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The Acer Predator Triton 500 is everything I want in a gaming laptop. It checks all the boxes, and then it checks boxes in those boxes, like zooming in on a fractal of dope gaming laptop credentials.

It’s “cool” but subtle enough for a coffee shop. It’s got significant horsepower but doesn’t bog it down with pointless software. It’s capable of on-the-go gaming (power supply recommended) but can power through nearly four hours of work on a single charge. Perhaps the most seductive feature of all is the display – a 15.6-inch IPS screen that’s capable of a 300hz refresh rate. That’s a display fluid enough to warrant a “silky smooth” cliche.

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Acer Predator Triton 500 – Specs

• Model: Acer Predator Triton 500
• Display: 15.6” IPS with 300hz refresh rate (1,920 x 1,080)
• Processor: Intel Core i7-10750H processor Hexa-core 2.6GHz
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q
• Memory: 32GB DDR4 2666MHz
• OS: Windows 10 Home
• Storage: 1TB SSD
• Webcam: Yes
• Ports: 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort, 3x USB 3.1 gen 1, 1x USB 3.1 Gen 2 port, 1x USB Type-C
• Connectivity: IEEE 802.11ac, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 5.0
• Dimensions: 17.9mm x 358.5mm x 255 mm
• Weight: approximately 4.4 lbs
• Price: $2,499

Acer Predator Triton 500 – Design and Features

I usually hate the “gaming aesthetic.” It’s often carelessly done, lumping neons and shiny blacks as a catchall design sensibility. I would gladly trade RGB and neon plastic for clean lines and premium materials. But the Triton 500 is somehow able to walk that tightrope, meshing an almost timeless aesthetic with enough cool RGB bells and whistles to win over even a hater like me.

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The best part of the Triton’s design is doubtlessly its brushed aluminum chassis. It looks fantastic and feels sturdy and expensive. Closed, the Triton is impossibly thin – just shy of 18mm (not even three-quarters of an inch!). Along the chassis, you’ll find a deluge of ports. There are three USB type-A ports, one USB-C, an HDMI port, an E3100 Ethernet Controller, and even a MiniDisplay Port. Where there aren’t ports there are exhaust vents each tied to the Triton’s triple-fan cooling system.

That cooling system is called the 4th Gen Aeroblade 3D technology. It’s a fancy name, but gaming laptops get hot no matter how fancy their cooling system’s name. While playing the most part, they won’t stop your computer from getting hot (and loud). At peak performance, this laptop runs so hot, it can actually be uncomfortable, especially in the vent just above the keyboard. That being said, I rarely experienced any thermal throttling, thanks in part to the jet engine-like fans.

Speaking of loud, the Triton’s speakers are plenty loud, but you might not like what you hear at higher decibels. Audio quickly gets distorted at louder volumes and sounds a bit muddled at lower ones. PredatorSense has a multitude of options to adjust the audio for Movies, Shooters, Music, Voice, even Strategy whatever that means. But no matter what I tried, I couldn’t make the speakers sound clean at low or high volumes.

The metal of the chassis picks up its fair share of smudges and fingerprints, especially on the top cover, which can make the laptop look grimy, but I’d still take it over a shiny plastic in a heartbeat. It’s all fairly subtle, save for the sharp, illuminated Predator logo on the back, which is one of the only things you can’t customize.

That’s because, thanks to a suave software companion called “PredatorSense,” you can customize just about everything. You can control your fans, set audio profiles, change your boot logo, or customize your keyboard RGB lights on a per-key basis and save it to a profile. I had way more fun with this than expected, and I made an embarrassing number of profiles. One “Gaming” profile, I leaned into the kitschy aesthetic I usually detest. Every keystroke sent a ripple of bright green lights from my fingers in what can only be described as Matrix-esque fever dream. I also made one sexy coffee shop guy profile, where the keys remained white, save for a red delete key for good measure.

There are some comically bad options in there too. Settings that make the lights zoom distractingly from left to right and back again, or one reasonably innocuous option called “Breathing” that lights up your keyboard, then totally dims it. Or “Snake” which lights up keys like a game of, well, snake on your keyboard. One favorite is “Afterglow,” which briefly makes each struck key glow for a moment before dimming, giving each keystroke a subtle consequence.

Acer Predator Triton 500 – Performance and Gaming

If the Triton’s design is demure, its internals are anything but. You’ll find a 10th gen Intel Core i7 Mobile processor and GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q under the keyboard. Its DDR4 RAM is configurable up to 32GB and up to 1TB of PCIe NVMe storage.

