RTX 4070-powered gaming laptop with 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a hi-res 3072 x 1920 display on sale for only $1,249

[Admin]

A good amount of RAM and a powerful RTX 4070 GPU are both highlights of this gaming laptop deal from B&H Photo.

RTX 4070-powered gaming laptop with 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a hi-res 3072 x 1920 display on sale for only $1,249 : Read more

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Definitely worthy of a spin. The 4070 is woefully inadequate at native, but dropping back a little would get good FPS, and with DLSS 4 and FG, it's still a great gamer.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

It's been on deal for the last couple of weeks at that price, I've been tempted to get it but I'm waiting to see if it dips under $1000. You can also chalk up a fairly middling battery life number as well, think THs review said about 8 hours, and only a single M.2 slot so storage upgrades will come at a higher cost.

 

[Notton]

FYI, the RTX 4070 mobile is an 8GB card and performs like a desktop 4060Ti/8GB.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

FYI, the RTX 4070 mobile is an 8GB card and performs like a desktop 4060Ti/8GB.

It's 8% slower than a desktop 4070Ti per notebookcheck, it's closer to a Radeon 6650XT

 

[Pierce2623]

It's 8% slower than a desktop 4070Ti per notebookcheck, it's closer to a Radeon 6650XT

A 4060ti with a lower TDP is exactly what it is. With 16GB it’s be fairly impressive as a laptop part. The big L2s on ADA go a long way to reduce pressure on the memory bus just like the “infinity cache” does on AMD’s last few generations.

 

[mikegtx]

I don't understand why Tom's keeps pushing "deals" that don't seem that great. $1,249 for an 14" screen, medium performance CPU and memory than can't be upgraded?

For the exact same price that this 14" 16-core no-RAM-upgrade laptop cost, I bought a few months ago from B&H the 18" version of this same laptop family with the much faster 24-core 14900HX. It has an 4060 instead of 4070, but Acer is running it at the same TDP as the 4070, so the performance is fairly close and VRAM is identical in size. The 18" screen has a lower dpi than the 14", but the memory in the machine is upgradable! Officially it can be upgraded to 64 GB, unofficially to 96 GB using 48 GB SODIMMs.

PassMark CPU scores:
Intel Core Ultra 9 185H - 3,706 single core / 29,470 multi-core.
Intel Core i9 14900HX - 4,300 single core / 45,500 multi-core.

Sadly, B&H is no longer selling the 18" version I bought, but it might still be available from other retailers.

Only advantage I can see for the 14" model is you will definitely get better battery life with the smaller screen and more power-efficient CPU - and of course it is several pounds lighter.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

I don't understand why Tom's keeps pushing "deals" that don't seem that great. $1,249 for an 14" screen, medium performance CPU and memory than can't be upgraded?

For the exact same price that this 14" 16-core no-RAM-upgrade laptop cost, I bought a few months ago from B&H the 18" version of this same laptop family with the much faster 24-core 14900HX. It has an 4060 instead of 4070, but Acer is running it at the same TDP as the 4070, so the performance is fairly close and VRAM is identical in size. The 18" screen has a lower dpi than the 14", but the memory in the machine is upgradable! Officially it can be upgraded to 64 GB, unofficially to 96 GB using 48 GB SODIMMs.

PassMark CPU scores:
Intel Core Ultra 9 185H - 3,706 single core / 29,470 multi-core.
Intel Core i9 14900HX - 4,300 single core / 45,500 multi-core.

Sadly, B&H is no longer selling the 18" version I bought, but it might still be available from other retailers.

Only advantage I can see for the 14" model is you will definitely get better battery life with the smaller screen and more power-efficient CPU - and of course it is several pounds lighter.

They're targeting different markets. This Acer is targeting people who value portability, battery life, and acoustics.

Meanwhile they are also selling the Lenovo Legion 5i with the higher performance 14900HX and RTX 4060M for $1199.99, that's only 1lb heavier, has upgradable RAM and a second M.2 slot, bigger and brighter screen with a higher refresh rate,

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1811269-REG/lenovo_83dg00agus_16_legion_5_laptop.html

But the tradeoff is a lower battery life, higher weight, and ~12% slower GPU.

PC World rated the Lenovo at just over 5 hours of battery life, Laptopmag rated the Acer Helion for near 9 hours of battery.

So yeah, in a rare case of me defending TH I'd say TH is right to promote this Acer as a deal at $1250 even though it is 21% slower single core and 42% slower multicore (Cinebench 2024) than a 14900HX powered laptop like the Lenovo Legion 5i.

 

[mikegtx]

So yeah, in a rare case of me defending TH I'd say TH is right to promote this Acer as a deal at $1250 even though it is 21% slower single core and 42% slower multicore (Cinebench 2024) than a 14900HX powered laptop like the Lenovo Legion 5i.

