Slim gaming laptops are a rare breed, and Acer's Predator Helios Neo 16S AI (starts at $1,599.99, as tested) tries to bring sizzle to a 16-inch machine with a 0.79-inch-thick frame. This configuration's quirky component mix and slimline design (limiting the interior space for cooling) keep this Predator from hitting its mark, however. The laptop pairs a gorgeous 240Hz OLED display with a top-end Intel processor, but with a lesser, somewhat mismatched Nvidia graphics chip. The CPU roars despite the thin chassis, but the GPU slightly lags thicker systems with the same GeForce chip but lower-end processors, especially at 1600p resolution. Plus, the laptop's battery disappoints, and we've come to expect better keyboards at this chassis size. The Acer Helios Neo 16S AI is a workable slim midrange gaming laptop, but if you can handle a thicker design, grab the Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 instead, which holds our Editors' Choice award for midrange systems.

Configurations: Hold Out for a Deal

Acer sells a few different Predator Helios Neo 16S AI configurations. I reviewed the starting setup, the PHN16S-71-91AW, which costs $1,599.99 and includes a top-notch Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU, a middling GeForce RTX 5060 GPU, 16GB of memory, a 1TB solid-state drive, and a 16-inch 2,560-by-1,600-pixel OLED panel. I spotted it at Best Buy for $1,589.99 at the time of publication.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The most prominent alternative model Acer sells is an RTX 5070 Ti configuration with 32GB of RAM and the same processor, starting at $1,899.99. Jumping two tiers of graphics and doubling the RAM for just $300 more (at the list price) sounds like a fine deal on its own, but we've seen that model for as low as $1,549.99 at Best Buy on sale. If you can snag that configuration, that's a whopper of a deal.

Design: A Trim Profile and a Basic-Black Look

At 0.79 inch thick and 5.1 pounds, the Helios Neo 16S is the thinnest and lightest 16-inch gaming laptop among those compared in our benchmarks to follow, which all hover around an inch thick and 5.5 pounds. The black metal chassis isn't especially interesting: It looks like a gaming laptop designed by default, if that's your thing.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The laptop's lid is slightly shallower than its base, so the back of the keyboard deck protrudes behind the display. That outcropping features a sleek logo engraving that evokes a luxury-car aesthetic. After seeing bolder systems like the Alienware 16X Aurora or Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10, however, you (like me) might want something more than Acer's subtle touch.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

It isn't terribly difficult to open the top of this machine, but a lip on the screen lid would have been helpful. The laptop's keys, keyboard deck, and palm rest maintain familiar shapes (and fonts) that evoke nostalgia for old-school designs but aren't particularly inspiring or eye-catching. If aesthetics aren't a concern for you, then the Helios Neo's plain design might be a non-issue.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Display and Audio: Super Speedy, With Serious Sound

I get hyped about high-end displays, and the Helios Neo 16S AI delivers with a vivid OLED screen: a 16-inch WQXGA or 1600p panel refreshing at 240Hz for gaming at high frame rates. The RTX 5060, however, hasn't come close to 240 frames per second at 1080p, even in our most permissive tests designed to measure maximum frame rates on any system. You'll likely want the RTX 5070 Ti variant if your goal is to max out the screen's refresh rate.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Regardless, this OLED makes assaulting a building in Cyberpunk 2077 pop with green and pink street art contrasted against armored henchmen. Even though this panel is bright, it still catches ambient glare when navigating dark, grimy hallways in the game. I appreciate how sharp and smooth the game's buildings look as I walk around with the detail settings turned up and the resolution at 1600p.

In-game dialogue comes off crisp through the Helios Neo's speakers, while combat sounds well-rounded, from shotgun blasts to katana clashes. Songs like “Radio” by Bershy, however, reveal that bass-level instruments tend to blend together through these speakers. Regardless, the Helios Neo offers a well-rounded listening experience overall, particularly for gaming.