It’s a powerhouse, in other words. I never had any issue with any game even playing at the top of the line. When I felt the computer could utilize a little extra horsepower, I popped the Turbo button that sits above the F1 and F2 buttons. Doing so overclocks the CPU and delivers some serious extra juice. In fact, I ran every benchmark test twice – once with the Turbo button on and once off. It consistently delivered across-the-board performance improvements, including an extra 5+ frames per second.

Overclocking comes at a price, and that’s heat and battery life, the two areas where the Triton already struggles. If you’re ever planning on actually putting this laptop on your lap, you’ll need to be careful. While the top vents get hot to the touch, they’re nothing in comparison to the bottom of the computer where the intakes sit. After a 30 minute session of Metro Exodus, the system was 120 degrees Fahrenheit – and likely much warmer on the bottom.

To counteract that molten core, the Predator requires you to plug in to utilize the Turbo button, which solves two problems. One, it prevents people from using it in their laps and two, it leviates the battery concerns. Activating Turbo instantly kicks all the fans into overdrive. Those fans are loud. Loud enough to hear from the opposite end of my apartment. And they’re frankly loud enough to make me think long and hard about activating them for most games’ negligible performance boosts. But when a game finally tests the laptop, like Metro Exodus or Death Stranding, the choice is obvious.

Much of the keyboard seems designed to be quickly familiarized. There’s a significant spread between each key, which makes it easy to single out individual keys, and small ridges on the “F” and “J” keys help ensure your hands are in the right spot. The WASD, arrow keys, and special PredatorSense keys are outlined in a clear cap that makes them easy to hunt and peck when needed. As mentioned earlier, the customizable RGB lighting is a nice touch too. The keys can feel a bit mushy at times, especially when writing long documents like, say, a “Laptop Review.”

And then there’s the PredatorSense button, aka the bane of my existence. It sits lodged to the right of the backspace key, and while I tested this laptop, I accidentally triggered it no fewer than 25 times. Doing so doesn’t just bring up the PredatorSense window, it minimizes your current window. That goes from annoying to infuriating real quick, especially during gaming sessions where the game’s on the line – though mercifully, this is also when I’m much less likely to press “backspace.” Instead, it’s most likely to occur when you’re working, aka the last time you’d ever need to overclock your laptop. Unfortunately, I never found a way to disable the button, so I just had to live with the annoying interruptions.

On the flip side of the keyboard is one of the Triton’s hallmark features, an IPS FHD display capable of a 300hz refresh rate with G-Sync. It bears repeating: that is a shockingly fast refresh rate. It’s a display deserving of the cliche, “Silky Smooth” and easily one of the best gaming displays I’ve seen on a laptop. In action, everything looks so fluid you might just begin to resent other panels.

However, the sad truth is that the refresh rate is something you’re going to experience most often when you’re not gaming. Getting that kind of refresh rate while playing a graphically demanding game is just not going to happen. I was able to achieve more than 200 FPS playing games like Age of Empires: Definitive Edition and I got more than 144 FPS in Valorant, too. And the Triton 500 let me experience the glory of every one of those frames. But in anything graphically demanding, 300hz is a far cry from what’s achievable.

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And not to sound ungrateful, but I did occasionally feel a bit claustrophobic with the 1080p FHD display. Games that don’t depend on high refresh rates but benefit from larger fields of view – like certain real-time strategy games – had me longing for a UHD monitor. Unfortunately, the hit to battery life and stress on the GPU to achieve 4K would likely require Acer to rework the Triton 500 from the ground up.

Acer Predator Triton 500 – Battery Life

Despite packing a decently large 5,400mAh battery, the Acer Predator Triton 500 has mediocre battery life. Our PCMark Modern Office test simulates desk job conditions – it pegged the battery around 3 hours and 58 minutes. My real-world testing had the battery drained much faster, in a measly 2 hours and 21 minutes. But suppose you’re just planning to work. In that case, there are myriad options for extending your battery life, including lowering the performance, turning off G-Sync, dropping the RGB, and reducing the display refresh rate to 60hz.

Unsurprisingly, gaming eviscerated the battery. It took just one hour and nine minutes to completely power down the device with middle of the road performance (things like the Turbo button are unavailable without being connected to power).

Despite the sub-par battery life, I’m okay with the compromise if it’s part of what contributes to the laptop’s thin form factor.

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Purchasing Guide

The Acer Predator Triton 500 is available at a starting price of $2,199, but the configuration we reviewed goes for $2,499 on Newegg and $2,599 on Amazon.

