Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51) review – haven’t we seen this one already?

Among all of the Predator brands of Acer, there is one in particular, that received a major overhaul this season – the Triton. Earlier this year, we were able to get our hands on both the Triton 500 and Triton 900, which were the newcomers in the laptop gaming industry. Now, there is a third one – the Triton 300, which is dubbed as the lower budget model.

Interestingly, this laptop looks incredibly similar to the Helios 300 and the Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-54). So, what is the reason Acer is duplicating their hardware and is it actually duplicating? Of course, all of the aforementioned are parts of different subbrands, which in many cases means different target groups. No matter if we are talking about a fan base or region availability.

Other than that, the Triton 300 (PT315-51) can be configured with up to a Core i7-9750H and a GTX 1650. Moreover, there is the magical 144Hz 1080p display, which should be perfect for the mid-tier gaming experience, this laptop should be able to provide.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-predator-triton-300/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51) - 规格

  • Innolux N156HCE-EN1
  • 颜色精度  5.2  1.5
  • HDD/SSD
  • 以至于 1000GB SSD + 以至于 1000GB HDD
  • 内存
  • up to 32GB
  • 操作系统
  • Windows 10 Home
  • 蓄电池
  • 59Wh, 4-cell
  • 车身材料
  • Plastic / Polycarbonate, Aluminum
  • 外形尺寸
  • 363 x 259 x 22.9 mm (14.29" x 10.20" x 0.90")
  • 重量
  • 2.50 kg (5.5 lbs)
  • 端口和连接性
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • HDMI
  • 迷你显示接口
  • 以太网LAN
  • Killer Ethernet E2500
  • Wi-Fi
  • Killer Wi-Fi t6 AX1650 (2x2 MU-MIMO)
  • 蓝牙
  • 5.0
  • 音频插孔
  • 3.5mm audio jack
  • 特点
  • 指纹识别器
  • 网络摄像机
  • 720p HD (SHDR)
  • 背光键盘
  • 麦克风
  • Digital dual-array microphones
  • 扬声器
  • 光驱
  • 安全锁槽
  • Kensington Lock
  • 2x 4th Gen AeroBlade 3D metal fans
  • 4-zone RGB keyboard

What’s in the box?

As expected, the Triton 300 (PT315-51) comes in a branded box, that screams “GAMING” right in your face. Inside the package, we see the notebook itself, as well as a 135W power adapter.


Design and construction

Despite being the most affordable of the Predator Triton family, the Triton 300 (PT315-51) features an aluminum lid and body. With this, the device weighs 2.50 kg and has a profile of 22.9mm. Indeed, this is not the thinnest, nor the lightest gaming notebook, but its measurements, are clearly on point with what would you expect for a mid-tier gaming device. Keep in mind that this is relatively the same thickness as the Helios 300 (PH315-54), but marginally heavier than it.

Gladly, the lid opens easily with a single hand, and furthermore, the hinge is very stable in an upright position. Its lid is prone to some flex – a little more than what we would have liked to see from a laptop with an aluminum cover. By the way, the camera is in its traditional position, unlike the Legion Y540 for instance.

Now, let’s move to the base, which houses the gorgeous keyboard of this device. First, there is a 4-zone RGB backlight, which can be tuned by the PredatorSense app. By the way, this application gives you some neet controls over fan and clock speeds. Now, about the keyboard itself, it has a great key travel and clicky feedback, and we feel it is very decent for gaming.

This is not all, however. There is a dedicated button for the aforementioned app. What is more interesting is the tiny button to the top left of the keyboard. Yes, this is the famous “Turbo” button (Or as we call it – the “Take off” switch) of the Triton series, which boosts the fans to their maximum speed for as long as you want.

In addition to that, as a typical laptop, the Triton 300 (PT315-51) has a touchpad. It is noticeably larger than the average for this type of notebooks and has good gliding capabilities, as well as accurate feedback.

Turning the laptop upside down we see a substantial ventilation grill, as well as two speaker cutouts. Hot air is exhausted from the back, as well as from the right side.

Ports

On the left, you can see an RJ-45 connector, a mini DisplayPort, an HDMI connector, as well as a USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 1) port, followed by two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports. Then, on the right, there is the charging plug, a USB Type-A 2.0 port and a headphone jack.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

As you can see from the video up above, there are 11 Phillips-head screws fixing the bottom panel. After you unscrew them, you have to pry the plate with a plastic tool, in order to get inside.

