Acer Predator Helios 300 Vs Asus ROG Strix Scar 3: Which to Choose?

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This article is an in-depth comparison of the Acer Predator Helios 300 and the Asus ROG Strix Scar 3. The choice is not easy and if you don’t know which one you should go for, this article may help you find the answer.

Helios 300	Scar 3
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Lots of power. Affordable price. 144Hz refresh rate. Decent battery life.	Keyboard and side RGB lighting looks cool. Awesome audio output.
CONS	CONS
Gets too hot. Loud fans. Lackluster sound.	GeForce RTX 2060 graphics and 240Hz display are a questionable pairing. Fans get loud while gaming.

SPECIFICATIONS

DESIGN

The Scar 3 is a very eye catching laptop. You have metal lid with brushed aluminium texture and the ROG logo that you can light up with RGB colors. On the back it has extended exhaust section, but when you open the laptop it doesn’t stick out too much thanks to well-designed hinge mechanism. On the front and on the sides there is one large light bar that makes the laptop look like it’s hovering above the ground. The deck is made of solid plastic with few extruded lines and a keystone slot on the left hand side. Thanks to carbon fiber pattern the fingerprints are not so visible on it.

The Predator has also metal top pannel, but it’s matt black with blue accents and a backlit logo in the middle. The back of 2019 Predator looks awesome – I love the triangular exhausts with blue heat sinks inside. On the front of the laptop there is a nice silver trim and the keyboard is eye catching thanks to white key strokes. Despite the matt texture of the deck, fingerprints show very easily, but they are easy to wipe away.

Both laptops come with thin bezel display, but only Acer managed to fit 720p webcam properly on the top bezel. On the other hand Asus decided to not include any webcam even though there is a lot of space under the display.

WEIGHT & DIMENSIONS

If it comes to dimensions the extended exhaust section in Scar 3 makes it slightly deeper than Predator, but the weight is about the same for both laptops. I think they both are pretty portable, so carrying any of them should not be a problem.

KEYBOARD & TOUCHPAD

The keyboard in Asus Scar 3 is very good and i think that it’s better than in Predator. It has long 2mm key travel, good spacing and 5 additional useful keys. It’s not full size, but don’t worry, you have the number pad displayed on the touchpad after touching right top corner. The useful feature that it has is the “overstroke” technology which registers the key press before you actually press the key all the way down.

The keyboard in Predator has 1.7mm key travel, good spacing and comfortably big arrow keys. You have also one dedicated key to open the control center app, and the turbo button which improves the performance and sets the fans to max. The keys with white strokes look great but the lighting is not as strong and vivid as in Scar. You have 4 zones of lighting and few simple effects, so you can customize the keyboard.

When it comes to touchpads there is not much to tell. Both are using Windows Precision drivers, so the tracking is good, and you can take advantage of the gesture controls. The only difference is that Predator has one big pannel with bottom mechanism for left and right click. In Scar 3 the touchpad area is smaller, but it has 2 separate buttons. In my opinion it looks cleaner, and i like this solution more. One thing to note is that if the numpad is on, you can’t use the touchpad until you turn it off.

PORT SELECTION

In terms of ports selection i think that Predator is the winner. Basically it has the same ports as Scar, but in addition it has MiniDisplay port and Security lock which the Asus is missing. Unfortunately there is no Thunderbolt 3 and no SD card slot in both laptops. In Scar 3 you can find a new feature called Keystone which is a magnetic NFC chip that you can plug in to the slot on the right hand side.

DISPLAY

One of the most hyped features of Scar 3 is 240Hz display and i believe it’s buttery smooth but i’ve got the unit with 1080p 144Hz 3ms response IPS pannel which is not worse at all. Despite it doesn’t support G-Sync it’s the smoothest 144Hz display that i’ve tested, which in combination with powerful hardware allows you to take advantage of the fast refresh rate. The color accuracy is good as well, the colors are vivid and sharp with cold tone. I find them very accurate, the games look great, but i can recommend this laptop for content creation as well. You have 97% of sRGB color gamut, 73% of AdobeRGB and the brightness is 320 nits.

My Predator has also 1080p 144Hz 3ms response time IPS pannel without G-Sync. I felt like it’s just a little less smooth compared to Scar, but on the other hand it has slightly better color reproduction. The colors are also very vivid and sharp, and the display has perfectly balanced cold tone. It can reproduce 97% of sRGB color gamut, 75% of AdobeRGB and the brightness is 315 nits.

SPEAKERS

The Asus Scar 3 which has the best sounding speakers on the gaming laptop market right now. I was surprised by the amount of bass that they can produce. Every shot and every explosion in game was full and punchy so there was no really need to use the headphones. Mids are just on point but the highs may seem to be a little bit overwhelmed by lows. You can always equalize the sound the way you want using a Sonic Studio III software.

The sound in Predator is above average, but it’s not even close to the Asus. It has noticeably more bass than many other devices and i was surprised how clear was the sound. On stock settings it had a lot of detail and depth, but if you want you can equalize it in Waves MaxxAudio software.

