:49what we're now calling MGP, maximum graphics power and also Nvidia Advanced
01:53Optimus graphics switching aka a MUX switch. So this GPU in this laptop is
01:59really meant for 1080p 60fps gaming with high settings although obviously you can
02:04drop settings or turn on DLSS 3 in games that support it to get closer to maxing
02:08out that 144Hz refresh. The 6GB of VRAM may also suit 1080p but I reckon
02:14long-term the 4060 may actually be a better buy. So if you can stretch your
02:18budget a little bit further perhaps you could consider jumping up to the Praetor
02:22Helios Neo 16 with a 140 watt RTX 4060 GPU with 8GB of VRAM. And straight
02:31away you can tell this is a bit more premium from the quality of the screen,
02:34the components, the material used for the chassis, there's a lot more aluminium, it
02:38does feel like quite a nice step up. And also we do have 13th generation Intel
02:42CPUs including the HX series of chips so we're talking 55 watt TGP CPUs there
02:48which is pretty impressive, you don't tend to see that that often on laptops
02:51at this price point. And also as usual with Acer laptops we have a ton of IO
02:56all at the back here so your cables are nice and hidden including an HDMI 2.1,
03:00a couple of Thunderbolt 4 ports and also on the side we have an RJ-45 and a
03:04couple of your regular USB A's. The display comes with either full HD plus
03:08or quad HD plus resolutions and we have this taller 16 by 10 aspect ratio which
03:13I do much prefer and also a higher 165 Hertz refresh rate. Plus also the colors
03:18and the panel itself are a bit higher quality. The Helios Neo 16 also allows us
03:22for overclocking the CPU thanks to improved cooling with Acer's 5th
03:26generation Aeroblade 3D fans. We also have their liquid metal thermal grease
03:30and also dedicated heat pipes. And like the Nitro Sense on the Nitro laptops
03:34this Predator Sense app lets you control the performance in the fans. So
03:38the RTX 4060 in here is still definitely a 1080p card but it's gonna be much
03:43easier to get this higher 144, 165 Hertz refresh rates and also at higher
03:47settings. Also for a bit of fun Acer's added this little encrypted cipher on
03:52the lid of the Helios Neo 16 here. Apparently it's fairly easy to figure
03:57out. I obviously got the answer straight away but I'm not gonna tell you, you have
04:01to figure that out for yourself. Maybe don't buy it just for that reason alone
04:05but it's a nice little extra. Or for similar money you could consider this
04:10the Acer Nitro 16. This is the bigger brother to the Nitro 5 and comes with an
04:178 gigabyte 140 watt RTX 4070. So again we are dropping down a little bit in the
04:22build quality, the premium aesthetics of it but it is packing a 4070 and it
04:27doesn't cost an absolute fortune. And if size really does matter to you then you
04:31could consider its bigger brother the Nitro 17. And so the Nitro 16 and 17
04:36pack in either Intel or AMD CPUs. We also have a PCIe 4 SSD RAID 0 option, Full HD
04:42Plus or Quad HD Plus 165 Hertz displays and we also get liquid metal thermal
04:47grease on the CPU and dual fan cooling. A great range of ports as usual and
04:51advanced Optimus graphics switching to save power when you're on battery. A
04:55quick side note but these advanced Optimus graphics switchings, the MUX
04:59switch, were kind of more limited to the higher-end laptops, gaming laptops from
05:02last few generations. Now we're seeing them on a lot more sort of mainstream or
05:06less flagship tier models which is great because you're not always gaming on your
05:10gaming laptop. Sometimes you're just watching Netflix or you know doing an
05:13essay or writing or anything like that. So having that ability to turn off the
05:17discrete GPU and either use it in a hybrid mode or purely the integrated
05:21graphics means you can actually get some decent battery life out of these pretty
05:24hefty gaming laptops. But let's talk about this RTX 4070 which is really
05:29designed for gaming at high refresh 1080p so 240 maybe even 360 Hertz or
05:34Quad HD at 60 or 144. Especially if you're playing a game with DLSS 3 and
05:38enjoying the extra boost in performance. Plus there's a little bit more headroom
05:42here for RT effects. Stay tuned for those benchmarks which are coming very soon
