Acer Predator 17 G9-793 Notebook Review

[Redaktion]

The Mighty Giant. Just this May, we reviewed the Predator 17 G9-792 with GTX 980M GPU. Now Acer has released the nearly identical successor, this time equipped with a GTX 1070 graphics card. The behemoth manages to impress once again with special features like an additional FrostCore cooling fan. Is the Predator "cooler" than its competition?

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-Predator-17-G9-793-Notebook-Review.173668.0.html

[Paul-Zero]

I was very surprised when I saw the final score of this product, the score difference only 2% between this and the ROG G752VS and MSI GT72VR. I think you should have penalized much more on display, application performance and temperature.

When spending $3000,- one should be highly critical when it comes down to performance, and this creature doesn't stand out from the competition:
- Card reader: transfers data at medium-fast rates of 70 to 90 MB/s (MSI twice as fast)
- Wireless: the Acer notebook only averaged 322 MBit/s when receiving data. The Asus G752VS with Intel Wireless-AC 8260 (ac, MIMO 2x2) is up to 76 % faster
- Accessibility is not the Acer's strong suite (can't access fans for cleaning)
- The only available backlight color for the number block is white, while the main keyboard has three color zones, which are adjustable, but can't be dimmed (competition has full coloured keyboards)
- We haven't encountered a cloudy display such as the Acer's in a long time ... we encountered massive screen bleeding
- CPU performance: 10% less compared to competition
- System performance: 10-20% less compared to competition
- Sometimes the fan spools up for no apparent reason; fan noise starts upon opening software.+ fan sound unfortunately accompanied by a high-pitched buzzing noise
- CPU temperature up to 98 °C (this breaks hardware long term)
- Light throttling does occur at times
- Eats up much more power compared to competition

[spy]

3000€
I won't even bother reading the test.

[john.q]

Yes, points are not accurate on this one. 92% temps when they go up almost to 100°C? (saw a review with max 99°C on 2 cores!) Doesn't make sense.

[disappointing]

over. priced. period.

This isn't a refresh, they just put pascal on that thing with no real optimazion. So it runs so hot you can cook eggs on it.

[Shahriar Farkhan]

So, I purchased one of these and I think some of the issues are related to it being a early build/prerelease.
1. The screen bleed is still an issue - I was lucky enough to get one with very little in one corner but there was a guy who was returning one which had so much screen bleed it was ridiculous - Normally, I don't mind but I'd have exchanged mine if it looked that bad.
2. I just played Witcher 3 for about 3 hours while downloading Watchdog 3 in the background, running Intel Xtreme overclocking. The CPU never exceeded 80 degrees C. ZERO throttling - the CPU was a stable line over an entire hour that the intel utility displayed. There have been a few BIOS updates so this may be addressed in a BIOS update or intel thermal driver update.
3. The case was positively cool in the above test.
4. The keyboard back-light colors and dimming are now fully adjustable for the all the keyboard sections. Again, I think this has changed since this thing launched.
5. I don't know what Paul-Zero is talking about RE cloudy display, though I have the 1080P not the 4K but I can report it's fantastic. I've been toying with whether or not I should keep it and it's as good as the Razer Blade's 1080P, ASUS GL502VS's  1080P, blows away MSI's GS63VR's 1080P. Bright, clear, good contrast.
6. Almost NO bloatware. MSI (absolutely awful) could learn something, ASUS was number two on Bloatware. MSI's systems are so burdened that it's affected performance.

FWIW, I think there has been improvement on this beast since it launched. It would be useful to have a review especially since this is ACER's second attempt at a high end laptop and they are definitely learning a few things.