First, we see the cooler that is pretty much the same as the ones seen on the Helios 300 (PH315-54) and the Nitro 5 (AN515-54). It embodies three heat pipes – two are cooling both the CPU and the GPU, while the third is only attached to the graphics card. What is interesting here is that the second fan is actually coming from the 4th Generation AeroBlade 3D technology and is made out of metal.

In terms of upgradability, we are looking at another champ here. It can be upgraded with up to 32GB of DDR4 memory via two RAM DIMMs, while the storage department features a 2.5″ SATA drive, as well as two M.2 slots. For now, there is no information about RAID 0 support.

Lastly, there is a 58.75Wh battery inside.


Display quality

Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51) is equipped with a Full HD IPS panel, model number Innolux N156HCE-EN1. Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 142 ppi, their pitch – 0.18 x 0.18 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 60 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Viewing angles are good. We offer images at different angles to evaluate the quality.

The maximum measured brightness is 308 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 285 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 14%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 7000K (average) – colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 6930K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 36% Brightness (White level = 141 cd/m2, Black level = 0.11 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is very good – 1270:1 (1130:1 after profiling).

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 91% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 29 ms.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51)’s display does use PWM to adjust its brightness up until 80 nits. Additionally, its frequency is high enough, so the display is comfortable to use in the long run.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusions

Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51)’s Full HD 60Hz display has an IPS panel with comfortable viewing angles, good contrast ratio and doesn’t use aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment. Moreover, it covers 91% of sRGB.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51) configurations with 15.6″ Innolux N156HCE-N1, (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

除了获得高效和健康友好的配置文件,购买LaptopMedia的产品,您还可以支持我们实验室的发展,我们在实验室测试设备,以产生最客观的评论。

办公室工作

Office Work应该主要由那些花大部分时间看文本、表格或仅仅是浏览的用户使用。该配置文件旨在通过保持平坦的伽玛曲线(2.20)、本机色温和精确的色彩来提供更好的清晰度。

设计与游戏

本资料针对专业处理色彩的设计师,以及游戏和电影。设计与游戏》将显示面板发挥到了极致,使其在白点D65的网页和高清电视的sRGB IEC61966-2-1标准中尽可能准确。

卫生保健

Health-Guard消除了有害的脉宽调制(PWM),并减少了影响我们的眼睛和身体的负蓝光。 由于它是针对每个面板量身定制的,因此可以保持色彩在视觉上的准确性。 Health-Guard模拟纸张,因此大大减轻了眼睛的压力。

以33%的折扣获得所有3份资料


Sound

Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51)’s speakers sound good and rather loud. Additionally, its low, mid and high tones are clear of deviations.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities can be downloaded from here: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/8111?b=1

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. Surprisingly, the 58.75Wh battery delivered an astonishing battery life for a gaming laptop.

We were able to extract 10 minutes shy of 11 hours of Web browsing and around 9 hours of video playback.


CPU options

The first Triton 300 can be paired with the Core i5-9300H or the Core i7-9750H.


GPU options

By the time being, this device can be purchased with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card.


Gaming tests

Far Cry 5Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 165064 fps60 fps56 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650112 fps81 fps35 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 165057 fps53 fps46 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Core i7-9750H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51)2.91 GHz (B+12%)@ 63°C2.90 GHz (B+12)@ 66°C2.81 GHz (B+8%)@ 74°C
HP Pavilion Gaming 15 20193.57 GHz (B+37%)@ 81°C2.88 GHz (B+11%)@ 73°C2.66 GHz (B+2%)@ 73°C
Lenovo Legion Y7000 (2019)3.34 GHz (B+28%)@ 72°C3.15 GHz (B+21%)@ 82°C2.99 GHz (B+15%)@ 79°C
Lenovo Legion Y5402.78 GHz (B+7%)@ 74°C3.08 GHz (B+18%)@ 90°C2.87 GHz (B+10%)@ 79°C
ASUS ROG G7313.38 GHz (B+30%)@ 87°C3.43 GHz (B+32%)@ 94°C2.63 GHz @ 73°C
ASUS ROG G5313.41 GHz (B+31%)@ 95°C3.23 GHz (B+24%)@ 95°C2.72 GHz (B+5%)@ 79°C

In reality, this laptop placed its processor in an underperforming state. This means, that it probably prioritizes its GPU ahead of the CPU. Nevertheless, despite the rather low frequencies, in the beginning, the Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51) was able to finish with relatively high clock speed and a very decent temperature – just 74C.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
Acer Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51)1615 MHz @ 66°C1591 MHz @ 72°C
Dell G3 15 35901605 MHz @ 67°C1566 MHz @ 74°C
ASUS ROG G5311461 MHz @ 65°C1408 MHz @ 71°C
ASUS TUF FX7051566 MHz @ 74°C1568 MHz @ 74°C
Acer Nitro 7 (AN715-51)1633 MHz @ 61°C1599 MHz @ 67°C

Despite featuring give or take the same cooling as the Nitro 7 (AN715-51), the Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51)’s GTX 1650 works at significantly higher temperatures and even higher noise levels.