05:45but if I was gonna go out and buy a gaming laptop now I think the 4070 is
05:50kind of like the sweet spot. But it all depends on your budget and the laptop
05:55model you go for. Now for my next laptop well I actually have two laptops. This is
06:00the Praetor Helios 16 and this is Big Brother the 18. They share the same specs
06:05same cooling all that good stuff just a couple of different screen sizes for you
06:07and these guys are a step up from the Acer Helios Neo 16 in terms of having
06:12even more premium materials they look and feel a little bit classier. We also
06:16get more advanced cooling and they're equipped with a 12 gigabyte of VRAM RTX
06:214080 with a max MGP so maximum graphics power of 175 watts. These things are
06:27gaming beasts. This is a high-end card and is more than a match for 1440p at
06:33144 or 240 Hertz with ultra settings and in my view it's the first proper card
06:37where 4k could also be an option. These two also come with a couple of very
06:41tasty display options in the form of either a 240 Hertz IPS QHD plus display
06:47or a 1000 nit 1000 dimming zone 250 Hertz mini LED display which is also
06:53available on the Triton 17x which we'll come to in a second and looks absolutely
06:57incredible. These guys also come with Intel i7 and i9 HX series CPUs up to 32
07:04gigs of RAM and 2 terabytes of storage in RAID 0 and of course tons of
07:08connectivity. Plus you can have a clock them via the Prayer2Sense app. I mean
07:12just have a look at this 18 inch 16 by 10 so it's a little bit taller than your
07:17average 16 by 9. It is an incredibly massive display and really awesome for
07:23that sort of immersive gaming factor. Obviously a little bit bigger you're
07:26gonna feel this in your backpack if you're carrying around all day you do
07:29have that more portability convenience with a smaller 16 but if you want a big
07:33screen and you're not outputting to an external display it's nice to have the
07:37option. And last but not least the top dog this is the Acer Prayer2Triton 17x.
07:44The X suffix means they're pushing the boundaries a little bit they'll being a
07:47bit more experimental and this is an incredible gaming laptop not just the
07:51fact that it comes with an RTX 1490 also with a 175 watt MGP like the 4080 but it
07:57also comes with 16 gigabytes of VRAM. But you may be thinking hang on Tom why is
08:01this so well relatively thin and light it's not a chunky boy like some of the
08:06laptops well with the Triton 17x you're not just paying for that high-end
08:09hardware but also this form factor this thinner and lighter chassis. We have
08:13incredibly high materials it is an aluminium unibody we also have a big old
08:18vapor chamber cooler in here and also three of their fifth generation aero
08:22blade fans which creates this what they call vortex design so the cooling in
08:27here is properly next level so they can afford to make it a little bit thinner
08:30and lighter but you're still getting that high level top-of-the-line performance.
08:35And all this means this is actually a lot thinner than the others but with the
08:38same connectivity and features like advanced optimus switching. Go with the
08:42Intel i9 and it's got 24 cores we also have a 17 inch QHD plus 1000 nits
08:47mini LED display with a 250 Hertz refresh rate it's also packing 64 gigs
08:52of DDR5 RAM up to 2 terabytes of storage again in RAID 0 and as I say best of all
08:57an RTX 4090. And this really is designed to give you the best laptop gaming
09:02experience whether you're playing at full HD 360 Hertz maybe quad HD 240 or
09:06even 4k 144 and of course it's all best served with DLSS frame gen and ray
09:12tracing. So that is the lineup all very impressive laptops each with their own
09:16strengths but at the core of each one of these we have an RTX 40 series laptop
09:21GPU from Nvidia and according to Nvidia with this new Ada Lovelace architecture
09:26we're looking at three times the efficiency versus previous generations
09:29and also we get some of those very tasty Nvidia extras and if you're a
09:33regular on the channel you'll know my favorite is of course DLSS and so with
09:37the 40 series we now have DLSS 3 the latest generation and as you'll know if
09:42you've tried DLSS it can give you a huge frame rate boost while maintaining
09:45image quality and this third generation is exclusive to these 40 series cards.