Keyboard, Touchpad, and Webcam: Serviceable Vs. Superb

Keyboard looks are an aesthetic preference, but feel is another, and I just don't get enough feedback when typing on the Helios Neo. On the other hand, the key travel is fine, and the keys are well spaced, with a deck that leaves enough room for my wrists. Overall, the keyboard is comfortable, but it doesn’t stand out in fidelity or ease of use like the keyboard in the latest Lenovo Legion 5i laptop.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Despite a just-fine keyboard, the touchpad is quite smooth and produces a meaty click, making it easy to navigate across apps. It also feels natural to click-and-drag text on the screen, which some touchpads struggle to get right.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The Helios Neo’s webcam is another example of "just fine." The 1080p camera works well for chatting with friends and family, reproducing the colors in my blue shirt accurately and avoiding overexposure from my ceiling lights. However, I notice a subtle green tint in the image, which becomes more apparent (and grainier) when looking at darker clothes or objects, like my bookshelf. Find a dedicated camera or webcam for job interviews or other public-facing video calls.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Ports: Every Connection a Gamer Needs

Don’t let the Helios Neo's thin chassis fool you: This laptop has all the ports you could ask for. You'll even find some on the back edge, including the power connector, an HDMI 2.1 port, one 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 port, and a 10Gbps USB-C port. The two USB-C ports can connect to external displays via DisplayPort.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The laptop's left edge houses an RJ-45 Ethernet port for direct internet access, a 5Gbps USB Type-A connection, a headphone jack, and a microSD card slot for expanding storage or pulling photos from a smartphone. On the right side, you'll find two more USB-A ports (these, 10Gbps). The Helios Neo features Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 radios inside for wireless connectivity.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Performance Testing: The Downside of Slimming Down

The Acer Predator Helios Neo 16S AI laptop pairs a lower-midrange GeForce RTX 5060 (with 8GB of video memory) with a top-end Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor with 24 cores. (Eight of these are Intel's Performance cores running at up to a 5.4GHz clock speed.) That's something of an unbalanced power dynamic between the CPU and GPU. With 16GB of system RAM and a 1TB SSD, though, the Helios is still otherwise configured like a midrange gaming laptop, but we noted some unusual results for a gaming laptop of its class, given the CPU/GPU mix and the slim chassis.

We compared the Helios Neo with the Alienware 16X Aurora ($1,819.99 as tested), a $1,499.99 Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 configuration that won our Editors' Choice award, and a Lenovo LOQ 15 ($1,474.99 as tested), each with an RTX 5060 inside. To show what you're getting at the entry level, we've added the Helios Neo’s much cheaper cousin, the $899 Acer Nitro V 16 AI, with its RTX 5050.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput. 

Three more tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image-editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in the seminal photo editor Adobe Photoshop 25.

The Helios Neo delivered stellar CPU performance, which isn’t a surprise given its top-end Intel chip. The laptop registered a truly impressive PCMark score of more than 10,000 and took first place in Geekbench by a few percentage points. (The Legion notably outpaced the Helios in Photoshop, which likely came down to its additional RAM.) Navigating a claustrophobic number of browser tabs while Cyberpunk 2077 ran in the background didn’t seem to slow down the machine much, either.

However, this was after I turned off Nvidia’s Optimus mode for performance testing, which lets the laptop automatically switch between the CPU's integrated graphics processor and the discrete graphics chip based on use. Optimus has caused issues for me before, so I wasn’t shocked. In this case, Optimus caused the laptop to pause momentarily when switching between graphics before opening a game application. On a related note, graphics-switching issues may have caused Cyberpunk 2077 to crash once, likely because the game defaulted to the IGP, which buckled under the pressure.

In that situation, launching Cyberpunk 2077 a second time made it clear the game would continue to prioritize the IGP. Because you cannot switch GPUs within the game, I deactivated Optimus entirely while testing this game and running other benchmarks. (I reactivated Optimus for battery testing.) Enabling Optimus mode didn't buy the Helios Neo much additional battery life, mind you, as you'll see. If it gives you trouble, you might consider deactivating it when you're not running on the battery. You can do this easily from within Acer's Predator app.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The second pair, Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests, focuses on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to Solar Bay to measure ray-tracing performance.

