Dell G3 15 3500 vs Acer Predator Helios 300: Which One is Better in Gaming?

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Dell G3 3500 and Acer Predator Helios 300 laptops are compared here. Both the laptops are specially made for gaming purposes. The price range, features, performance, and everything are different. Here, we will see which one will be better for you as per price range and performance.

BUY NOW	BUY NOW
Dell G3 15 3500	Acer Predator Helios 300
PROS	PROS
Good maintenance possibilities. Sturdy build quality and clean design. Thunderbolt 3 connector.	Good gaming performance. Backlit RGB keyboard. Stays cool while gaming.
CONS	CONS
Light screen-bleeding. Average trackpad.	Loud fans. Average battery life.

SPECIFICATIONS

INTRODUCTION:

Dell G3 15 3500

The G3 3500 is the latest entry-level gaming laptop. Dell down the price by using alternatively cheap materials and focus on the performance. So, as this is a gaming laptop, you will get a good performance in gaming than other things.

Acer Predator Helios 300

This is their mid-tier gaming laptop, the Nitro 5 with 15-inch size would be the entry-level model. This one sits in the middle and then there are more expensive Helios models. This one has a lot to offer though for the price.

DESIGN & CONSTRUCTION:

Dell G3 15 3500

The entire laptop is made of plastic. It definitely feels like plastic but it’s also pretty strong, rigid, and, very little flex on the keyboard deck. The hinge tension is firm, very nice, and the rubber feet on the bottom are massive, these are very grippy feet. There is one big problem in design which is the hinge. Many people complain that the hinge of this laptop breaks or gets loose after using some period of time.

I believe it’s using the same keyboard as last year, so fairly shallow key travel but very tactile which I like. Given the thickness of this laptop, I feel like they could have increased the key travel to make it more comfortable to type on but their Alienware laptops have excellent keyboards. I also think the keycaps are a bit small in terms of surface area, there’s quite a large gap between each key and I feel like increasing the size would make it slightly easier to hit each key because then it requires less accuracy. Overall, the key travel feels a little bit shorter than the average gaming laptop but tactility is a little bit above average.

The trackpad has a slightly rough texture to it but the tracking accuracy is actually pretty good. Small movements are okay, not amazing but above average and I realized that tracking accuracy is definitely more important than the feel and smoothness of the surface in my opinion. It does require quite a bit of force to click down on the trackpad, so it gets tiring quite quickly.

Acer Predator Helios 300

The Predator tries to look a little more chill. You’ve got anodized matte black aluminum on the lid but you do get those blue stripes instead of red anyway. This is a little more toned down than the Nitro.

The cooling system on this is relatively good at this price. I think that helps because this is fairly thin and light. Acer says, it’s 5.5 pounds which is 2.5 kilograms but our model actually measured a little bit less than that.

It has a Microsoft precision trackpad. The keyboard is a four-zone RGB backlit, we don’t expect per-key RGB backlighting at this price point. The keys are a little on the soft and mushy side, pretty decent travel but I would like them to be a little bit firmer and a little bit crisper.

DISPLAY:

Dell G3 15 3500

This one comes with a 144Hz panel and it is a much better screen, not just because of the faster refresh rate but things like brightness, contrast, color accuracy, color gamut, and just overall image quality. I did notice quite a bit of light bleed around the edges of the screen but that is about my only complaint with this.

Acer Predator Helios 300

The Predator Helios has a more robust cooling system which is always important for a gaming laptop and of course that 240 hertz IPS 3-millisecond refresh display. There is a base model which is 144 hertz which is still nothing to shock at and the metrics are pretty good. It’s a little brighter than average gaming laptop they typically aren’t very bright, so it was over 300 nits by a good amount and pretty good color gamut. The mid-tier usually in gaming laptops, the display is what takes the hit. They don’t get the greatest quality displays, so this one’s better than average which could be nice for those who are thinking of using this for content creation, photo editing, video editing, doing some 3D blender work.

FEATURES:

Dell G3 15 3500

The Dell G3 3500 has 10th gen Intel Core i5-10300H and i7-10750H processors. It also has many options in GPU, they are NVIDIA GTX 1650, GTX 1660, GTX 1660 Ti, and RTX 2060. All the options give a different range of performance as its capacity. Storage and memory are also enough for a gaming laptop. 

The speakers are halfway between downward-firing and side-firing. So, it’s like a 45-degree angle, very little bass but I think the mid-range and treble are fine. I would definitely not recommend them for music, they sound pretty bad for that but otherwise like for youtube videos or while gaming, they are acceptable.

They made some slight changes to the inside of the laptop, so you lose the 2.5-inch drive slot in favor of a much larger battery and a second m.2 slot. You also have two Ram slots and the Wi-Fi card is still upgradable. In terms of upgradability, on the left, you have the charging port, mini display port, HDMI, USB-A, ethernet, a Thunderbolt 3 port, two more USB-A, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD slot.

Acer Predator Helios 300

It starts around $1200 with an RTX 2060 and an intel core i7 10 gen CPU. We compare the RTX 2070 Max-Q model which is around $1500. In this, you get a metal lid, fast 240-hertz refresh display. Inside, we have an intel 10th gen core i7 with 6 core CPU. We have two Ram slots, Acer only mentions going up to 32 GB. You have not just the m.2 boot SSD drive which is NVMe and the benchmark is pretty well on this one but you also have a hard drive. Even if you buy a configuration that doesn’t have a 2.5-inch hard drive, the brackets in place and they include the connector cable that you need to put in.

The fans are not terribly loud. As it’s a gaming laptop, you will hear them when you’re doing things like gaming or if you’re doing a complex blender but not that loud. So, there is certainly a thermal room there for going even higher. They also have the turbo button built-in keyboard deck and that one basically does the GPU overclock, sets the power profile to high performance, and blasts the fans, and probably most people don’t want to get that loud either. You might get about 5% more performance improvement by doing that.