The next entry in the Baldur’s Gate series, Baldur’s Gate III, launches in early access on October 6 on Steam, GOG, and Stadia. Developer Larian Studios provided a surprise announcement for Apple users of the game: Baldur’s Gate III also launches on October 6 for Mac in addition to the previously announced PC and Stadia version.

Baldur’s Gate III will be available on Mac via Steam and unlocks at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET. The same unlock time applies to Baldur’s Gate III on the aforementioned platforms as well. It costs $60 and the price will not change as it eventually leaves this early stage. How long Baldur’s Gate III will be in early access is unknown, but Larian estimates “at least one year.”

Alongside announcing that Baldur’s Gate III launches on Mac the same day as it drops on other PC platforms and Stadia, Larian shared the official system requirements for Apple’s computers. On top of requiring at least 150 GB of hard drive space, Mac players will need either 8 GB of memory for minimum or 16 GB for recommended settings. Check out the full Mac system requirements below.

Baldur’s Gate Mac System Requirements

Minimum:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: macOS 10.15.6
• Processor: 2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: AMD Radeon460 4GB or Intel Iris Plus Graphics
• Storage: 150 GB available space
• Additional Notes: For example: MacBook Pro 15 inch 2016, MacBook Pro 13 inch 2018

Recommended:

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: macOS 10.15.7
• Processor: 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8GB
• Storage: 150 GB available space
• Additional Notes: For example: MacBook Pro 15 inch 2019 and up, MacBook Pro 16 inch, iMac from 2017

In other Baldur’s Gate III news, Larian has launched a new account service that supports cross-saves. This new Larian Account will also feature compatibility with Baldur’s Gate III and the studio’s future games.

Mortal Kombat 11 producer Ed Boon has announced a new sales milestone for the fighting game, and teased an impending announcement. The NetherRealm studio founder announced on Twitter that MK11 had sold 8 million units since its launch in April 2019.

The potential bigger news of his tweet, though, was that a new announcement is coming this week. Boon said that “what’s next for MK11” will be shown, suggesting this will be news surrounding the current game, not a new game or the long-rumored Injustice 3. He did not announce a Kombat Kast, so it’s unknown how or when the new announcement will be made.

With next-gen consoles (ahem, konsoles) coming soon, this could be an announcement of PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions or upgrades. Or it could be a whole new round of DLC altogether, as leaks have suggested more characters on the way. So far NetherRealm has added a slew of additional characters to the mix, along with the story-focused epilogue Aftermath. That update added some new features like Friendships and new finishers for free as well.

“Mortal Kombat 11 remains one of the best fighting games of this console generation, and the recent free update makes it better,” Edmond Tran wrote in GameSpot’s review. “Aftermath introduces a couple of great characters, and the expanded story definitely has its highs, but it’s not essential to your enjoyment of an already superb game.”

Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune remake has been delayed and will now release on October 1, 2021. It was originally scheduled for release December 18, 2020.

As reported by Variety, the delay is likely to separate Dune from the recently delayed Wonder Woman 1984, as the two would’ve premiered just a week apart from each other.

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Dune joins a long list of films playing musical chairs with release dates this year, largely in part due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that has thrown a wrench in many studios’ production plans.

It’s worth noting that The Batman’s tentative release date is also October 1, 2021, so expect that shift to happen at some point in the near future, too.

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Based on Frank Herbert’s best-selling 1965 novel, Dune is a sci-fi epic depicting the power struggle for the planet Arrakis. The star-studded cast includes Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Zendaya, and more. Oh, and a bunch of giant sandworms that took over a year to design.

Villeneuve is no stranger to science fiction, having directed Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival, and his adaptation of Dune will mark one of his largest undertakings yet. He confirmed the story will be spread across two films because Herbert’s world is “too complex” to fit into a single movie.

Here’s to hoping Dune is worth its weight in spice when it finally launches next year.

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For more on Dune, check out what the film’s cast has to say about their characters as well how Denis Villeneuve will bring his vision of Dune to the big screen.

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Matthew Adler is a Features, News, Previews, and Review writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @MatthewAdler and watch him stream on Twitch.

Nintendo has released another Pikmin 3 Deluxe trailer, and this time the alien helpers called Pikmin get a dedicated preview. Originally only available on the Wii U, Pikmin 3 Deluxe is a strategic adventure game coming to Nintendo Switch on October 30 for $60. The deluxe version will include new missions featuring Olimar and Louie, as well as all the original game’s DLC. New enhancements such as lock-on targeting, a hint system, and a two-player co-op mode for the entire game will also be included.

