Acer Predator Helios 3D 15 review

It’s the end of the single-digit naughties and the world’s gone 3D mad. James Cameron’s revitalised 3D movies with Avatar and TV manufacturers are keen to cash in. Even Nintendo shifts its DS handheld into the 3D space with glasses-free autostereoscopic display.

Then the 3D era ended.

Movies aren’t really 3D anymore and nor are TVs, and Nintendo’s content with the 2D realities of the Switch. But somehow, 3D’s returned. While gaming laptop displays seem to be battling over high-resolution, fast-refresh-rate OLED and mini-LED screens, the Acer Predator Helios 3D 15 enters the fray to reignite autostereoscopy with a gaming laptop that offers 3D, albeit at a serious cost.

The Acer Predator Helios 3D 15 is too pricey for what you get, effectively only outpriced by gaming laptops with Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards and Mini-LED screens. In fact, the Lenovo Legion 7i Pro has a bigger screen with a higher refresh rate and an RTX 4090 inside for a $600 cheaper RRP. Meanwhile, the MSI Raider GE68 has a newer CPU and the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo has mostly comparable specs, but both are $1,000 RRP cheaper than the Helios 3D 15.

That “15” in the Acer Predator Helios 3D 15 title is short for 15.6-inch screen. But the overall chunkiness and heft make it look and feel like something that should have a larger screen. That chonk carries over to the power brick, which has an admittedly long total cable length.

On the right of the laptop are two USB 3.2 ports and on the right are four separate ports: a 3.5mm audio jack, Micro SD, another USB 3.2 slot and a gigabit Ethernet. I like how two of the more practical-but-get-in-the-way ports are on the back—namely, the power and a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port—alongside two Thunderbolt 4 ports.

You’ll also find four noticeable exhaust ports around the laptop, too: two on the back, and one at the rear of either flank. Pop open the lid and there’s a cramped but practical backlit keyboard with a numpad. The spacebar and trackpad are off-centre, though, so this takes some getting used to for adapting muscle memory hand placement.

The Acer Predator Helios 3D 15 is certainly priced and intended as a gaming laptop. And on raw benchmarking alone, it certainly offers decent performance. Obviously, you can’t expect comparable performance for the GeForce RTX 4080 laptop graphics card vs a full-sized alternative, but the performance is decent enough. Note that normally I’d benchmark Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III as part of my testing, but it kept crashing on the Helios 3D 15. All games are tested with their max settings and, where available, ray tracing is enabled.

Note that all benchmarking was done with the laptop’s maxed-out Turbo setting. For DLSS 2 games, there’s a marginal improvement over native and AI-upscaled frames, with the truly impressive results coming from DLSS 3 games, some of which boast double the frame rate. All games below are set to DLSS balanced. The best frame-rate gains come from the DLSS 3 games: namely, Returnal, Dying Light 2, Cyberpunk 2077 and Hitman 3.

The big elephant in the room is the 60Hz max refresh rate of the laptop’s screen. For those unaware, the refresh rate dictates how many rendered frames are shown on screen. It effectively means anything over 60 frames per second (60fps) is wasted. With DLSS games, 60fps is basically possible for all games at 4K resolutions, which means not too many wasted frames for this laptop’s 4K screen.

The catch, though, is playing games at 1440p and 1080p resolutions run at up to two or three times that 60Hz restriction, which effectively relegates the Helios 3D 15 to primarily for single-player or co-op games. This isn’t a system you should consider for online gaming, particularly for shooters that benefit from higher frame rates. You could bypass this by connecting the Helios 3D 15 to an external monitor via HDMI cable, but that dents the overall mobility of the gaming laptop.

So, why the 60Hz limit? That “3D” part of the full laptop name is in reference to an autostereoscopic screen. Technically, you can turn any 2D on-screen image—static, video or gaming—into a 3D one with the Helios 3D 15, but there are some catches. First, whatever you’re 3D-ifying needs to be full screen. Second, it’s restricted to 1080p (at least for games). And third, well, results vary based on my tests.

At the time of testing, there were 120+ games fully recommended for 3D. I tested a few of them but, honestly, I wasn’t able to play any of them for very long. Mouse cursors, text and other UI elements were recurring problems, with my eyes feeling like they were either perpetually trying to focus or objects were blurry. The 3D was at its most impressive in parts of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, but also at its most painful when there were too many foreground objects.

I also performed 3D tests on select movie scenes. The Battle of Helms Deep from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was my first stop, and it was initially impressive. Still, the 3D tech seemed to struggle with longer hair, which made heads look deeper than they should be, and certain rain shots made the top of the screen blur.

Top Gun: Maverick was particularly immersive for the steady shots but proved a literal eye-watering pain for faster camera movements. Rogue One’s attack on Scarif looked good in parts—like Top Gun, in-cockpit shots are a great match for the tech—but felt out of focus in others. My partner couldn’t stomach more than a few seconds before she felt “bilious”, and my eyes felt weird for a few minutes after testing.

In terms of other everyday use, the off-centre keyboard placement was a constant pain. Admittedly, keystrokes are responsive and quiet, and the trackpad is functional without being giant. The main pain was fan noise. It’s barely noticeable if you’re on the Quiet preset and manageable on Balanced and even Performance. But if you choose the all-out Ultra setting, the fans power up to a painful 55dB-minimum level, even if you’re not doing anything particularly demanding.

In fairness, you’d likely only want to use that setting for intensive tasks, but the size of the exhaust ports made the fans sound even louder, and I’ve never been so annoyed by fan noise during testing. It got to the point where I was using my Sony WH-1000XM5 over-ear headphones to drown out the noise, which was noticeable from every room in my apartment.

As for battery life, forget about it. I typically leave laptops on overnight to test battery longevity but the Helios 3D 15 couldn’t make it past two hours. My battery tests with 3D enabled couldn’t even make it past 90 minutes. It takes about an hour to recharge from 0% to full. That short battery life relegates the Helios 3D 15 to an always-plugged-in workstation and not something you could practically use while out and about.

The Acer Predator Helios 3D 15 is a really tough sell. It’s bet everything on the autostereoscopic 3D screen and, short of being able to test it yourself before buying, you’re effectively hoping your $7,599 investment pays off. There’s decent enough performance but there are too many concessions for what ultimately feels like an overpriced gaming laptop with a glorified 3D gimmick.