Gaming comfort

While the fans are not too loud when the “Turbo” button is not activated, the externals clearly get pretty warm.


Verdict

What can we say about this notebook? Apart from the undoubted similarities between the Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51), the Nitro 5 (AN515-54), Helios 300 (PH315-54) and even the Acer Aspire 7 (A715-74G), this laptop looks sleek AF. On the inside – perhaps the same hardware, on the outside – the Triton 300 has the less obnoxious and best-looking design (in our opinion), excluding the Aspire 7.

Not only that, but its chassis is aluminum, its keyboard is amazing and features 4-zone RGB backlighting, and its touchpad is huge. In terms of gaming, the device performs on par with the other notebooks that feature the same Core i7-9750H/GTX 1650 combo.

However, this laptop has the PredatorSense app, which enables you to tweak your fan and clock speeds to some extent, and also features a “Turbo” button. What does it do? Well, kind of what it says – it turns your laptop in a monstrous airplane, that is sucking itself into the desk better than an octopus to a young dolphin.

Yes, as you can imagine, it gets immensely loud, which is pretty uncomfortable, but any pair of good headphones will do the job in that case. By the way, we got the model with the 1080p 60Hz display (Innolux N156HCE-N1), which is pretty nice for the money – you get decent maximum brightness (300+ nits), good contrast ratio and viewing angles and more importantly – 91% of sRGB coverage, for punchy colors. Additionally, the display doesn’t use aggressive PWM to adjust its brightness levels.

Now we come to the most impressive feature of this laptop – battery life. It is extremely rare to see a gaming notebook that is capable of doing around 11 hours of Web browsing and 9 hours of video playback.

Moreover, you can upgrade the thing with up to 32GB of DDR4 memory. This is not everything, though. Similarly to the aforementioned Acer laptops, this one also features a 2.5″ SATA drive slot and two M.2 slots.

Of course, there are a couple of downsides – one of which is the hot base when gaming. Then come the I/O. While we are more or less happy with it, we were disappointed to see that there is no Thunderbolt connection. Not only that but the only USB Type-C port it has is only a 3.1 (Gen. 1) (up to 5Gbps). You know what it else lacks – an SD card reader.

Honestly, apart from that, we feel that the Predator Triton 300 (PT315-51) is a very good gaming notebook. But if you want something slightly more affordable – check out the Nitro 5 (AN515-54) or HP Pavilion Gaming 15 (2019).

Pros

  • All-aluminum build
  • 91% sRGB coverage and no aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment (Innolux N156HCE-N1)
  • Great keyboard for gaming
  • Upgradability is on point with two M.2 PCIe SSD slots
  • PredatorSense app offers good customization
  • Impressive battery life


Cons

  • Lacks Thunderbolt connector
  • Doesn’t feature an SD card reader
  • Gets warm in long gaming sessions

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/acer-predator-triton-300/

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Aryaman Adivya Singh
Aryaman Adivya Singh
4 年 之前

Can I take it to college for coding as I wanted a stylish laptop with all things in one.

Someone
Someone
4 年 之前

Yes i take it every day with me it not that heavy and you’ll end up getting used to it , the turbo mode is pretty darn loud enough to silence other gaming laptops but not best suited if u turn it on in a library .

anonymous
anonymous
3 年 之前

Does this laptop have a feature like that of rog and the legion counterparts were they have battery health charging that caps the battery to around 80% while charging. I’ve heard that this can keep the battery degradation a bit longer. Also, if I’m planning to play with this laptop I’d like to plug it to the wall so that it would have a smoother gameplay but I’m scared that this laptop would kill its battery a lot faster.

Red
Red
3 年 之前

What is the bottom cover screw size? I lost one and gonna buy a new set.

YxngMech
YxngMech
3 年 之前

how long is it safe to game with turbo mode on considering the thermals ?

Last edited 3 年 之前 by YxngMech