Acer Predator Triton 300 SE (2022) Review

Acer's 2021 edition of its 14-inch Predator Triton 300 SE was among our favorite gaming laptops of the year—compact, capable, and reasonably affordable. The 2022 Triton 300 SE (starts at $1,349.99; $1,949.99 as tested) offers a like-priced base model with a new 12th Generation Intel Core i7 CPU, but our amped-up review unit boasts an even faster Core i9 chip and a stunning OLED display. Its Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU breaks a sweat in the most demanding titles, but generally delivers a steady 60 frames per second (fps) or more for all types of modern gaming. Add a roomy 1TB solid-state drive and long battery life, and you have a highly desirable laptop that challenges the best 14-inch gaming rigs such as the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, the Alienware x14, and the Razer Blade 14 while undercutting them on cost.

The Predator Triton 300 SE is far from the first 14-inch gaming laptop, but when you combine its compact footprint and high-end specs, it comes across as remarkably well-rounded. The Acer measures 0.78 by 12.3 by 8.9 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.75 pounds, slightly thicker but lighter than the ROG Zephyrus G14 (0.73 inch and 3.64 pounds) and the Blade 14 (0.66 inch and 3.92 pounds). The Alienware X14 is the thinnest at 0.57 inch but heaviest at 3.96 pounds.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

All four are premium 14-inch models worth showing off, though I think the all-metal Blade 14 has the most premium build of the bunch and the Asus is especially aesthetically pleasing. The Predator's physical construction is solid but unremarkable, and its plastic chassis can't hold a candle to the Razer. There's a little flex if you press the keyboard deck, and it lacks the design flair of the others, though a nice two-tone finish (part metallic, part brushed) keeps the lid from looking wholly plain.

While what we (and everyone else) call 15- and 17-inch laptops usually have screens measuring 15.6 and 17.3 diagonal inches respectively, these machines' displays are exactly 14 inches, which is an important consideration when deciding if they have enough screen real estate for your taste. The panels are considerably smaller than their counterparts, which may feel restrictive if you plan to use a new notebook as your main gaming rig without an external monitor.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

That said, I generally don't find these systems too small, and you can't beat their portability. The Acer's display also boasts a 16:10 aspect ratio, which gives you a slightly taller view than the familiar 16:9. This is increasingly common among productivity as well as gaming laptops, yielding a few extra vertical pixels—full HD is 1,920 by 1,200 instead of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, while QHD resolution is 2,880 by 1,800 pixels.

As for this particular panel, it looks fantastic. Our review unit flaunts the Triton 300 SE's top screen option, a 2,880-by-1,800 OLED display whose picture quality is impressively sharp. As with other OLED panels, colors especially pop and look rich and vibrant, making this one of the nicest screens I've seen on a gaming laptop. The beautiful panel helps concerns about the smaller screen size fade away, because it simply looks great.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Gamers should note, however, that the screen's refresh rate tops out at 90Hz, a far cry from the 144Hz and beyond of other high-end gaming laptops. Truthfully, as you'll see in our benchmark results, this Predator won't push most modern AAA games past 90fps, though you'll lose a bit of a competitive edge with esports and multiplayer games that benefit from sky-high frame rates (though such games aren't ideal fare for a 14-inch laptop, anyway). Acer's base-model or alternative display is a 1,920-by-1,200-pixel IPS panel with a 165Hz refresh rate.

Inputs and Connectivity

The Triton 300 SE's keyboard and touchpad are both decent, but not as impressive as the screen. As with most laptops this size, the keys are a little cramped, but there's enough room for comfortable typing once you adjust. The keys don't deliver the most feedback we've felt from a gaming laptop, sort of anticlimactically hitting bottom when pressed, but they do deliver a good amount of travel.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

It's not surprising that such a compact system lacks the room for a large touchpad, but the Predator's pad does feel small. It's mostly fine—it tracks panning and presses well—but I did find my finger bumping fairly often into the fingerprint scanner in the top left corner, which interrupted my mouse maneuvers. That may be down to how I personally use the touchpad, but it seems the sensor would be less in the way if moved to the upper right corner or elsewhere in the palm rest. It's a minor complaint, but one I thought was worth noting.

The Triton 300 SE has a good selection of ports. On the left side, you'll find the power jack, a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 support, and a USB 3.1 Type-A port. The right edge houses another USB-A port and an HDMI monitor connector. It's not a vast array of ports, but it does provide the connections most users should need.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

The webcam above the screen also delivers 1080p instead of the minimal 720p resolution, a boon in this era of remote work. Its video quality is definitely a cut above cheap consumer laptop cameras. The speakers are also solid, quite loud without losing quality at max volume even if they lack bass compared to some fuller setups.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Components and Configurations: The Bargain Base Model, or the Enthusiast Loadout?

