Predator Helios 18 AI N25Q1 Review: When Money isn’t an Issue during RAMageddon

With RAMageddon taking a huge hit on laptop prices, we happen to be looking at a decked out laptop which costs RM 1 shy from the RM 20,000 price tag it has. This is our Predator Helios 18 AI N25Q1 Review.

Predator Helios 18 AI N25Q1 Review

Stunning Display with Option for Colour Profile

By far this is the best display I have seen in a Predator laptop. The Predator Helios 18 AI features an 18” 4K MiniLED 16:10 120Hz refresh rate display which is mega bright, that can blind you and even makes every content look magnificent. Because Acer knew that the laptop wont be just used for gaming, they have added other colour profiles which can be changed from the task bar, so DCI-P3, Adobe RGB or sRGB – you can toggle it without any issues.

Intel Core Ultra 9 is the best thing happened to Intel in a Long time

I genuinely believe that the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 has brought extremely tasteful experience for gamers, creators, well, any kind of users really. This Predator Helios 18 AI features the 290HX with 24-cores, 24-threads and 13-TOPs AI is going to blow everything out of the waters and it is way more than enough for anything and everything. It is the kind of processor you want in a laptop to handle demanding things and not just games.

With the RTX 5090, this Laptop is set to last for years

Pairing that processor with an RTX 5090 with 24GB of GDDR6 is sinfully good. When you play the most demanding game and still have room to push, that’s proof that this laptop is here to put up a good show. You can check out our benchmark done with 3DMARK and this helps to give you an idea what this laptop is capable of. We played a bunch of game and honestly, I couldn’t find a fault in anyway.

Not a laptop you want to bring around (but you can try)

This 18” 4K laptop weighs 3.5kg. Let that sink in. This laptop is no way a portable machine but it is portable enough for you to move from one permanent location to another permanent location for a certain duration.

Apart from that, if I were to use the Predator Helios 18 AI as my daily machine, you best believe I am not moving it or bringing it anywhere with me. I’ll be honest about that. But hey, if you would like to break your back, and not to forget, you need to carry that 400W adapter, well, be our guest.

It has a Full Size SD Card reader (Happy Tears)

I am in so much tears because finding a full size SD Card in a laptop is generally hard and to see one in this behemoth made me so happy. During my time using this laptop, I did use it to edit some of my photos and videos and I didn’t have to reach to a card reader due to its built in option. More laptops with specification like this should have one, after all, specs like this are more enticing for those who create and this laptop does have the hardware to fulfill those users.

Needs Improvement: PredatorSense needs Polishing, Better RGB controls

PredatorSense is the tool you use to control the fans, RGB, and a lot of the intricate things about the laptop. Now, don’t get me wrong, the software does offer the good slew of controls you need. What I find lacking in this laptop is the inability to control the RGB lighting on a granular level. I tried going around the settings to see if I could turn off the ones illuminating on the sides, but it isn’t as great as it seems. The way to set it up and control feels clunky and its not live, so it appears that you need to restart the laptop every time you change.

There needs to be some improvement on this and PredatorSense as a whole could use a bit more polishing to make it more user friendly. But credit where its due, I am glad it’s a light software and not heavy as ROG Armoury Crate. In fact, calling it a crate is an understatement of the century.

Needs Improvement: Inferior Speakers

Predator, or well, Acer in this case has made great performing laptops but the whole point of a laptop is to make sure you get to use it for everything and when a laptop this big still has the inferior speakers you have listened to from years ago, I find it a little unacceptable.

Does it get loud? Yes. But does that mean its clear? No. It lacks the nuance you’d want from a decent speaker on a laptop. We have tested plenty of laptops that are smaller and packs smaller drivers which delivers better clarity and even some laptops uses the spaces very well to a point that you can tell that they have added tweeters and such to give a better audio delivery. This needs to change and I see plenty of space on the laptop where they could use side firing speakers, put in smaller tweeters around the keyboard to give a better sounding experience.

Something I hope that it changes with the future Predator laptops in general.

Surprising and Appreciated: Inclusion of Thermal Pads and Custom KeyCaps

We have not seen any brands to do this and something I really appreciate here. The Predator Helios 18 AI has upgradable slots for SSDs and even RAM for that matter. And to include thermal pads and tools for the thermal dissipation inside the box, deserves a huge respect and this laptop has customizable keycaps.

While the keycaps probably doesn’t matter much, but if you happen to game heavily and don’t want the WASD to wear off, well, you can replace and that is a nice to have.

Conclusion

RM 19,999 for this laptop with this hardware is actually pretty attainable for the moment before the prices starts going up. Because other brands have been seen increasing prices for similar specs and it touches more than the Predator Helios 18 AI. So, my only advice is: if you want a laptop that gives you the RAW performance for RM 20,000, this is very well worth the consideration. But you might want to act fast because there’s a good chance that we will see this same laptop to have a more expensive price tag very soon.

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