Acer announced the launch of two new Predator gaming laptops last Friday at the prestigious IEM Katowice Counter-Strike 2 tournament in Poland. Acer, being a headline sponsor of the event, unveiled the pair of high-specced machines to an arena of eager esports fans.
Both the Predator Helios Neo 16 AI and 18 AI laptops come with the latest chips from Intel and Nvidia, up to a Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU. Additionally, both laptops support up to 64GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and Wi-Fi 6E connectivity internally, while offering a host of display options, 4-zone RGB keyboards, and Acer’s stack of AI features.
Predators are after your money
We reached out to Acer to find out if these new laptops will be making their way to South African shelves but hadn’t heard back at the time of publication.
Considering that the Predator Helios Neo 16 landed here a few years ago, and older models are still available from Acer’s local website, chances are good that we’ll at least get the smaller of the two. Chances are less likely that South Africans will have the vast number of display options available to them.
Of the configurations that might land in SA, we’re most hoping to see the Predator Helios Neo 16 AI with the OLED display option available. Judging just from the spec sheet, the 16in OLED panel appears to be the most capable. It sports a 2,560 x 1,600 resolution with a 240Hz refresh rate and full coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut.
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There’s no OLED option for the Predator Helios Neo 18 AI. It instead gets an 18in Mini-LED panel with the same 2,560 x 1,600 resolution as its smaller brother but with a slightly higher 250Hz refresh rate.
Acer’s new gaming laptops are priced from $1,900 (~R35,000) for the Helios Neo 16 AI and $2,200 (~R40,500) for its bigger brother overseas but expect their starting prices to be a few thousand Rand higher if they make it to South Africa.
