Acer Triton 500 SE Review – 11900H + RTX 3080 Tested!
Acer’s new Triton 500 has changed a lot since the first version I reviewed a few years ago – it seems gone are the days when this was a pretty well priced mid range machine that punched up pretty hard. This absolute monster I’ve got here retails for almost $3000, and if you could buy it here in the UK likely north of £2500. It is absolutely decked out spec wise though and sports the apparent new favourite 16:10 display, so is it worth the cash? Let’s take a look and see.
I’ll start with the spec, the model I have is rocking an Intel i9-11900H with 32GB of DDR4-3200, for graphics you get an RTX 3080 Laptop GPU with 8GB of VRAM and a max 110W TDP, and for storage that’s 2TB of PCIe Gen 4 space in RAID 0. The display is the new 16:10 WQXGA, 2560×1600 165Hz IPS panel, and thanks to them using a MUX – a digital switch to change which GPU is actually connected to the display – it even supports G-SYNC fully.
As you can imagine performance is pretty good although I have reviewed another 11900H based machine, the Asus Zephyrus M16, which does seem to run a touch faster than this even in gaming tests despite using an RTX 3070 Laptop GPU instead of this 3080L. Taking a look at the CPU results, starting with Cinebench R20 single thread, the 11900H in this Triton 500 SE sits pretty far down the list. It’s bested by every Ryzen 9 laptop chip I’ve tested and only narrowly beats the Ryzen 7 5800H.
In multi-threaded again it runs in the lower half of the chart, it’s still great performance especially when compared to the last gen 10875H and 10750H, but compared to both current generation Ryzen and the other 11th gen Intel chips I’ve tested it’s definitely falling behind.
In the BMW scene in Blender it’s the same story, in its ‘Extreme’ mode it offers decent but not game changing performance, although in ‘Default’ mode it’s down near the ProArt StudioBook which had its fan curve set to aggressively quiet in it’s normal mode meaning performance was limited. Again, this isn’t bad performance, it’s just not quite as good as both much cheaper machines and it’s same-spec’d rivals. The Gooseberry scene is similar, although thanks to a very similar total power consumption the gap between the default and extreme modes isn’t all that large.
In the Puget bench suite, starting with Premiere Pro, interestingly the Triton finally nears the top of the list, although is still outperformed by the Zephyrus M16 with the same 11900H, albeit with a lower end GPU and slower storage. The Intel chips all tend to do better in Premiere and many of the Adobe apps so only the 5900HX in the SCAR 15 on Turbo technically runs faster than the 11900H’s, but only by 1 point.
In After Effects it’s a return to form, with the Triton running in the mid-field, being bested by a handful of Ryzen 9 options and the M16’s 11900H. Again, this is still a good result for sure, but not quite as good as you might hope. And finally in Photoshop it actually runs as one of the lowest scoring at around 800 points compared to more like 1000 for the M16 and a number of Ryzen chips too.
You might be a little confused why this machine which on the surface looks like it should be just as fast as the Zephyrus M16 but in practice is a good 15% slower on average – that’s thanks to this, the power consumption. Looking at the peak power usage you can see even on its performance mode the M16 runs over 30W more power than this Triton 500 SE, and on turbo it runs another 10W higher. That’s not because the power limits are lower, the Triton has PL1 set to 90W and PL2 at 115W, the difference is in the stable power. 68W is all this cooler could sustain for longer workloads, versus around 100W for the Zephyrus. That’s where the performance gap comes from.
That also translates to gaming performance, as in Watch Dogs Legion it sits in the middle of the pack, despite it’s top shelf specs. It’s still nowhere near bad at all, but it’s not quite on par with it’s rivals.
Cyberpunk is the same, still averaging between 55 and 60 FPS on ultra settings at 1080p, with the 3070 based M16 running in the high 60s to low 70s instead. CSGO on it’s standard mode matches the 5900X and 3080 in the SCAR 15, but when you enable turbo the CPU has more room to boost, netting you an extra 44FPS average, a sizable advantage for sure.
MS Flight is running at it’s new-found cap at around 50 FPS, although somehow the Acer Nitro 5 with it’s Ryzen 5 5600H and RTX 3060 Laptop does beat out the Triton 500 SE when not in its high fan mode. Finally in Fortnite the Triton is towards the back of the pack, although still fairly close to the Zephyrus M16, and still netting over 110FPS average so not too bad.
