While Black Friday deals on gaming gear tend to be hit or miss, you can usually find some of the best gaming laptops at a steep discount, if you’re willing to make a few concessions. For example: You can get a perfectly good mid-range gaming laptop at a steep $500 discount today.
Right now, you can buy the Acer Predator Helios 300 for $999 at Best Buy. That’s a significant savings over its usual going rate of $1,499, and puts the laptop in an enviable sub-$1,000 price range. This particular model of the Helios 300 comes with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, an Intel Core i7 12700H CPU, 16 GB RAM and a 15.6-inch, 1080p, 165 Hz screen.
In our Acer Predator Helios 300 review of a previous model, Tom’s Guide gave the machine three out of five stars, and a mild recommendation:
“No matter which configuration you buy, it packs some extremely powerful hardware, along with easy hookups for bigger displays, a screen with a fast refresh rate and a full number pad on its keyboard. But while the Helios 300 does indeed run games very well, it’s held back by a number of major problems.”
For the record, those problems included a poorly optimized keyboard and incredibly loud fans. However, our biggest criticism of the Helios 300 was that it cost too much for what it does — which doesn’t apply when you can get the device for less than $1,000.
The only other caveat is that a 512 GB SSD is a little on the small side, considering that modern games can easily range between 50 and 100 GB. Setting aside some space for Windows files and other multimedia, you may only be able to install between five and 10 games on this Helios 300 model. But if you tend to play only a few games at a time, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Generally speaking, the Acer Helios 300 is a decent gaming laptop, and it’s now available at an excellent price. Pick this one up if its specs match your expectations.
If you're looking for more sales, check out our other top Black Friday gaming laptop deals. And if you want something really cheap check out this Samsung Chromebook for 50% off right now.