Sorry to disagree, but TH is clearly not "right" here. The sub-headline of the article is "This small build hides big power!" - which it certainly does not. The CPU is anemic compared to what you can get in other laptops for the same money and the memory is non-upgradable. It should be noted here that the Intel CPU in question supports both non-upgradable and upgradable memory configurations - Acer unfortunately chose to use the consumer-unfriendly no-upgrade version with this model. They also chose to include only one Thunderbolt port - in this price range, you usually get at least 2.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Sorry to disagree, but TH is clearly not "right" here. The sub-headline of the article is "This small build hides big power!" - which it certainly does not. The CPU is anemic compared to what you can get in other laptops for the same money and the memory is non-upgradable. It should be noted here that the Intel CPU in question supports both non-upgradable and upgradable memory configurations - Acer unfortunately chose to use the consumer-unfriendly no-upgrade version with this model. They also chose to include only one Thunderbolt port - in this price range, you usually get at least 2.

Journalistic hyperbole aside, how many other laptops for this price, on sale or otherwise, have this kind of performance, battery life, and display specs? The MacBook Air maybe.

 

[DingusDog]

14.5 is an odd size personally I wouldn't go lower than 16 on a gaming laptop. Nice specs for the price though.

 

[punkncat]

The resolution seems odd as a "widescreen" res on a 14.5" screen.

 

[CelicaGT]

It's 8% slower than a desktop 4070Ti per notebookcheck, it's closer to a Radeon 6650XT

A desktop 4070Ti is more than twice as fast as the mobile 4070. With 3000ish more CUDA cores and probably 25% more clock speed it better be. Also, all the mobile 40 series are, with the exception of the 80 and 90 tiers, VERY power constrained. Parts marked 140W will rarely ever hit that output, due to rather arbitrary voltage limitations imposed by NVIDIA to maintain segmentation. My 4060 140W performs no better than the 115W version for this reason despite the gobs of cooling it gets. All marketing fluff. Does not mean these are bad parts, but the specs are deceiving.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

A desktop 4070Ti is more than twice as fast as the mobile 4070. With 3000ish more CUDA cores and probably 25% more clock speed it better be. Also, all the mobile 40 series are, with the exception of the 80 and 90 tiers, VERY power constrained. Parts marked 140W will rarely ever hit that output, due to rather arbitrary voltage limitations imposed by NVIDIA to maintain segmentation. My 4060 140W performs no better than the 115W version for this reason despite the gobs of cooling it gets. All marketing fluff. Does not mean these are bad parts, but the specs are deceiving.

Apologies for that typo I didn't catch, I meant a desktop 4060 Ti.

 

[mikegtx]

Journalistic hyperbole aside, how many other laptops for this price, on sale or otherwise, have this kind of performance, battery life, and display specs? The MacBook Air maybe.

The display resolution of 3072 x 1920 is admittedly above average, but also a waste on such a small screen. The question you should be asking is, is it worth it to pay $1,250 for a tiny screen and memory you can't upgrade?

Also, the laptop version of the 4070 is misleading - unlike the desktop version, the laptop 4070 is only slightly faster than a laptop 4060 and has the exact same amount of VRAM. To get a meaningful upgrade in speed and VRAM from a laptop 4060, you need to go with the laptop version of the 4080.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

The display resolution of 3072 x 1920 is admittedly above average, but also a waste on such a small screen. The question you should be asking is, is it worth it to pay $1,250 for a tiny screen and memory you can't upgrade?

Also, the laptop version of the 4070 is misleading - unlike the desktop version, the laptop 4070 is only slightly faster than a laptop 4060 and has the exact same amount of VRAM. To get a meaningful upgrade in speed and VRAM from a laptop 4060, you need to go with the laptop version of the 4080.

People do for a Macbook Air.

 

[mikegtx]

People do for a Macbook Air.

It's true that folks overpay for all kinds of things. That doesn't mean it's the smart thing to do.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

It's true that folks overpay for all kinds of things. That doesn't mean it's the smart thing to do.

It's not overpaying if you need a laptop that's primarily geared towards battery life and portability but still has muscle to do other things.

 

[mikegtx]

It's not overpaying if you need a laptop that's primarily geared towards battery life and portability but still has muscle to do other things.

> battery life and portability

Sorry, but the Acer is a gaming laptop that only has good battery life if you don't play games on it. The TH review's battery life test was for only video playback and web browsing. The RTX 4070 GPU in the Acer laptop cannot be powered by the battery; it needs 125 watts by itself and the 76 watt-hour battery cannot deliver that level of current. So gaming using the RTX GPU requires AC power.

Yet another problem with this laptop is that the unnecessarily high number of pixels (3072 x 1920) on the small 14" screen is a real drag on gaming performance. Native resolution gaming slows the laptop 4070 to unplayable frame rates on ray-traced games such as Cyberpunk 2077. You can get acceptable fps by dropping the resolution to 1080p, but that cancels out the benefit of the high dpi screen.

With a small screen, slow CPU, a GPU that can't be used on battery and not at native resolution if you want good frame rates, plus the memory being non-expandable, only one Thunderbolt port, etc. etc. does not add-up to making this laptop a "good deal" at $1,250.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

I give up, someone else try, or lock the thread.

 

[mikegtx]

I give up, someone else try, or lock the thread.

Lock the thread? Really? Is this how you handle not being able to win an argument on the facts? A disappointing reaction to be sure.