Acer Predator Helios 300 vs MSI GL63: Which One is Winner?

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This article is an in-depth comparison of the Acer Predator Helios 300 and the MSI GL63. If you don’t know which one you should go for, this article may help you find the answer.

HELIOS 300	MSI GL63
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Lots of power. Affordable price. 144Hz refresh rate. Decent battery life.	Bright screen. Above-average speakers. Dual-drive storage. Well-behaved cooling system.
CONS	CONS
Gets too hot. Loud fans. Lackluster sound.	Expensive for GTX 1050 graphics (and that, the 2GB version). CPU performance isn’t up to par. Stiff touchpad buttons. So-so battery life.

SPECIFICATIONS

DESIGN

Acer Helios 300:

The brushed aluminum on the back of the display, and the palm rest of the keyboard gives the laptop an unexpectantly premium feel, and, the rigidity of the chassis helps here, as well. It certainly looks the part of a gaming laptop, with red accents, it’s not terribly subtle. But in my opinion, it doesn’t go over the top in it’s attention seeking behavior. There are areas like around the screen, and the bottom, where materials like plastic reigns supreme. And it doesn’t have the reassuringly solid feel of something by Alienware, but it avoids feeling cheap. So, I’m willing to forgive that.

MSI GL63:

The MSI GL63 follows your typical budget gaming laptop design. It is big, bulky, and the build is plastic. With that built the weight is at 2.2 kg which feels like the standard weight for a gaming laptop. The top lid has a smooth matte finish but this one attracts very less fingerprints and even then the fingersmudges are not clearly visible.

The rest of the design footprint is still the old classic MSI, you have two air vents at the back and both sides of the body. The lid has two red stripes which do not grow and the MSI dragon shield which glows when turned on. Even inside the design remains unchanged, you get the standard keyboard layout with extra keys on top for the cooler boost fans and the Dragon Center.

KEYBOARD & TOUCHPAD

Acer Helios 300:

The trackpad, those are returned to things that are pretty good, it’s accurate and tap to click and gestures work well, but I do wish that the force required to press was a little less, so that dragging and dropping files was easier.

The keyboard feels pretty good too. Again, the force to press the keys is a little too high and they are touch mushy, so I can’t get quite as fast as I could on something like an Alienware or the Surface Laptop, which is a bummer, because on a gaming laptop quick and accurate key presses are a plus. But overall it does the job it needs to and the inclusion of both a backlight and a full number pad are appreciated.

MSI GL63:

This is a steelseries keyboard, so you know what to expect but being a budget gaming laptop you will get red backlighting and you can’t program the keys lighting either. Still steelseries keyboard are decent in this price range. Keys are soft and provide good tactile feedback. There’s right amount of machinist to it and ample key travel. Overall, typing experience and gaming is good enough though not as good as on some higher-end other MSI gaming laptops.

The trackpad is a serious compromise on MSI. Tracking is okay but sometimes can take a lot of effort, scrolling with it is a pain in the neck, and gestures are a hit or miss. So do yourself a favor and use an external mouse.

DISPLAY

Acer Helios 300:

To have an IPS screen on a budget oriented gaming laptop at all. The viewing angles in contrast ratio are great, it’s still icing. Maximum brightness could be better described as maximum “glowyness” and average ΔE values of 5.67 are only okay if you don’t see huge outliers and you’re covering more than 67 percent of the sRGB color space. I’m just saying that you won’t be doing any serious video editing or Photoshop, unless you want to invest in a secondary monitor to check your work.

MSI GL63:

We get here is a 15.6 inch full HD display with a TN LCD panel and that makes for not so good viewing angles and slightly above average color distribution and accuracy. So the screen becomes the bottleneck for content creation. However that screen is more than enough for gaming or your regular consumption of media too. Besides the viewing angles, other aspects in the media consumption Department is okay; the display has Bezels around it but every other gaming laptop has in this price range, so it’s okay.

WEIGHT & DIMENSIONS

Acer Helios 300:

Dimensions of the Helios 300 are 362mm in width, 254mm in depth, and 22.9mm in height. The laptop weights around 2.3 kilograms and with the charger, the total weight is 2.9 kilograms.

MSI GL63:

This laptop is bigger in design when compared to Helios 300 while the dimensions are 383.5 x 259.1 x 30.5 mm and there is not much difference in weight. (2.2Kg)

BATTERY

Acer Helios 300:

The battery in predator Heroes 300 does surprisingly long for a gaming laptop. While watching YouTube videos and doing some office works with the videos running in the background with the screen brightness set to 75%. I managed to use it for 4 hours and 57 minutes.

If you’re a student or you just carry a laptop with you all the time 5 hours of battery life in a gaming laptop should make you happy you could probably extend the battery life even more by lowering the screen brightness.

MSI GL63:

The battery is not the strong suit of gaming laptops and not this one either. It has a small 41 watt hour battery which will last you like 2.5 hours on normal usage but maybe close to an hour when gaming. So you’ll have to carry your charger around if you’re taking to outdoor.

PORT SELECTION

WHICH ONE YOU SHOULD BUY?

Helios 300 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.

If I had to choose i’d rather go for the Helios 300, but i am curious what is your choice. I hope that this article helped you decide, so if you know which laptop you’re gonna buy now, let us know in the comments.

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 MSI GL63:

By Pokde
The MSI GL63 8SE comes in as an “affordable” GeForce RTX 2060 with few bells-and-whistles and spends all their budget where it…

By Notebooks-und-mobiles
Die Nvidia Geforce RTX 2060 ist ein leistungsstarker Spiele-Grafik-Chip aus dem Mittelklasse-Segment. Aufgrund der hohen Performance und dem damit verbundenen Stromverbrauch ist der Einsatz grundsätzlich für den 15-Zoll-Formfaktor oder größer…

By Chimerarevo
MSI GL63 8SE è disponibile all’acquisto su Amazon.it attualmente a 1.530€ circa, modello attualmente non venduto direttamente da MSI. In compenso, il rivenditore Amazon ufficiale al momento propone la versione con display da 17,3 pollici.OffertaMSI GL73…

By Ozeros
En términos generales, el MSI GL63 es un equipo bastante interesante, pero que peca de algunos detalles que les comentaremos a continuación:Para partir, el cuerpo es plástico, y si, es de buena calidad, pero no de la misma que posee un equipo con partes…

By Everyeye
MSI GL63 8SE mette sul piatto prestazioni molto convincenti, una RTX 2060 offre oggi una longevità potenzialmente molto lunga e piano supporto al Ray Tracing e al DLSS. Il prezzo di vendita di 1899€, pur essendo elevato, è commisurato alle performance…

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.