Acer Helios NEO 16 Review – Cryptic Clues, Cryptic Specs

Acer’s Helios Neo 16 is one of the gaming laptops of all time. With an RTX 4060 Laptop GPU with 8GB of VRAM, an i7-13700HX 8+8 core CPU, just 16GB of RAM in my model, and a shockingly small 512GB SSD, this is an interesting combo. Pair that with a 1600p 165Hz display and you get really quite a strange config. Let me show you around, we’ll take a look at the performance, and give gaming on it a go. 

The top of the clamshell holds a few cryptic clues to some “hidden loot” – I’ve cracked some of them but I’ll show them all here if you want to give it a go yourself. Let me know how you get on in the comments. Beyond the ciphers, the shell is fairly neutral. It’s still clearly a gaming laptop, but it wouldn’t be horrifically out of place in an office. Inside the clamshell is where you’ll find the 1600p, 165Hz, 3ms quoted IPS panel. Naturally I put that to the test with my open source response time tool – which yes you can pick up at OSRTT.com – and, well… Here’s the thing, the control centre software included that you can launch from the dedicated key on the keyboard has an option for “LCD Overdrive”. Normally turning that on should, well, over-drive the panel. Push it harder to increase the response times, often at the expense of overshooting. This setting seems to be backwards, because with the overdrive set to off, the panel was faster in the initial response time, but overshot a decent bit more. With the setting on it was a touch slower on the initial response time, although if you include the overshoot time it’s actually slower overall. Still, neither of these are all that close to 3ms average – being charitable you might call it 5ms, but realistically it’s more like 6-8ms average. To be clear, that isn’t all that bad, but it isn’t what they’re claiming. 

When it comes to colours and brightness, to the eye I’d say it looks a little dull. It gets pretty bright – far more than you’d need for a darkened room for sure – but the colours don’t quite pop as much as some other panels. That’s borne out in the SpyderX results, where the panel roughly covers 100% of the sRGB spectrum, and around 76% of the DCI-P3 spectrum. For a gaming laptop that is more than enough, but I have had some in that cover more like 90 to 100% of the DCI-P3 spectrum, and they do have the edge in vibrancy. Brightness comes in at 534 nits at peak and a contrast ratio of 1200:1 – a touch better than your average IPS panel. What’s also impressive is the 0% brightness – just 22 nits! Colour accuracy is pretty good with an average DeltaE of 1.83. It isn’t quite a perfect content creation panel, but it’s not all that far off and for more occasional use I’d have no problem with these results.

Of course, to drive that many pixels you need some pretty beefy hardware. I’m not sure if the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU – and especially its 8GB of VRAM – quite qualifies there, but the performance is still pretty good. At the full 1600p you’ll struggle to find games that can run anywhere near the full 165Hz refresh rate, barring the more esports titles like CSGO and Rainbow Six Siege, with the former topping out just shy of 500 FPS average, and the latter a hair under 300 FPS. Pretty much anything else you’d play – all on medium or high settings – will net you around 100 FPS average. While that isn’t bad, it is a bit of a shame to have such a high resolution display without the horsepower to properly match it. 

At 1080p for a bit of comparison probably unsurprisingly you’ll find the Helios NEO trading blows with the other 13th gen Intel and RTX 4060 Laptop based machine I’ve tested recently – that being the XMG Focus 16. In CSGO, thanks to the Focus having the higher end 13900HX CPU, the Helios is at the back of the pack here by about 60 FPS. Still, at basically 500 FPS average, that’s no big deal. Cyberpunk is an awful lot closer, with just one FPS between the two 4060 based machines, and surprisingly the 4070 based XMG Pro 15 isn’t much faster. Shadow of the Tomb Raider has the NEO at a 1FPS lead over the Focus, and a more convincing lead for the 4070. Fortnite is a bit of a weird one, and I think my data for the Focus 16 isn’t the best, so it’s best not to dwell on this one. Microsoft Flight Simulator sees the 4060 machines effectively tied, and again a small lead for the 4070. Hitman, especially due to the heavier physics load during the benchmark, sees a little less performance on the Helios I think due to the slightly slower CPU. Still, 173 FPS average is plenty fine on medium settings! And lastly in Siege you’ll find again the CPU is the likely culprit for a touch less performance from the NEO, but again at around 400 FPS average, I can’t complain much.

A quick peek at the CPU performance shows the 13700HX is pretty much on par with the 12900H in single core performance, although the extra two performance cores do help it handily beat it in multithreading. Interestingly, likely thanks to thermal throttling with those extra cores, in Blender you’ll find the 13700HX running behind the 12900H, especially in the longer Gooseberry render. Still you’ve got plenty of performance here.

So that’s the numbers, but let’s talk about how it actually feels to use. The keyboard is nice enough – nice and responsive for gaming. The panel, while not perfect, still offers a great experience even for faster paced games. It isn’t exactly your next pro esports machine, but it isn’t going to be a big hindrance for sure. It’s remarkably quiet while gaming too – it’s still a bit of a jet engine of course, but it seems a touch less intrusive than other machines I’ve used. I did enjoy gaming on it, and I think that’s what matters with a machine like this. 

Ports wise you’ll find three USB A ports, gigabit ethernet, headphone jack, microSD card reader, two Thunderbolt four ports on the back along with HDMI and the massive power brick and DC in jack. Inside you’ll find a 90Wh battery that Acer has taken the wireless approach to mounting… You’ll also find two M.2 slots – one of which in my case is populated with a meagre 512GB SK Hynix drive, although the config you can buy right now has a better – but still limited – 1TB drive instead. You have two SODIMM DDR5 slots, which are populated with 2 8GB DIMMs. That seems a little light for this sort of spec and price, and that seems to be your only option. Luckily you can just upgrade them later if you want. 

Otherwise I’d say this is a decent, if unusually specced machine. It seems to be available for around £1,700, which looks like a whole lot for this. XMG’s Focus 16 with the same spec is pretty much the same price – save for the import fees you’ll have to pay now, frustratingly – and that’s a little bit more of a premium feeling machine. You can also spec what RAM and SSD you want from the factory with that, which I’d personally recommend more like 32GB of RAM and at least 1TB of SSD space, but 2TB is better. If you can find this on deal I’d still say it makes for a great option, but those are my thoughts and I’d love to hear yours in the comments down below!