The Triton 500’s build is one of Acer’s best efforts for gaming machines to date. It’s slim and compact, and it offers an appealing design. The body measures 0.7 by 14.1 by 10 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.6 pounds.

The build quality is mostly very solid, and the style is admirably tame. I continue to prefer the shift to a black-and-light-blue color combination to the all-too-common red-and-black look.The lid logo isn’t too bad, though in 2019 I’m not sure I’d want to sit in a café with a laptop that has the word "Predator" emblazoned on it.

There are just enough blue accents (on some keys, and on the ventilation portions you see here) to add a little flair without going overboard.

The Triton 500’s display has a lot going for it. Even with the powerful hardware in this unit, a full HD resolution is a fine match, and Acer sweetened the pot with a 144Hz refresh rate and G-Sync.

The keyboard and touchpad are good-quality, if mostly unremarkable. No big issues or downsides here: The keys are fairly comfortable to type on, and the touchpad tracks smoothly.

The keys have customizable backlighting in the form of three zones across the left, center, and right of the keyboard. You can play with the lighting and colors in the included PredatorSense software, which can be summoned easily via a dedicated button.

This flank is home to an Ethernet jack, a USB 3.1 port, an HDMI connection, a headset jack, and a mic jack.

This edge has two more USB 3.1 ports, a USB Type-C port with Thunderbolt 3 support, and a mini-DisplayPort connection.