In Pikmin 3 Deluxe, players become adventurers on an unknown planet and enlist aliens called Pikmin to help them out with puzzle-solving and combat situations. The new trailer highlights these plant-like assistants and hints that each differently colored Pikmin has a different ability.

For GameSpot’s Pikmin 3 review, Tom Mc Shea rated it a 8/10 and commented, “Strategic combat and rewarding exploration make the adorable Pikmin 3 a satisfying adventure in planetary survival.”

Pikmin 3 joins the lineup of Wii U games Nintendo is porting to the Nintendo Switch. Other Wii U games now on the popular hybrid console include New Super Mario Bros. U, Mario Kart 8, and Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze. If you want to get a Switch copy of the game, you can check out our Pikmin 3 preorder guide.

As for the next installment in the Pikmin franchise, Pikmin 4 was announced in 2015 but has not been released yet. As far as we know, it’s not cancelled. Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed in 2016 that Pikmin 4 was still in development, but conceded that Nintendo found it hard to slot Pikmin 4 in its busy schedule. With Pikmin 3 getting a Nintendo Switch release, perhaps we could see more news about the long-promised fourth Pikmin installment in the near future.

Amazon Prime Day 2020 begins next Tuesday, October 13, and runs for 48 hours. Some of the Amazon Prime Day deals are already live, actually, and you can save on Amazon’s own devices like Kindle, Echo and more.

While those deals are nice and all, you’re probably here for Amazon Prime Day video game deals, or more specifically, Amazon Prime Day PlayStation deals. Will we see any Prime Day savings on PS5 preorders? No. I mean, I don’t have any insider info, but I don’t think so at all. However, there will certainly be other chances to save big on PlayStation this Prime Day, even if it isn’t on the next-gen PS5.

For a full run down of what to expect for Amazon Prime Day video game deals, check out our full coverage in the lead-up.

Prime Day PS4/PS5 Console Deals

Yeah, like I said before, don’t expect to see any PS5 deals on Prime Day. Who knows, maybe Amazon is holding onto another round of preorders? But the outlook on that seems grim, too, given the fact no one seems to be restocking PS5 preorders. If you haven’t gotten one yet, don’t fret, Sony said there will be more PS5s available at launch than there were PS4s when it launched back in 2013.

As for PS4 and PS4 Pro Prime Day deals, those remain to be seen. The last two Black Fridays saw an incredible PS4/Spider-Man bundle for $199 and it sold out fast. This, in spite of the fact everyone knew PS4 was in its twilight. There’s a good chance we could see the return of a value-priced PS4 bundle, but it’s difficult to say for certain. PS4 just isn’t widely available for purchase. Whether that’s pandemic-related or an internal Sony decision, the PS4 is hard to come by.

The PS4 Pro could see a deal, bundled or not, over Prime Day, but once again, I’m nowhere near certain of it. After having disappeared from Amazon for most of the summer, the PS4 Pro returned triumphantly a few weeks back for its MSRP (which is no longer the case).

Prime Day PlayStation Game Deals

Now here’s where I think we’ll see some great chances to save, at least on current-gen games. The PS4 has been out for so long, and its library of games so vast and loaded with excellence, that it’s a safe bet we’ll see some great Prime Day chances to save.

I’d be surprised if there weren’t deals on the PlayStation Hits line. The games already have a $19.99 MSRP without being on sale, but they routinely see discounts for as much as 50% off. And since they’re Hits, they’re great. They wouldn’t call them “Hits” if they weren’t, right?

Prime Day PlayStation Controller, PSVR and Accessory Deals

Expect to see discounts on DualShock controllers. It’s almost a given at this point. The DualShocks seem to go on sale pretty regularly, with the exception being whichever color you really want at that particular time. It’s science.

As for PSVR, at this point, who knows? They released the Iron Man VR bundle just a few months back, but in this year where time is a meaningless measure, you might have already forgotten. I know I almost did. And PSVR is supposed to work with PS5, although we haven’t heard much about it since back in July. I love my PSVR, and recommend it to everyone, but for the same price as MSRP you can pick up an Oculus Quest 2. Hopefully we see some deals, but I’m not holding my breath.

Headsets will also likely see deals, and unlike PS4 controllers, the PS Gold and Platinum headsets will work with PS5. Keep an eye out for deals.

PS Plus Prime Day Deal

This one’s a lock. The PlayStation Plus service is almost always on sale, and no one ever pays full price for it anymore (unless you’re like me and you forgot to turn off auto-renew). Absolutely keep an eye out for PS Plus deals on Prime Day.