There is a second NVMe SSD slot and it is possible to set up two drives. Acer mentions Thunderbolt 3 for some of the configurations, others just have USB-C but the rest of the ports are pretty hardy. You’ve got Killer ethernet, Killer Wi-Fi 6 onboard which is an intel-based card so that’s good but you’ve got plenty of USB-A ports. You got a mini display port, the HDMI 2.0. So, it’s pretty well equipped and obviously a headphone jack.

When it comes to the speakers, they’re average, they’re not so great. They’re not so terrible but fitting for this price range. There’s Dolby DTS X Ultra software. So, if you’re playing plugging in a set of surround sound speakers, you can get some pretty nice audio out of it and even your headphone audio quality is quite fine on this.

PERFORMANCE:

Dell G3 15 3500

In terms of gaming performance, the RTX 2060 will push pretty good frame rates in most games but the thermals on this are really holding it back. For context, you should expect around 45 watts on the CPU and 90 watts on an RTX 2060 in gaming, so that’s like a combined CPU and GPU load in a demanding game something like Doom Eternal.

With this laptop, you are looking at around 30 watts on the CPU and 58 watts on the GPU that was also with the high-performance thermal profile which did increase the fan speed by a noticeable amount. The thing is the fan seemed pretty loud kind of like the HP Omen 15 which had excellent thermals and nothing really seems out of the ordinary with the cooling assembly. There’s also still a bit of thermal headroom to boost a little bit higher, so I assume it’s just a software thing with those performance profiles and unfortunately, none of the intel 10th generation CPUs have supported undervolting, so you’ll get good performance but it’s not going to be as good as it could be even compared to the average 15-inch gaming laptop.

Acer Predator Helios 300

If you’re playing AAA titles on ultra settings or full HD resolution, it will thermal throttle but a hundred millivolt undervolt using throttle stop, there will be no problem and that brings it down 80 degrees centigrade. The thermal control in this price range is a really decent one. They have the Acer PredatorSense app as always on this and you can do things like give the GPU a mild overclock, set your fan speeds manually if you want certainly that could help with cooling.

The 2070 Max-Q version of the card does help run less hard but the performance is exactly where you would expect it to be. The 2070 Max-Q is not mid-range, it’s getting into the upper tier. So, you can play any game on the market now on ultra settings and certainly have frame rates that exceed 60 frames per second on this and given that you have a fast refresh display if you’re using it for something like Battle Royale or Apex Legends, you can easily go into the 100 fps in your frame rate. You’re not going to overrun the 240-hertz display but maybe with something even lighter less demanding like Overwatch. So, it performs above its capacity and if you’re thinking about future games like Cyberpunk 2077, this should be able to handle without any problem. Even if you get the RTX 2060, you’ll still be able to play games on high or ultra settings at the full HD resolution in this panel.

BATTERY:

Dell G3 15 3500

There’s a bigger 68-watt hour battery inside compared to the 51-watt hour battery from last year. You’re looking at around 5 hours of battery life which is pretty standard. There is also a small battery option is available but it will give less battery life than this assumption.

Acer Predator Helios 300

It has a 59-watt hour battery which is how they get them thin and light in this price tier. So, that’s not a very big battery, it’s a little bit bigger than you would see in an ultrabook but there’s obviously a lot more horsepower going on here to consume it.

We do have NVIDIA Optimus switchable graphics, no g-sync by the way but that’s going to help if you’re doing light work, streaming video, or something like that, or working in an office, then it’s going to run on integrated graphics but still, you don’t expect a whole lot of battery life out of this. This may give you about four hours on a charge doing light work. Our Max-Q 2070 card came with a 230-watt charger. I assume that you probably get a 180-watt charger for the lesser configuration with a GTX 2060 inside.

WHICH TO BUY?

Definitely, in the Dell G3, especially on your budget-oriented devices, I’d also like to see much better thermals because there’s plenty of room inside for bigger fans and bigger heat pipes. It’s definitely not a thin laptop by any means. If they make the keycaps bigger and increase key travel, it would make this an excellent keyboard. Overall, This is not a bad laptop for the price you pay but you should keep an eye on the hinge of this laptop. For the price, Aer Predator Helios is not bad, it competes with things like the Dell G5 and MSI’s mid-range gaming laptops. I think Acer really does a good job with the low to mid-end gaming laptop.

Dell’s G3 3500 is an entry-level gaming laptop while Acer Predator Helios 300 is a mid-range one. In my opinion, if you have a tight budget, then G3 will be okay. Otherwise, the Acer Predator Helios 300 is a better option.

Expert reviews of Dell G3 15 3500:

By Indiatimes
Overall, the Dell G3 15 3500 has several things going for it — it’s well built, has a rugged but edgy design, offers a medium-to-high-level…

By IGN
The Dell G3 3500 isn’t the best if you’re considering an entry-level gaming machine. The 60Hz display is brilliant, bar none that I’ve seen this year so far, and Nahimic Audio is crisp…

By Cnet
There’s not a huge price break between the G3 and G5, but it’s enough that you could put it toward adding more storage or memory (both are easily accessible for you to upgrade) or…

Expert reviews of Acer Predator Helios 300:

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 Ultabookreview
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.

Arya

Hello! I'm Surendar Arya, a passionate tech writer from Uttar Pradesh, India. I'm a freelance contributor to the tech blog - The World's Best And Worst. My enthusiasm for technology drives me to explore the latest trends and innovations in the field. I take immense pleasure in guiding individuals on how to leverage technology for their benefit, making their lives easier and more efficient.