Acer Malaysia announced that the 2026 refresh of the Predator Helios 18 AI is now available in Malaysia. The Helios 18 is flagship gaming laptop under Acer’s Predator brand, for a good reason. This is the most extreme performance you can squeeze into a laptop form factor, with top-of-the-line chips and thermals.
We’re talking an Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus, the highest end of Intel’s Arrow Lake-based mobile CPUs released last March. We’re talking an Nvidia GeForce RTX5090 graphics, the top of the crop of Nvidia’s current RTX offering for gaming.
The display on the Helios 18 is also killer, with an 18-inch 3840×2400 (the 16:10 aspect ratio equivalent to a 4K, 3840×2160) resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, Mini LED display with full DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage and 1,000 nits in brightness with HDR support.
The Predator Helios 18 (2026) isn’t maxing out on memory, not in this economy and current PC parts crisis, but it’s still pretty luxurious all things considered. Between the two specs available in the country, the top one only has 48GB of DDR5 RAM, in a dual channel setup (i.e. two modules of 24GB sized RAM) and 1TB of SSD storage. It has room to support and expand up to 256GB of RAM and 6TB of SSD.
Packing this much heat performance-wise means the thermal solution must be able to keep it cool. The Helios 18 has Acer’s AeroBlade 3D fan, now in its 6th gen, which features 100 blades and the ability to adjust airflow volume based on RPM speed. That’s on top of vector heat pipes and “premium” liquid metal thermal grease.
The Predator Helios 18 (2026) also includes customisable dynamic RGB lighting on the logo, a lighting bar, and per-key RGB keyboard. Said keyboard also uses the Predator MagKey 4.0 mechanical switches. Wi-Fi 7 support, an Ethernet port and two Thunderbolt 5 ports round of this luxurious and powerful beast of a gaming laptop.
The Predator Helios 18 is now available for purchase at authorised Acer resellers and Acer eStore in two different spec variants:
- Nvidia GeForce RTX5090, 48GB RAM: RM19,999
- Nvidia GeForce RTX5080, 36GB RAM: RM17,999
Purchases of the Predator Helios 18 (2026) before July 12 includes a free Acer PM161Q portable monitor worth RM349 while stocks last.
If the Predator Helios 18 is way too overpowered (and overpriced), Acer also has a more reasonable offering of a gaming laptop, the recently released Predator Helios Neo 16 (2026).