Our Predator Triton 300 SE test unit is a Best Buy exclusive priced at $1,949.99. That takes it beyond the affordable midrange and into high-end territory, but is still less expensive than the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and Alienware x14 units we tested. Besides the build and deluxe OLED display described above, our Acer packed a speedy Intel Core i9-12900H processor, 32GB of memory, a 1TB SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

It's an impressive loadout, especially for a 14-inch laptop, though the price is maybe a bit rich for an RTX 3060 as opposed to an RTX 3060 Ti or 3070. Larger gaming rigs in this price range almost uniformly feature faster GPUs, though the Acer isn't abnormal given size constraints—the x14 has the same RTX 3060 at an even higher price point with a Core i7 instead of Core i9 CPU.

You could argue that the Triton 300 SE base model (also sold at Best Buy) is an even sweeter deal: For $1,349.99, you get a Core i7-12700H processor, 16GB of memory, a 512GB SSD, the same GeForce RTX 3060, and the full HD display. The CPU, screen, and storage represent obvious downgrades, but the Core i7 is plenty capable (especially for gaming) and half a terabyte of storage is passable. The base system is much more in line with last year's Triton 300 SE, which we praised as a great value at a $50 higher figure. Our enthusiast test configuration loses some value appeal, but both have their merits.

Indeed, our review unit arguably offers more bang for your buck than its abovementioned competitors, outpacing them when it comes to the processor and display. Is this advantage only good on paper instead of in real-world performance? Let's find out.

Testing the Predator Triton 300 SE: Core i9 and RTX 3060 Can Do It All

We matched the 2022 Triton 300 SE's performance against not only its chief 14-inch rivals but the 16-inch Lenovo Legion 5i Pro Gen 7, which obviously offers less portability but shows what a superior GPU can do in a larger laptop with better cooling for about the same price. You can see the contenders' exact specs below.

Productivity Tests

The main benchmark of UL's PCMark 10 simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows, measuring overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We usually also run PCMark's Full System Drive storage test, but it repeatedly returned an error on the Predator, though the SSD gave us no trouble with other apps and games.

Three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Our final productivity test is workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The Triton by and large did very well in these tests, leading the way in Geekbench and Photoshop and landing on the podium in other benchmarks. This indicates a very proficient laptop for everyday use and even image and video editing as well as gaming. A Core i9 CPU and 32GB of memory are definitely an advantage for content creators, and not particularly common at this size either. Given that the Predator also costs less than its rivals, it comes away looking quite good if you need a highly portable system for productivity and creative apps when not playing games.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). We also try two OpenGL benchmarks from the cross-platform GFXBench, run offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions.

In addition, we run three real-world game tests using the built-in 1080p benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege. These represent simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive esports shooter games respectively. Valhalla and Siege are run twice (the former at its Medium and Ultra quality presets, the latter at Low and Ultra quality), while F1 2021 is run twice at max settings with and without Nvidia's performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing turned on.

Running at full HD rather than its native QHD resolution, the Triton 300 SE hung close to the Alienware but couldn't quite match the Asus despite all three sharing the GeForce RTX 3060, due to thermals and the individual GPUs' configured wattage—a major issue with RTX 30 Series graphics. The RTX 3070 laptops were, not surprisingly, a step ahead.

Apart from head-to-head comparisons, the Acer is a very capable gaming rig; all modern games will run with no trouble, and most will hit 60fps at their high or peak image quality settings. As shown by Valhalla, you may need to dial the most demanding games down to medium quality to reach 60fps, as is true of a couple of other systems here. Similarly, the RTX 3070's advantage is clear if you prioritize frame rates over portability.

As for that native resolution, it shouldn't shock you that we can't recommend running at 2,880 by 1,800 for the most challenging titles. Switching to native resolution in F1 2021 with DLSS on slashed our frame rate from 81fps to 54fps, while Valhalla dropped from 53fps to 37fps at top settings and from 79fps to 54fps at medium. Less demanding titles, to say nothing of desktop browsing or movie viewing, will be fine at full resolution, but you'll probably have a better experience playing most games at 1,920 by 1,200.

Battery and Display Tests

We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100% until the system quits. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

Portability is nothing without battery life, and fortunately the Acer did very well, basically tying the Zephyrus for the gold medal. With 10 hours of runtime, you can confidently leave the AC adapter behind and take the Triton to class or a meeting without keeping a constant eye on the battery. As for its OLED screen, the SpyderX numbers backed up my eye tests—color coverage is extremely wide and peak brightness is high. It's a great screen for gamers and creators alike.

Verdict: A Very Worthy 14-Inch Entry

Acer's latest Predator Triton 300 SE is a strong contender, packing plenty of power and high-end features into a compact package at a price that doesn't go overboard. It comfortably holds its own against the 14-inch gaming rigs from Razer, Alienware, and Asus.

There are differences, of course. While we praise the Triton's reasonable price as tested, the base model is a better value play at under $1,400 including the GeForce RTX 3060, if you can live without the dazzling OLED display. Other factors include the Acer's build quality, which is fine but a notch below its rivals'. Still, the Predator's negatives are a small price to pay for its gorgeous screen, good battery life, and Core i9 horsepower, so there's not much room for complaint. The new Triton 300 SE may not redefine 14-inch machines, as some of its competitors did, but it joins them near the head of the class.