09:50Essentially it's rendering the game at a lower internal resolution but then using
09:54Nvidia's advanced AI and deep learning to then upscale it back to native
09:58resolution which can be a whole lot more efficient and therefore boost your
10:01frame rate. It's kind of like free extra performance why not? But wait there's
10:06more because exclusive to DLSS 3 is Nvidia's new frame generation
10:10technology which is itself a huge leap and actually in some games it can
10:14actually double my performance and this also uses AI to add a whole new frame
10:19between two regular rendered frames and means in the games that support it even
10:23higher frame rates. However while it has nigh on doubled my FPS in some games
10:28like Flight Sim in other titles it is a smaller boost and also the only
10:32compromise is it can add to the system latency which is why any game that does
10:36support frame gen also requires Nvidia Reflex which itself is also available
10:40for all recent RTX cards. So Reflex is pretty straightforward it's where the
10:44game and the GPU work together to reduce that system latency so say the time
10:49between clicking the mouse or pressing a key on the keyboard and your gun firing
10:53or you're reloading in the game and it can make a life-or-death difference and
10:57actually what I have found over the last year or so with these more powerful
11:00laptop GPUs is that it's less about the frame rate and the refresh rate of the
11:05screens these days and a lot more about that system latency that can often be
11:08the bottleneck now particularly for those twitchy comparative shooters. And
11:12then there is ray tracing which has been around for a few years now and can add
11:16much more realistic lighting and shadows to games although it does come at the
11:20cost of some performance and particularly with the 40 series cards
11:23where we have third-generation RT cores and also the help of DLSS 3 to help make
11:28up that performance overhead. So now I do regularly play my games with ray tracing
11:32turned on. For example Cyberpunk 2077 looks incredible and it's more than
11:36playable now even on a mid-range card and ray tracing in Fortnite looks great
11:40as well. But of course gaming laptops aren't just for gaming you can utilize
11:44the performance in these guys for your productivity and work tasks for me it's
11:48video editing and rendering and they all come with AV1 encoders and if you're not
11:53sure what AV1 is it's kind of like a alternative more efficient codec to h.265
11:58and actually exclusive to the RTX 4080 and 4090 we have dual AV1 encoders so
12:04even better performance for your rendering exports and even your
12:07streaming. 40 series cards as well as last-gen 30 series also get RTX video
12:12super resolution or VSR and this takes low-resolution video streams and uses AI
12:16smarts and deep learning to upscale to full crisp 4k video. And then finally
12:21behind the scenes we have Nvidia's Max-Q technology which is kind of like
12:25their suite for balancing performance and battery life and acoustics stuff you
12:29don't really have to worry about but it all adds up to make Nvidia GPUs the
12:33best in the market for laptops right now. Okay I've made you wait long enough let's
12:38test these properly let me show you some benchmarks. And starting with Cyberpunk
12:42with RT set to ultra balanced DLSS and frame gen on I still managed a very
12:48impressive 76 FPS at 1080p on the Nitro 5 with its RTX 4050. The 4060 in the
12:55Helio Neo 16 was around 40% faster with just as big of a jump going to the 4070
13:01but it was the 4080 and 4090 that really pushed those ultra high frame rates.
13:05Moving up to 1440p on the laptops that support it I still got 71 FPS with the
13:104060 a 21% boost for the 4070 and well over a hundred FPS with the 4080 which
13:17actually wasn't far off the 4090 score. Next up Diablo 4 and even at ultra
13:22settings it's massively playable at over 130 FPS on the 4050 and that's even
13:27without DLSS 3 or frame gen. Switch them on and I'm easily maxing out that
13:31134 Hertz refresh. And it's a similar story with all the GPUs with very high
13:36frame rates between 150 and 300 with the 4080 and 4090 running away with the high
13:41scores at both resolutions. Interestingly though I didn't really find DLSS or
13:45frame gen made that much of a difference here. In Forza Horizon 5 again with ultra
13:50settings I was averaging just over a hundred FPS with the Nitro 5's 4050 at
13:541080p which is very impressive by itself although I reckon it's the 4080
13:59returning the best bang for buck overall. Also frame gen does much better here
14:03adding anywhere between 15 to 45 percent extra frames at 1440p where the 4060 was
14:09averaging well over a hundred FPS. And finally firing up old faithful a bit of
14:13Rainbow Six Siege and ultra settings of course although this does run the older
14:17DLSS 2 and I'm still getting huge frame rates over 240 FPS with the 4050. In fact
14:24even the 4060 is enough to max out a 240 Hertz screen at Quad HD and you don't
14:29even need DLSS. And I also got solid results in my synthetic benchmark tests
14:34meaning there's power here for both gaming and well everything else as well.
14:37So there we have it. Hopefully that was helpful and now you have a bit of a
14:41better idea of what kind of laptop you're gonna go for and of course it all
14:44does depend on the games you play. If you do fancy checking out any of these guys
14:47I will leave links in the description below and of course a big thank you to
14:50Nvidia and Acer for working with me on this video making it possible. It is
14:54kind of tricky normally to get five laptops in the studio at the same time
14:57and if you've got any questions about these guys drop a comment below. Thank
15:01you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the video a subscribe would be fantastic and
15:04I'll see you next time right here on the Tech Chat.
15:11Sorry about that.