Our real-world gaming testing is based on the in-game benchmarks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at the system’s full HD (1080p or 1200p native) resolution—represent competitive shooters, open-world games, and simulation games, respectively. If the screen supports a higher resolution, we rerun the tests at the QHD equivalent of 1440p or 1600p. Each game is run at two sets of graphics settings per resolution, for up to four runs total on each game.

We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Minimum graphics preset—aimed at maximizing frame rates to test display refresh rates—and again at the Extreme preset. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs fully, so we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again at the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 represents our DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems) test, demonstrating a GPU’s capacity for frame-boosting upscaling technologies. The capacity of these frame-rate boosts changes with the version of frame-generation tech available, with DLSS 2 and 3 stitching in one AI-generated frame for every originally rendered frame, and the latest DLSS, DLSS 4, inserting up to three additional frames. (FSR can generate up to four new frames per original, while Intel's XeSS can only stitch in one new frame per original frame.)

These results make it clear that Acer shaved off some of the RTX 5060's graphics potential by squeezing it into the Helios Neo's thin chassis. (It's more obvious at 1600p resolution.) Using the normal performance settings laid out in our benchmarking regimen, the Helios Neo posted subpar graphics results for an RTX 5060. Noting that, we toggled the power settings to Turbo mode in the Predator app for the Helios Neo to produce the above numbers. The Helios Neo has less internal space than these rival models due to its thin-and-light design, which limits the volume and size of the cooling hardware. That means key components, namely the GPU in this case, must be dialed back to a lower peak power to avoid overheating.

The Helios Neo closely trailed the Aurora laptop in the synthetic 3D graphics tests, whereas the Lenovo laptops battled for first place on all of them. Moving to the gaming tests, we saw the Helios trail the other RTX 5060 laptops in F1 2024 across all resolutions. While the Helios Neo kept pace with the RTX 5060 crowd in Cyberpunk 2077, the game's killer Ray-Tracing Overdrive preset crashed it at 1600p. (That said, neither of the Neo's high-res competitors posted anything like playable frame rates on those settings.)

It's notable that, despite its thin chassis putting a damper on frame rates, the Helios Neo outstripped the Legion in Call of Duty at both resolutions, if not by much. Meanwhile, the Aurora ran away with this benchmark. Overall, the trade-offs necessary to slim down a midrange 16-inch gaming laptop aren't as big as we expected, but they are visible. It's also important to remember that, while the Helios Neo features a gorgeous 240Hz display, we haven't seen the RTX 5060 manage to run demanding games close to 240 frames per second—even at 1080p—in any laptop. This reality makes such a GPU/screen combination a questionable value for many AAA games, though esports hounds are willing to dial things down to extremes to max out frame rates.

Battery Life and Display Tests

We test each laptop and tablet's battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

To gauge display performance, we 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, or candelas per square meter. (We do not have display-test results for the Lenovo LOQ laptop, so it is not included in those charts below.)

We expected more from the Helios Neo given its design, but its battery couldn’t endure even half a workday. Acer, admittedly, rates the laptop at a maximum of 5 hours of battery life, so we weren't far off the mark with this result. Gaming laptops don’t tend to have excellent battery life, but some models here proved that this trend is shifting. Two of these laptops could last you a work or school day. Now, those are proper all-rounder gaming laptops.

As for display quality, the Helios Neo's panel matched the Legion for the most complete color coverage, covering the entire sRGB spectrum and achieving 98% coverage of the others. While not the brightest display here, the Helios Neo panel just surpassed the 400-nit goal for quality OLED panels. It's hard to doubt Acer's commitment to a quality panel with numbers like these, but Lenovo's Legion screen was considerably brighter despite its OLED classification.