Simply put, this thing is great especially at the $928 black Friday 2019 price I paid. Good mix of portability, versatility, gaming, without going too far in either direction (being so thin and light that it can't game, being so powerful that it can't be portable). This is a great middle ground, and an amazing price. I'll now break my review down into different sections.Screen: 144Hz is becoming the norm for gaming laptops, including budget ones. For me, the response time is what makes this screen feel great. The 3ms response time is published prominently on the listing because most gaming laptops have response times at least twice that, and I can tell the difference going from my 144hz 9ms 17" laptop I previously used. Same refresh rate, different response "feel". It's noticeable faster on the Helios. It isn't color-calibrated or anything, and according to experts the colors are just mediocre. To my simple gamer eyes, colors pop and games look great. So it does what it needs to!Gaming: The i7-9750H is the standard for this generation of gaming laptops, and it's just a refresh of the 8750H. 100Mhz faster, it's basically the same. Not too much to discuss about it other than the thermals which I'll discuss more later. The GPU is the new GTX 1660TI. This is why the Helios is relatively "cheap" compared to some laptops touting an RTX 2080. Honestly, I've used very powerful gaming laptops, and they do not feel faster. Unless you're going home and hooking the laptop up to a 4k monitor, which you should have a powerful gaming desktop for anyway, you don't need more performance than this. Even with a RTX 2060, the GPU doesn't reach full utilization because the mobile version of Intel's CPUs cannot keep up with the GPU performance. With a 1660ti, you get high settings in games, with over 70-80fps (AAA games), and it's being fully used, so you know that your investment is being put to good use.Keyboard: Acer did an amazing job of mixing a great feel for both typing and gaming. I have not owned the machine for long, but have reached my full typing speed very quickly. Just mushy enough to be comfortable in gaming, but tactile enough for typing to be a breeze and enjoyable.Mousepad: Great for a gaming laptop. The use of Microsoft precision drivers makes it very accurate, and I have been happy with the feel. Click-and-drag functions are easy to do, not something I can say for all laptops.Aesthetics and build quality: The aesthetic is now a blue, not the familiar red that the Helios line has used before. Some non-Amazon models have RGB keyboards, this one does not. I personally don't care, but it's there. In a way I do wish the logo on the back was smaller or less angular, but having my peers know that it's a gaming laptop doesn't really make a difference for me as a student. The build quality is great, and it feels like a quality machine. Yes, the bottom is plastic, but that's true for laptops costing over $2,000 as well. The parts that you touch such as the lid, and keyboard deck are metal, and have no flex in them. It feels like a machine costing hundreds more, evidenced by the fact that Acer uses the same chassis/frame for models costing closer to $2,000. That speaks for itself.Portability: The laptop is relatively thin without compromising on the cooling performance. It is 5 lbs, and this again is good enough without giving up potential performance. The fact that it's 15" and not 17" also adds to the portability, if you're thinking about a 17" and have to move your laptop often, don't do it. The power supply "brick" in the cord is also relatively small for the performance you're bringing around. I can carry the laptop with one hand easily, and in a backpack it feels like it isn't there. Battery life is shorter than an ultrabook, sure, but that's what you should expect. 3-4 hours is enough if you're a student in my opinion, and I rarely need to use my laptop when I'm not near a power plug.Thermals/noise: Acer has done some serious engineering here. I have used ASUS, MSI, and even custom-made liquid metal applied laptops. I know what I'm talking about here. Any ASUS I've tried hits 95+ celsius on the CPU right away even in normal gaming, even with the fans all the way up. Seriously, they're horrible. MSI's that I have experience with are actually quite good at cooling, but they were also thicker than this machine. I most recently used a custom-made Eluktronics laptop with optional liquid metal applied for cooling (goes between the CPU and heatsink for maximum heat transfer). This laptop is actually most comparable to that one, and even is slightly better in some ways. Acer has seriously taken into account the thermal paste they use, the construction of the fanblades, and the necessary fan speeds, PLUS, the machine is undervolted from the factory. From stock settings, the CPU stays in the 80s, usually below 85. Given how Intel has not been able to get past their 14nm process, this is sadly a great result. If you use predator sense software and change the GPU overclock to fast or extreme, you get more performance, and louder fans, resulting in slightly lower temps, plus better framerates, going from 70-76 in my borderlands 3 benchmarking. I personally am a tinkerer, and enjoy messing with settings. I used throttlestop and undervolted the CPU more to -.150V, plus adding 15W to the chip's turbo boost power consumption, changing it from 45W to 60W, and changing the turbo boost time window from  28 seconds up to 40. Even with adding a lot of power to the chip, my CPU stays 77-80 now, with a maximum of 81 in games. This is even with the Acer software set to extreme overclocking, and with the fans in their stock overclocked setting. All summed up, as someone who knows a lot about laptops, desktops, and their cooling issues, this is hands-down an amazing feat. Acer is the only manufacturer in the game right now that cares at all about thermals it appears. The changes they've done with the thermal paste, fanblade design, and undervolting is a GREAT innovation.Altogether, this is an amazing laptop. I'd recommend it to anyone looking in the price range, and even those looking closer to the $2,000 price mark, as the 1660ti GPU is really all you need for a gaming laptop, they almost always have 1080p screens anyway. I'm happy I got it on black friday, but it's well worth the $1200 regular price as well. A last note is storage. The laptop only ccomes with 256gb SSD storage. The included SSD is actually NVMe, and extremely fast. Just plan on getting an additional 1tb slower ssd, or even a hdd if you're desperate. Acer has two extra mounting options included, with hardware provided. You can add a 2280 M.2 SSD, or a 2.5" SSD. You can total have 3 drives in the machine, and that's amazing for a 15" option. Upgrading is very simple, just need a philips screwdriver, and there's many videos online of how to open this laptop.