Acer Predator Triton 700: a good radiator for winter

Construction

Like the recently tested ROG Zephyrus, the Acer Triton 700 opts for bold design biases, linked to the constraint of Max-Q design. At first glance, before opening its hood, nothing very original appears: the all-aluminum chassis is sober and benefits from a fairly successful gloss treatment, pleasant to the touch, but somewhat messy. For a laptop dedicated to video games, we must admit that this Triton 700 remains discreet, and we will not complain. Given its price range, it is also not surprising to find a very good level of finish and impeccable build quality.

It is by discovering the screen and the input area that we notice the surprising design choices made by Acer. The first thing that stands out is the lack of a touchpad under the keyboard. It is indeed integrated in the wide strip of Gorilla Glass just above, where the graphics card is notably wedged. Without a dedicated mouse, it is therefore compulsory to seek the pointer by extending the arm, which is far from practical. But this is not the main problem, because the graphics card, integrated just under this glass surface / touchpad, invariably heats up and then raises the temperature of the touchscreen very high, which becomes almost unusable when a game a while either undemanding turns.

The Triton 700 is therefore a notebook that is used almost exclusively with a mouse, its touchpad being both very badly placed and almost dangerous to use under certain conditions. In addition, the absence of physical buttons and differentiation between the left click and the right click require hazardous and frankly imprecise manipulations.

The balance sheet is however a little more positive when you put your hands on the keyboard, with mechanical keys and backlit in RGB. The race is quite long and the typing pleasant and precise, but one can be embarrassed by the inevitable sound of the keys which sink. In addition, this keyboard is found very much forward on the chassis and the comfort at the wrists is not really there.

The Triton 700 is well provided with connectors and Acer has sacrificed nothing in favor of the finesse of the chassis. There are three USB 3 Type-A ports, a USB 3.1 / Thunderbolt Type-C port, an HDMI output, a DisplayPort, a Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as two jack sockets for headphones and a microphone. We still regret the absence of an SD card reader.

To finish this review of the design and construction of the Triton 700, let's talk about noise and the level of heating. As a reminder, this notebook has the "Max-Q Design" label from Nvidia, which allows you to enjoy a high-end graphics card in a thin chassis (here 18.9 mm thick). Unlike the ROG Zephyrus, a very good student in heat dissipation and noise management, the Triton 700 struggles to convince on these two points. As we mentioned above, the temperature can reach very high values: 62.1 ° C at the glass touchpad, 65.4 ° C at the back and 69.3 ° C under the hood. Something to keep warm for the winter. This observation is especially made during a session of a recent game in 3D, and the whole is accompanied by a ventilation which releases up to 47 dB (whisper mode deactivated). The breath emitted is therefore very audible and can be really annoying if you use the Triton 700 without headphones or in the presence of other people.

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Screen

The Acer Triton 700 is equipped with a 15.6-inch (39.6 cm) IPS mat panel, displaying a Full HD definition (1,920 x 1,080 px). As on many laptop screens for recent gamers, the refresh rate goes up to 120 Hz and G-Sync compatibility is there.

Once our probe is applied, we see very good results, and in the good average of PCs with IPS matte panels in 15 inch format. The contrast ratio thus rises to 960: 1 and the maximum brightness is set at 330 cd / m². However, the calibration lacks precision, with a delta E (difference between the actual colors and the displayed colors; it is considered very good below 3) at 4.3 and a color temperature which rises to 8 270 K, with as a result a rendering slightly favoring cold shades.

delta color E = 4.3 gamma 2.2 temperature 8270 K

We are however very disappointed with the afterglow of the screen, which reaches 24 ms. A very bad score, even more so for a laptop PC equipped with a GTX 1080 and a 120 Hz panel. For this type of gaming PC, the ideal is to have a latency of less than 10 ms, certainly still difficult to find on notebooks. Either way, 24 ms afterglow is unacceptable.

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Performances

The Acer Triton 700 is particularly well equipped. Our test model includes an Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor, 32 GB of DDR4 at 2400 MHz and two 1 TB SSDs mounted in Raid 0. What hope for an excellent level of performance, which was verified during our various benchmarks based on 3D calculation, audio and video conversion, file compression and photo editing.

The Triton 700 thus reaches a high power index, comparable to that of the Asus ROG Zephyrus and consistent with what usually delivers an Intel Core i7-7700HQ. This is the kind of configuration that allows a wide variety of uses in excellent conditions. For office, web, video editing or photo editing, the Triton 700 does the trick.

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Games

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card (8 GB of video memory) which equips the Triton 700 is a "Max-Q Design" version: in order to be able to function properly in a chassis less than 2 cm thick, its frequencies clock have been lowered. Our power index based on 3D Mark shows however a large advantage of the Triton 700 over the ROG Zephyrus, and a gap almost zero with the Predator 17X, also equipped with a GTX 1080 but devoid of "Max-Q Design".

A very positive observation therefore, and we no longer find ourselves in front of a GTX 1080 as on the Zephyrus. In game, the results are very good and we reach very easily 70 frames / second in Full HD - or even more on certain titles - at the highest level of detail. We noted 74 fps on Metro: Last Light, 73 fps on Rise of The Tomb Raider, 72 fps on The Witcher 3 (hairworks x4), 75 fps on Crysis 3 or 146 fps s on Star Wars: Battlefront.

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Mobility / Autonomy

On the question of autonomy and transportability, the Predator Triton 700 is full of contradictions. We appreciate its weight of 2.6 kg and its thickness of 18.9 mm, which allow easy transport in a medium-sized bag, but you have to do it with a charger which still remains quite bulky and, above all, a frankly disappointing autonomy. If the video game is only possible for 1 hour to 1 hour 30 minutes (this is not really a surprise), our streaming video playback test (Netflix in Chrome, headphones plugged in, backlight off) has not exceeded 1 hour 38. A very low figure, even for a gaming laptop in 15 inch format. Office-oriented use, using energy saving, will be possible for 4 hours, no more.

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Audio

The headphone output of the Triton 700 is good. There is a fairly low distortion rate (0.01%) and a good output power (150 mVrms). The whole spectrum is well rendered and the listening experience is quality.

A technical problem prevented us from applying our usual test protocol for loudspeakers. By ear, they deliver a decent sound for a notebook, but the rendering seriously lacks bass and treble, focusing mainly on the mids.

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Conclusion

The first Acer "Max-Q" laptop blows hot and cold ... Finally, especially hot, given its ability to rise very high in temperature in completely inappropriate places. The design choices made by the manufacturer are strange and often unwise, making its use almost impossible without a mouse. If we add to this a too low autonomy and a remanence time of the panel far too high for a gaming product, we obtain a notebook certainly very powerful and easily transportable, but which struggles to convince.

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