Gadgetory

This is the Triton 500. It's a brand new gaming laptop, and it's the first truly thin-and-light gaming laptop that Acer's ever made I mean they've made thin devices before, "thin" devices But this is the first one they've made that was actually competitive with the other thin-and-light gaming laptops in the premium segment And for the first attempt at making a truly thin-and-light gaming laptop I think they did an awesome job It's actually cheaper than all the other devices here So, if you're interested in picking one up, I would suggest the RTX 2060 configuration Even right now, I feel like the RTX 2080 Max-Q or the RTX 2070 Max-Q are just not worth the value's at, 2060 is the way to go Gaming performance is very good on the RTX 2060 On the 144Hz panel, stuff just looks really smooth All the popular titles are going to play very well on this thing It also has an overclockable GPU So in the software in here, you can bump it up a little bit if you want The thermal performance on this device is also pretty good I do not know if the fan profile is different between the different configurations So this is their weakest configuration, the 2060 and the thermals are comfortable, but the fans do get loud Also, if you activate Cooler Boost and crank up the fans to max, you get the best thermal performance but it gets even louder and at that point, you definitely need to have headphones if you're playing games or anything like that Now, as I used this device, I realized that this thing was very familiar This whole device and all the components and how they built it was very familiar It's because it is basically a clone on the inside to the MSI GS65 Now, that is a device that I've reviewed in the past and I'm quite familiar with it So when I crack this thing open, I just recognize like There's so much about this that is very similar to the GS65 The internals are designed in a somewhat annoying way You only have easy access to your Wi-Fi card and your battery I'll get into the battery details in a second, but you don't have access, at least easy access, to your RAM or your drives You have to unscrew the motherboard and do a pretty extensive disassembly to access them And on a gaming laptop, I feel like that's a bit of a miss A lot of people want to switch those things out and upgrade them in the future and it's just a difficult task on this particular laptop, same with the GS65 The speakers on the side are also not great, they're very average sounding Acer has some software to try to make sound a little better, a little different But, doesn't matter what the software is doing, they just, they sound very plain Okay, inside, the keyboard and the trackpad are also very similar to the GS65 The mechanism on the keys are a little bit different but the layout is surprisingly similar to the GS65 Now, I prefer the keyboard on the Triton I feel like it's just a more responsive keyboard It feels better to me for gaming and typing and I would say that of the thin-and-light gaming laptops, like this whole stack here, I would say that this is the best keyboard for the average person I think most people get used to this keyboard quicker than any of these The lighting on this keyboard is zoned lighting So instead of individually lit keys, they have three different zones But they also have this thing where the WASD keys have this blue tinted plastic and when you change the colors of the lighting, the lights of those keys have this blue hue to them, which is a little bit weird But having zoned lighting, it helps to keep the manufacturing costs down It also has a turbo button at the top of the keyboard You press it, and the fans kick in The trackpad is pretty good. It's running Windows Precision drivers It's got a pretty smooth surface There's nothing I would really complain about this trackpad It is a little small, if that matters to you but it's pretty solid for a gaming laptop The screen, 144 Hertz, 1080p panel It's supposedly overclockable to 3ms response time, but it's bright, it's reasonably color accurate I think it's a great screen for gaming Now, the build quality on the Triton 500 is something that I think is quite special, especially because of its price This is a cheaper device than the MSI GS65 but I think this is a better built device than the MSI This is a very light laptop, this is 1.9kg (4.2lbs) The Triton (4.6lbs) is 250 grams more, which may not seem that significant, but it is noticeable, but for that extra weight, you get a device that's built better There's less flex on the chassis, the bottom panel is a little bit sturdier The whole device feels just better built Also, the finish of this device is slightly better If you look at the bottom edge of this thing, the edge is less sharp compared to the MSI GS65 It's also got very similar ports to the MSI 3 USB-A, 1 USB-C that supports Thunderbolt 3, and it also has an Ethernet jack, which is nice on a thin-and-light gaming laptop But compared to the market, what you're getting with this device is better bang-for-your-back The Triton 500 has excellent performance for a reasonable price It also has a pretty good battery life It's a 84 watt-hour battery and I got 6 hours with the screen at 250 nits It's a pretty decent sized battery The AC adapter, it's 180 watts, it's relatively compact but because the battery life is pretty decent on this laptop I don't feel like it's a bring it around with you wherever you go But overall, I think they did a great job on their first attempt at a thin-and-light gaming device I do think it's better than the GS65 for me personally If I had to decide between the two, I opt for the Triton 500, but yeah If you do pick one up though, RTX 2060 instead of that RTX 2080 Max-Q.