PERFORMANCE

I’ve got the Scar 3 with RTX 2060 and the Predator has GTX 1660Ti on board, but in this case the results were very similare. I pushed both laptops to the limits, so for testing purposes i manually overclocked the GPU in Scar and set the turbo mode for more CPU power and better cooling. In Predator the only thing you need to do is to click the turbo button which instantly overclocks the GPU, increases the CPU power limit and sets the fans to max.

BATTERY

As for the battery life I managed to use the Predator for up to 6 hours when browsing the web and doing light productivity work. When gaming battery died after 1.5 hour. The Asus was a little bit behind, it ran for up to 5.5 hours when light work, and 1.5 hour when gaming.

WHICH SHOULD YOU BUY?

The Scar 3, I think it’s a great choice for those who have some extra dollar to spend. It’s not the cheapest out there, but it has many features that will take your gaming experience to the next level. The performance is good as well. With RTX 2060 can play most of current games on ultra settings at smooth 60fps and above. All of that at respectable temperatures without throttling. The andavtage of it is that it has a full size RTX 2070 variant, while the Predator comes with about 10% weaker RTX 2070 Max-Q. Buying Scar 3 you’re also getting a per-key lighting keyboard, tons of RGB, the best sounding speakers on the market and slightly smoother display without backlight bleeding. For the weak sides we can include lack of webcam, no MiniDisplay port, and the Armoury Crate app issues.

On the other hand, we have the Acer Predator Helios 300 which shows the best price to performance ratio out there, without really sacrificing anything. It has premium metal build, above average speakers and almost the same smooth display with slightly better color reproduction. Unlike the Scar the Predator comes with webcam and MiniDisplay port, but the $1200 configuration has only blue keyboard lighting. However if you want to squeeze the most fps out of your buck i think that this configuration is the way to go. As you have seen the GTX 1660Ti in Predator gives you very close results to the Scar 3 with RTX 2060, and it runns at respectively low temperatures as well. The only issue wasthe screen bleeding which was actually noticeable in my unit, but it vary between laptops and i believe that it’s not so visible in most cases during normal use.

If i had to choose i’d rather go for the Helios 300. I hope that this article helped you decide.

Expert Reviews For Helios 300:

By Techau
All things considered the Acer Predator Helios 300 would sit a lot better with me if it wasn’t as big, given I take laptops with me daily, whereas this feels more like a laptop designed to take to a LAN party once a month. If I’m investing in a laptop I…

By Hothardware
Summed up, the Predator Helios 300 is a fast gaming laptop at a fair price, with some unique features to boot. It may not be the same exceptional value it was a year ago, but with the addition of a 144Hz display, it still stands out against other similarly equipped configurations.

By TechRadar
Despite two glaring flaws, namely the cooling system and the speakers, this budget gaming laptop packs a punch. If you’re serious about gaming but have a limited budget, you’re going to want to pick this one up.

By UltraBookReview
The Helios 300 is Acer’s mind-range gaming laptop built on Intel HQ processors and 1060 graphics. The excellent pricing and solid performance are its main selling points, alongside a nice keyboard, alright IO and a fairly good screen on this updated 2018 model. There are however still some aspects to improve, like the size of the battery, arguable design decisions and rather lackluster speakers.

By PCWorld
The Acer Predator Helios 300 is a comfortable, no-nonsense gaming laptop that delivers a refreshing amount of bang for your buck.

Expert Reviews For Scar 3:

By eTeknix
If you’re looking for a laptop that provides exceptionally high-levels of performance that would look good in any setting, then the ASUS Scar III is definitely it. Coming at a price that is perhaps lower than you might expect (based on the excellent components inside) it may not have all of the bells and whistles offered by alternatives, but it’s sleek professional style and amazing performance gets a huge thumbs up from us!

By HardwareZone
When I buy a gaming laptop, I want it to work right the moment I power it on. ASUS says that leaving one of the DIMM slots free helps customers save because they can simply buy one more stick of RAM instead of, say, a 2x16GB kit (if they were upgrading from 2x8GB), but it still doesn’t seem worth it to me. Furthermore, the performance deficit that comes with single-channel memory is massive, and it doesn’t seem right that I’d have to pay more to upgrade the laptop in order to get my money’s worth.

By PCWorld
In reality, the Scar III doesn’t really do much that other gaming laptops don’t. While you’d be perfectly happy with its performance, you might be better off with building your own PC with the same components – unless you need the laptop form factor, you’re not missing anything here.

By IndiaToday
Asus has finally gone for a design that makes its gaming laptop look elegant and aggressive at the same time. Kudos to the design inputs from the BMW Designworks for making a conventional gaming laptop so appealing. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that this is one of the most exciting gaming laptops you can buy today.

By AusGamers
That said, the closer look with the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR III reveals a solid and exceptional laptop. From a great keyboard feel to a vibrant display to decent hardware that lets you max-out all the most visually demanding titles playable today. Minor issues aside there’s very little not to love here, making this a great gaming laptop.

Jaskaran Singh

Jaskaran, a tech enthusiast from childhood, inspired by his father, began his tech journey by rooting Android phones. He now writes on various tech topics, aiming to simplify complex ideas for a broad audience. His writing is direct, concise, and flows effortlessly, making tech topics accessible and engaging.