Acer's Predator Triton series has been a favorite of ours in the past, including the Triton 500 (15-inch) and this new, smaller model. Predator Triton 300SE (1,399.99) is an ultra-portable gaming laptop that offers both portability and high performance. The sleek design, long battery life and up-to date Intel Core i7 Tiger Lake-H processor make it a great mid-range gaming rig for a reasonable price.
Although the screen is smaller than others, it offers superior portability, 1080p gaming, and higher-refresh rate, high-performance 1080p play. The Triton 300 SE, like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, sets a new standard at this size and earns our Editors Choice award for midrange gaming laptops.
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Sleek standout design in a special edition
The laptop's small size makes it easy to understand. The lid has a glossy brushed finish and an all-silver design. It's not a distracting logo, but it is relegated in the upper right corner to be a nice badge. Although some might consider it simple, I believe a minimalist approach would be a good fit given the small size. It's light and compact, easy to carry and grab, so you can see it from a distance.
More specifically, the Triton 300 SE measures 0.7 by 12.7 by 9 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.75 pounds, exceptionally mobile for a gaming notebook. Its closest rival is the outstanding, abovementioned Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, at 0.7 by 12.8 by 8.7 inches and 3.52 pounds. The only competitors that are even smaller are the Asus ROG Flow X13 (designed to work with a separate eGPU) and the Razer Blade Stealth 13. The Flow measures 0.62 by 11.8 by 8.8 inches, while the Stealth comes in at 0.6 by 12 by 8.3 inches; they weigh 2.9 and 3.1 pounds respectively.
All of these are much smaller than standard 15.6-inch laptops that, while slimmer than they used to be, weigh closer to 5 pounds and take up more space in your bag. The compromise is, of course, the screen itself: 13.3- and 14-inch displays are arguably a bit cramped for gaming, though that's a matter of personal preference. If you're more comfortable with a 15.6-inch panel, stick with the Predator Triton 500 or the Alienware m15 R4.
For me, used to playing on a curved 27-inch monitor, the Triton 300 SE looks somewhat small, but it didn't spoil the experience once I started playing. Some UI elements and text are a bit puny, but games are perfectly playable, and the Acer's portability is a major plus. The display itself features full HD resolution and a 144Hz refresh rate, more than acceptable for a midrange gaming laptop. We'll get to the performance details in a minute, but the petite Predator's components are definitely capable of playing games at 1080p and, in some titles, making use of the higher refresh-rate ceiling.
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The Right Ports and Customized Keys
Although the keyboard and touchpad don't look extraordinary, they are high-quality. They have moderate travel, but are very responsive. The touchpad has customizable backlighting, in three zones (not per key), with many colors and effects. It feels premium and has a high level of quality. The touchpad is responsive and smooth, and it also glides smoothly. The touchpad also features a fingerprint reader on the top left, which allows for secure and quick login.
A modest port selection rounds out the physical build. The left flank holds a USB 3.1 Type-A port, a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 support, and the power connector.
On the right, there's another USB-A 3.1 port and an HDMI connection for an external monitor. That's not a huge number of ports, but it should give you what you need for most use cases without feeling too restrictive. The system also includes Wi-Fi 6 (with Killer networking to improve your connection while gaming), Bluetooth, and a 720p webcam on the top bezel.
Testing the RTX 3060: Potent Portability
As important as design, what is inside the compact machine? The only model we tested is sold by Best Buy. It includes a quad core Intel Core i7-11375H processor and 16GB memory. There is also a Nvidia GeForce RTX3060 GPU. A 512GB solid state drive. That's a pretty good value on paper—though I'd say that more storage would be welcome—but it will all depend how these parts perform.
The Predator Triton 300SE was compared to the four gaming laptops below for our benchmark charts. The field is diverse, with RTX 20 Series and 30 Series GPUs being contrasted to the RTX 3060. The Razer Stealth 13 uses the GeForce GTX 1650T, which is less powerful. The RTX 3060 should outperform the RTX 2060, and the RTX 3060 will show how the two 14-inch gamers compare to larger 15-inch or smaller 13-inch rivals.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 8 and 10 are performance tests that simulate holistic work environments. They were developed by the PC benchmark experts at UL (formerly Futuremark). PCMark 10 simulates real-world content creation and productivity. It is used to evaluate overall system performance in office-centric tasks like word processing, spreadsheet jockeying and web browsing. PCMark 8 also has a storage subtest, which we use to evaluate the boot speed. Each test yields a unique numeric score. Higher numbers indicate better performance.
The Triton 300 SE is a snappy general performer with its 11th Generation CPU, sharing the top two with the Asus TUF Dash F15, which uses the same processor. Realistically, all of these machines are well over the threshold of what we consider speedy everyday performance, as you'd expect from gaming laptops, but more multitasking power never hurts.
The next step is Maxon’s Cinebench R15 CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 testing, which is fully threaded in order to take advantage of all processor threads and cores. Cinebench uses the CPU to render complex images, rather than the GPU. This score is used to determine if a computer can handle processor-intensive tasks.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that's highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, we put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute clip of 4K video (the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file. It's a timed test, and lower results are better.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and add up the total. As with Handbrake, lower times are better here.