Of course, that’s at 1080p which isn’t native both for the screen or the aspect ratio, so here’s a quick look at the native 1600p performance. CSGO doesn’t drop all that much between modes, still running at 250FPS at high settings. Fortnite runs between 69 and 76 FPS average on epic settings without DLSS, again not too bad and if you were playing this with any level of competitiveness you’d run high and DLSS on for a much better result. Watch Dogs on ultra is always pretty rough, so again you’d want very high or high instead here. Microsoft Flight is also pretty tough so running high-end is a better choice than ultra, and finally in Cyberpunk it’s only pushing around 30 FPS average which is far from perfect. I think you’d want medium on this machine, at the full resolution, to get a good experience.
Since we are talking about the screen it’s worth covering in some more detail. This is an IPS panel that Acer list with a sticker right on the machine as a 3ms panel. I finally have a working version of my OSRTT device, so using that reports a complete transition time average of just over 4ms. Since I’m measuring the total transition time and not the still more common 10-90% measurements, that means Acer is pretty much spot on here. Good job Acer!
Their PredatorSense software does include an option for LCD overdrive, which can help reduce the response time, at the cost of a touch of overshoot although nothing glaringly obvious so on the whole seems worth enabling. A look at the UFO test seems to confirm that too, as you have practically no ghosting at all in either mode. Image clarity looks great, so a big thumbs up here.
Input lag runs a low average at 28ms, but does have a bit of inconsistency bouncing between 20 and 40 ms, but on the whole not too bad. All of that translates into a really enjoyable gaming experience, with a ridiculously sharp and vibrant screen and decent performance. I had a really good time playing on this when I could get enough frames to enjoy. The biggest downside is the fan noise, if you’ve got headphones (or ear defenders) it’s fine but if you are in the company of others while you game or work I’m not sure they’d appreciate having a jet taking off next to them for hours.
The display is also great for content consumption and creation, it gets nice and bright with a measured peak of around 560 nits, and is rather nice for colours too. It covers almost exactly 100% of the sRGB spectrum, which while not the widest colour space it’s plenty for a bit of content creation on the side or just an enjoyable viewing experience.
As for the rest of the machine, the keyboard is decent. It’s a little on the light side for me but feels great for gaming and it’s something I can adjust to easily. The trackpad is fine, not the biggest and does have a fingerprint sensor cut into it, although while it’s not perfectly flush the whole surface is still conductive meaning you don’t have a dead spot in the tracking.
The I/O is ok, but verging on needing dongles. You get 2 USB A ports, 2 Thunderbolt 4 / USB C ports, ethernet, a 4 pole headphone jack, HDMI 2.1 and an SD Express 7.0 reader – plus DC in. The Thunderbolt ports do offer up to 100W of power output though which is nice. The internal battery is the biggest the FAA will allow you to fly with, at 99.9wH, although being a gaming laptop it still doesn’t last all that long. I’d expect 3-4 hours of web browsing or word processing use max.
Speaking of the internals, both the SSD and RAM are upgradable, but not all that easily. The board is flipped meaning you need to disconnect all the ribbon cables and connectors and fully remove the motherboard and cooler to get at them. Luckily if you get this model it’s kitted out with two Samsung PM9A1 Gen 4 1TB SSDs in RAID 0 for an astonishing 13GB/s reads and 10GB/s writes at peak. It’s worth keeping a good backup of all your data on this as RAID 0 isn’t exactly the most stable configuration, but man you get crazy performance.
So, is this a machine worth buying? Well, as far as I can find it’s the same price, or slightly more expensive, than the Zephyrus M16. Between those two, the Zephyrus is just as loud, but offers more usable performance so I think I’d pick that instead. If you are looking at the wider market, I’d still argue AMD’s Ryzen laptop chips offer a better end user experience thanks to lower power consumption and therefore much quieter systems with better battery life, and generally cost less too. The screen here is stunning, but it’s likely the same panel most if not all laptop makers are using in this new wave of 16:10 laptops (a trend I’m personally not a fan), so that’s not overly unique. If it’s price comes down it might be easier to recommend as it is a great machine, but perhaps not for its current price tag.
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TechteamGB Score
