“No change” Acer confirms it is sticking with Nvidia for flagship gaming laptops

Acer first confirmed off its new Predator Helios Neo 16 & 18 AI laptops again at IEM (Intel Excessive Masters) Katowice, the place we received some hands-on expertise with the upcoming gaming laptops. They’ll be obtainable to buy within the coming months, and we’ve been involved with Acer to determine what to anticipate from the brand new laptops.

We just lately sat down and chatted with Acer’s Manuel Linnig and Ivano Cimaglia to debate the upcoming launch centered across the Helios Neo 16 & 18 gaming laptops. We’ve already discovered that the brand new fashions will provide a “20% airflow enchancment” over the past gen, however there’s one factor that received’t be altering – Nvidia graphics on the high-end.

Nvidia for the high-end, AMD or Intel for the mid-range

For those who’re conversant in Acer’s vary of laptops, chances are you’ll know that the Predator branding is reserved for a few of its greatest gaming laptops. Under that, you will have the Nitro vary, which is right for avid gamers on a extra restricted finances. Linnig confirms that the {hardware} in these two tiers will stay predictable, with Nvidia’s high-end RTX 50 collection reserved for the Predator fashions.

“The main focus has all the time been the identical, you understand, we go together with Nvidia and Intel on the high-end Predator variations after which we go together with AMD CPU & GPU or Intel CPU & GPU on the Nitro mid-range stage. So this has all the time been our technique and there’s no change in that.”

Manuel Linnig, Director of Advertising and marketing & Media at Acer

Even within the discrete GPU market, AMD hasn’t actually challenged Nvidia on the high-end this era, particularly should you evaluate Staff Pink’s choices versus the RTX 5090, although it doesn’t fall massively far behind the 5080 with its new RX 9070 XT, which is good to see. In any case, Nvidia has been selling its new 50 collection laptop computer GPUs since CES 2025 and has just lately needed to deny experiences that these cellular GPUs even have a lacking ROPs concern. It’s additionally vital to notice that Nitro laptops aren’t any strangers to the xx50 and xx60-tier playing cards.

You’ll have seen that AMD’s discrete GPUs skipped from the RX 7000 collection straight to the 9000 collection. AMD has already defined that it is because the 8000 collection can be reserved for cellular RDNA 3.5 graphics, although we don’t know precisely how this can look proper now.

All of the laptops demoed to us at IEM had been Acer Predator fashions with RTX 5070 as much as 5090 laptop computer GPUs. We aren’t at present conscious of what the mid-range Nitro lineup will appear like this era, so we’ll have to attend and see how that shapes up. As for the Predator gaming laptops, the Neo 16 AI and Neo 18, availability and pricing particulars are as follows: