Acer Predator Triton 900 First look: 4K RTX 2080 gaming 2-in-1 with an interesting party trick
Acer Predator Triton 900 – A flexible, twin-fanned gaming laptop
Teased at IFA 2018 and finally unveiled at CES 2019, Acer’s Predator Triton 900 is roaring its way to shelves as we speak. It’s an interesting animal – it’s a 2-in-1 gaming laptop which features a 17-inch 4K Nvidia G-Sync compatible display and an Nvidia RTX 2080 GPU, meaning that games should not only look fantastic right out of the box, you’ll (eventually) be able to experience more realistic lighting and shadow effects once those ray tracing updates start rolling out. Put another way, the Predator Triton 900 is a bigger, hencher-looking version of the slimline Max-Q certified Predator Triton 500. The Triton 900 knows it’s a gaming laptop and it’s not afraid to say it.
Processor-wise, Acer’s added an 8th gen six-coreH-series Intel Core i7 CPU here, and you’ll have the option to add up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM. Storage will be NVMe PCIe SSDs in RAID 0, which means that games and files should load extremely quickly – we’ve no information on how much storage you’ll have to play with, though.
Everything sits inside an adjustable metal frame, letting you adjust the screen’s position to your liking, and keeping everything cool is a pair of Acer’s latest Aeroblade fans – which are apparently inspired by owl’s feathers. Ya, rly. Whether Acer’s avian inspiration is genuine or this is just some savvy marketing, the main claim is that the 4th generation Aeroblade 3D fans kick out around 29% more airflow than a generic plastic blade. A slide shown during Acer’s IFA 2018 presentation says that the the 4th gen Aeroblades hit 3.8 CFM (Cubic Feet per Minute), which versus the 3, 3.3. and 3.5 CFM counts of previous versions.
What effect that has on actual gameplay remains to be seen, but if it can keep gaming laptops even a tiny bit cooler, that’s a plus and it’s just as well that Acer’s put two 4th gen Aeroblades in the Predator Triton 900.
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Acer Predator Triton 900 price and release date
The Acer Predator Triton 900 will go on sale in North America, the EMEA regions and China at some point in March.
In these parts of the world, the Predator Triton 900 should retail from $3999, €4,199, and ¥39,999, respectively.
UK-specific prices and a more precise release date has not yet been announced, but based on the current exchange rates, plus the fact that laptops from the current Predator Helios range, like the Acer Predator Helios 500, range from £1800-£2300, you can expect to pay something in the region of £3000 for one of these.
It’s named after a sea god, it features a heavy metal frame, an RTX 2080 and a cutting edge fan system, so you can expect to have to make Acer a serious offering for a Predator Triton 900. This is going to be decidedly un-cheap.
Acer Predator Triton 900 design and features
The main benefit of that machine-milled metal frame is that you can pull the screen forwards so that it’s closer to your face, or tilt it so that there’s less glare, whatever works best for you. For the times when you’re not gaming, you should be able to flip it over into a ‘tent’ shape, or turn it into a tablet for when you’re streaming movies.
If two feathery fans and a hinged 4K screen weren’t outre enough, there’s also a touchpad that sits to the right hand side of the mechanical keyboard, instead of down at the front. This might be useful for people who prefer a trackpads to a mouse, but if that is the thinking behind this, then that’s also a little unfair to left-handed gamers.
I was able to see and actually hold a version of the Predator Triton 900 at CES 2019 – the model shown off at IFA 2018 was locked up in a perspex box – and despite its bulky shape and hinged metal frame, it didn’t feel hugely awkward or hard to shift around on the display stand. If I slipped this into a backpack and spent a few hours hefting this around, I might have a different opinion. No official weight has been given for this just yet, but it didn’t feel much heavier to me than the Asus ROG Mothership, which weighs around 5kg.
Unfortunately, the model I saw had no charge, meaning I wasn’t able to spend any time zipping around on Battlefield 5, the de facto demo game of CES 2019.
Acer Predator Triton 900 specifications
These are the only official specs we currently have, plus what we’ve been able to infer from brief hands-on time. This will be updated once we hear more from Acer.
| Acer Predator Triton 900 | |
| Display | 17-inch 4K IPS display, Nvidia G-Sync supported |
| Processor | six core H-series 8th Gen Intel Core i7 |
| Memory | up to 32GB DDR4 RAM |
| Storage | NVMe PCIe RAID 0 SSDs (size and options unknown) |
| Graphics | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 |
| Ports | Ethernet, HDMI, USB-A (full specs TBC) |
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First Impressions
My initial reaction at IFA 2018 was, ‘I want one’, which was swiftly followed by ‘I won’t be able to afford one.’ Seeing it again at CES 2019 confirmed this. The Acer Predator Triton 900 looks incredible, but I wonder how much of your money would go towards paying for that uncommon design.
Then again, the Asus looks like it’s trying something similar with the Asus ROG Mothership. While that monster convertible follows a different design to the Predator Triton 900, both of these unconventional designs are ultimately striving for the same thing – use multiple fans and heat pipes to keep the CPU and GPU extra cool so you can safely push graphics performance to the max. How well each performs in this regard, not to mention how much you’ll have to cough up for either one, remains to be seen.
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