Acer Predator Triton 500 and Asus Zephyrus S GX701



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The Acer Predator Triton 500 has a refresh rate of 300Hz and costs more than my rent.
Photo: Victoria Song (Gizmodo)

The gaming notebooks were in effect today at the Berlin IFA, while Acer and Asus were holding their main press conferences just before the public opening of the largest European trade show from consumer electronics. But while I was buried in computers of all shapes and sizes, two sturdy gaming laptops caught my eye: the Acer Predator Triton 500 and the Asus Zephyrus S GX701. This is not because they are particularly beautiful or because they have a blinking RGB lighting: they are remarkable because they both display a 300 Hz screen.

If it sounds ridiculous, it's sort of. Until now, the fastest refresh rate on a gaming laptop was 240Hz. (Asus just In April, some 144Hz and 240Hz gaming notebooks had already been announced.) For more context, it was no small feat when Asus launched the first 120Hz IPS display in 2016. Three years later, we are now at 300Hz. Why now? While automakers are accelerating discount rates on high-end gaming notebooks, today's mobile GPUs are finally performing well enough to keep pace, at least in some games.

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In person, this refresh rate of 300 Hz is reflected by smooth, silky images on both the Triton 500 and the Zephyrus S GX701 that I've seen. Watching Overwatch on the Zephyrus, I had the impression that my eyes were melting – in a good way. Of course, not all games will reach 300 frames per second, but it is quite remarkable that this possibility exists even in certain contexts.

So who exactly "needs" 300Hz gaming laptops. Acer and Asus both said their laptops were meant for ferocious players and esports competitors, but I'm willing to admit even that the most obsessed amateur could crack for the starting price of $ 2,800 proposed by Acer for the Triton 500. I asked Asus how much the Zephyrus S GX701 would be sold retail, but a representative withdrew, saying, "It will depend on the locality." It is probably safe to to say that it will be expensive.

I played Overwatch 300Hz on an Asus Zephyrus prototype. You can not hear it, but the breath was wheezing.
Photo: Victoria Song (Gizmodo)

Despite all this, you will have to make some quality sacrifices to even have a chance to hit 300 frames per second. Few games are able to support this rate at higher resolutions. Therefore, unless you are a real competitor in the field of esports sports, the Triton 500 and Zephyrus S GX701 are more ambitious than realistic. Plus, the Asus prototype that I saw myself looked like a chorus of whistling grandpas during the race Overwatch. Even though these laptops are equipped with Nvidia GTX graphics cards and the most robust Intel processors, it is likely that these first iterations will have their own drawbacks and peculiarities, especially since Acer and Asus are trying so much to entrust their tasks in a chassis as thin as possible.

Even so, even with a limited market, it is unlikely that 300Hz laptops will go anywhere. Asus, in particular, presented a number of prototypes Zephyrus and Strix prototype laptops of 15 and 17 inches of 300 Hz expected to arrive sometime next year. The Zephyrus S GX701 17 inch should be delivered next month. The Triton 500 will be available in the EMEA regions in November and in the United States in December.

We live from Berlin at IFA 2019! Click here to read our full coverage.

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