We’ve liked what we’ve seen from Acer’s Predator Triton line in recent years, namely the 15-inch Triton 500, and the latest, more compact model is no exception. The Predator Triton 300 SE ($1,399.99) is a 14-inch gaming laptop with a mix of portability and performance that’s easy to love. It combines sleek design and long battery life with an up-to-date Intel Core i7 “Tiger Lake-H” processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU to make for a solid midrange gaming rig at a very reasonable price. Its downsized screen may be tight for some, but you can’t beat its true portability and high-performance, high-refresh-rate 1080p play if you’re looking for an alternative to just another 15.6-inch gaming machine. Like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 last year, the Triton 300 SE sets a new bar at this size, earning our Editors’ Choice crown for midrange gaming laptops.
Special Edition: A Sleek Standout Design
This laptop is a trim little package, easy to appreciate on the basis of size alone. It brings some style, as well, with a chic all-silver look and a shiny brushed finish on the lid. The logo isn’t a front-and-center eyesore, either, but relegated to a neat badge in the top right corner. Some might call it basic, but I think a more minimalist approach is an appropriate fit for the compact size. You can tell at a glance that it’s slim, light, and ready to grab and go.
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.
Customizable Keys and the Right Ports
The keyboard and touchpad aren’t anything out of the ordinary, but they’re high quality. The keys have a moderate amount of travel but feel very responsive, and feature customizable backlighting (in three zones, not per key) with a multitude of colors and effects. The touchpad feels above average in quality and responsiveness, with very smooth panning and a premium feel. It also includes a fingerprint reader at top left for quick and secure 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, Bluetooth, and a 720p webcam on the top bezel.
Testing the RTX 3060: Potent Portability
Just as important as the design is what’s inside this compact machine. Our test model is the only configuration, sold exclusively through Best Buy. For $1,399.99, it includes a quad-core Intel Core i7-11375H processor, 16GB of memory, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, and 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.
For our benchmark charts, I compared the Predator Triton 300 SE to four other gaming laptops detailed below. It’s a varied field, including RTX 20 and 30 Series GPUs as contrasts to the RTX 3060. (The Razer Stealth 13 employs the less potent GeForce GTX 1650 Ti.) This mix of competitors should show by how much the RTX 3060 outperforms the RTX 2060 and how two 14-inch gamers stack up against larger 15-inch and smaller 13-inch competitors.
Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system’s boot drive. Both tests yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
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.
Next is Maxon’s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
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 Tests
3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to midrange PCs and integrated graphics, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end and gaming PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores.
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 Tests
The synthetic tests above are helpful for measuring general 3D aptitude, but it’s hard to beat full retail video games for judging gaming performance. Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider are both modern, high-fidelity titles with built-in benchmarks that illustrate how a system handles real-world gameplay at various settings. We run them at 1080p resolution at the games’ medium and best image-quality presets (Normal and Ultra for Far Cry 5 under DirectX 11, Medium and Very High for Rise of the Tomb Raider under DirectX 12).
These results somewhat muddle the conclusions, which we’ve actually come to expect to some extent with RTX 30 Series laptops. The GeForce RTX 30 Series GPUs can be configured at a wide range of wattages by system makers, resulting in varied performance even with the same chip. You can read more analysis of the issue here, but the takeaway is that it’s more difficult to predict the performance you’ll get just from specs on paper or the GPU’s model number. That makes our individual tests of each machine more important than ever to see before shopping.
All that said, let’s look at the results. The Triton 300 SE lands roughly where you’d expect. Greater-than-60fps performance with AAA titles at peak quality settings is good, and 100fps is even better. Many gamers live for playing the latest releases with all of the eye candy activated, and this laptop can do the trick while offering exceptional portability. The most advanced titles will push you closer to 60fps (potentially lower if ray tracing is enabled), but realistically you won’t do better without a larger, pricier computer.
The Zephyrus G14’s RTX 2060 trailed in Rise of the Tomb Raider (though it managed a tie in Far Cry 5), and the Dash F15’s RTX 3070, surprisingly, struggled to compete. That makes the Predator Triton 300 SE a good bang-for-your-buck package. The Alienware m15 R4 proved to be the top dog you’d predict. (You’ll note how much better its RTX 3070 performed than the Dash’s, illustrating the variance I mentioned.) Conversely, the Blade Stealth 13 shows that dropping down from the RTX to GTX series cuts frame rates roughly in half.
Other gamers may want to take advantage of the Acer’s high-refresh screen with the most popular competitive multiplayer titles. As a check, I ran Rainbow Six: Siege’s built-in benchmark at both the highest and lowest quality settings (both at 100% render resolution). Normally you run games at higher settings to enjoy the visual treat, but many competitive esports players select lower settings to achieve smoother gameplay. The Triton 300 SE averaged 175fps with high and 190fps with low settings, surpassing its screen refresh rate in both cases.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop in 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.
A Winner on Portability, Power, and Price
There’s a lot to like about the Predator Triton 300 SE, and little to complain about. The design is sleek, stylish, and compact without compromising on essentials like ports or battery life. The general performance really only trails the larger, more expensive gaming laptops you’d expect it to, and even then it holds its own in some cases. The Acer’s RTX 3060 graphics raise the bar for 14-inch machines, making gaming on the go that much more plausible.
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.