The 300 SE acquits itself well here, even if it doesn't set any records. It finished roughly in line with the others, including the larger laptops with theoretically better cooling. The ROG Zephyrus G14's AMD processor is, as we've come to expect, the superior multimedia performer, but none of these laptops qualifies as a professional editing workstation. (You'd probably prefer at least a 15.6-inch screen for serious media editing and content creation work, anyway.)
Graphics Testing
3DMark is a method of measuring relative graphics strength by rendering sequences in 3D that are highly detailed and gaming-style. These graphics emphasize lighting and particles. Two different 3DMark Subtests are used, Sky Diver or Fire Strike. They can be applied to different systems. While both are DirectX 11 benchmarks Sky Diver suits midrange computers and integrated graphics better, Fire Strike targets high-end gaming and gaming PCs. These scores are not public.
Next up is another synthetic graphics test or gaming simulation, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it's rendered in the eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario for a second opinion on each laptop's graphical prowess.
This is our first look at a GeForce RTX 3060 in a laptop, and it makes a solid case as a midrange power GPU at a reasonable price. Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3070 GPUs are of course superior, especially deployed in bigger systems, but the GeForce RTX 3060 demonstrates big gains over the RTX 2060. That solidifies its presence in the hierarchy as the most affordable entry point into the advanced 30 Series segment, and it certainly delivers more power than we've come to expect from a laptop this size in the past. Let's see if this pattern holds up with the retail game benchmarks.
Real-World Gaming Testing
Although the synthetic tests are useful for general 3D aptitude testing, it is hard to compare full-retail video games with which to judge gaming performance. Far Cry 5 (and Rise of the Tomb Raider) are modern games with high-fidelity benchmarks. These benchmarks show how the system performs in real-world settings. They are run at 1080p resolution with the best quality presets for the game (Normal, Ultra and Medium for Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider).
The results are somewhat ambiguous, but we have come to expect some of these conclusions with RTX 30 Series laptops. System makers can configure the GeForce GTX 30 Series GPUs at different wattages, which results in varying performance with the same chip. The issue can be read in detail here. However, the bottom line is that you cannot predict how much performance will result based on specs or model numbers. This makes it more crucial to test each machine individually before buying.
Let's now look at the final results. You'd be surprised at how the Triton 300SE performs. The Triton 300 SE delivers a performance of more than 60fps with AAA titles running at their highest quality setting. 100fps is better. This laptop is perfect for gamers who want to enjoy the latest titles with all the eye candy enabled. It's also extremely portable. You can expect 60fps for the most complex titles (potentially lower with ray trace enabled), but you will not be able to do any better without a bigger, more expensive computer.
Rise of the Tomb Raider saw the Zephyrus G14's RTX2060 fall, though it did manage a tie in Far Cry 5. The Dash F15's RTX 3070 was unable to match the Zephyrus G14. The Predator Triton300 SE is a great value for money. Alienware's m15R4 was the best dog. You'll be able to see how well the RTX 3070 of the Alienware m15 R4 performed compared with the Dash, illustrating my variance. Blade Stealth 13 demonstrates that dropping from the RTX to GTX series reduces frame rates by roughly half.
Acer's High-Refresh Screen with popular multiplayer games may be of interest to other gamers. To check the benchmark in Rainbow Six Siege, I used both high- and low-quality settings. Both were at 100 percent render resolution. You normally run games at higher settings in order to experience the visual delight, however many competitive esports gamers choose lower settings for smoother gameplay. Triton 300 SE achieved an average of 175 FPS with high settings and 190 FPS with low settings. This was well above its screen refresh rate.
Battery rundown test
We fully recharge the laptop and set it up in power-save mode, instead of high-performance or balanced mode. Additionally, we make some battery-saving tweaks to prepare for the unplugged video rundown. We also switch Wi-Fi off and put the laptop into airplane mode. In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the same Tears of Steel short we use in our Handbrake test—with screen brightness set at 50% and volume at 100% until the system quits.
Gaming laptops have a reputation for brief battery life, but their runtimes are slowly rising as machines get slimmer. The Acer's impressive stamina is another win for this machine, pairing well with the portable design of the laptop and encouraging you to take it on the road or use it at a coffee shop or on the bus or subway.
The Winner in Portability, Power and Price
The Predator Triton 300SE has a lot of positive aspects. There is also little to be unhappy about. It is stylish and sleek without losing out on the essentials such as ports or battery life. It is able to perform at a level that's comparable with larger and more costly gaming laptops, although it can be beaten in certain cases. Gaming on-the-go is possible thanks to the Acer's RTX3060 graphics.
Our only real quibble is the 512GB rather than 1TB SSD given the size of some modern games, but you can make do by keeping just your favorites installed and skipping some of the more massive "living" games. If the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 set a new bar for 14-inch laptops last year, the Triton 300 SE has climbed over it—with a list price $50 less. While we admire the G14's elegant design and superior AMD processor, the Acer's new GPU and longer battery life give it the edge in the race for our Editors' Choice award.