[In-Depth Comparison] MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) vs Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s) – an unexpected winner

Intel is back on top in the laptop space, delivering its strongest showing in years. Tiger Lake did well last year and showed that Team Blue hasn’t given up. However, the Alder Lake CPUs are what put Intel back on top, delivering the final blow to AMD, and solidifying itself as the most powerful CPU manufacturer, for now at least.

Today we have two laptops powered by this new CPU family, that target the gaming and Creator audience, delivering features that are usable by both.

When it comes to both the MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) and the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s), we have stealthy chassis paired with the most powerful available hardware right now. There are also very good displays on board, delivering on the Creator part.

Today we are presenting you with an in-depth comparison between the MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) and the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s).

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux): Full Specs / In-depth Review

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s): Full Specs / In-depth Review

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) configurations:

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s) configurations:

Contents


Design and construction

The MSI laptop can be mistaken for a black slab of metal, as that’s all that there is to its design. It’s entirely built out of aluminum and comes with sharp edges and rounded corners. The lid has a very minimal-looking MSI logo, which is glossier, but still comes in black. The rectangular structure also means a sturdy chassis, with the lid being exceptionally durable, while also opening with one hand.

The Triton 500 SE has a more stylized design, with some gaming features. The laptop is also made from aluminum and has many of the same characteristics, including sharp edges and rounded corners. The vents of the back have an aggressive design fitting the Predator brand. In terms of branding here it is also kept to a minimum, with only a small Predator badge on the lid. Its lid also opens with one hand.

WeightHeight
MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)2.10 kg (4.6 lbs)19.8 mm (0.72″)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)2.50 kg (5.5 lbs)20.5 mm (0.78″)

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Keyboard and touchpad

Both devices have decided to skip out on the NumPad, looking to deliver a better overall user experience. This results in two keyboards with large keycaps, including the arrow keys.

On the MSI model, the unit has shallow key travel and quiet feedback, which is less than ideal for gaming and productivity. But being that the laptop is called the Stealth, we should have expected it. The gaming roots of the keyboard are expressed by the per-key RGB backlight. As for the touchpad, it has a wider aspect ratio than the display. The pad is covered in glass and has a fingerprint reader in the upper left corner. The experience that it offers is good enough, albeit the clicking mechanism is also a bit shallow.

Sadly, the Predator Triton isn’t that far ahead, delivering the same short key travel and not clicky feedback. The touchpad has a more standard aspect ratio with a fingerprint reader positioned in the same place. It is too covered in glass, offering smooth gliding.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Ports

The MSI Stealth’s I/O includes two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 2) ports, and three USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) ports, one of which has Thunderbolt 4 support, an HDMI 2.1 port, an Ethernet port, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. This leaves enough connectivity for up to three additional monitors, which is crazy.

On the Predator, you have two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 2) ports, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an Ethernet port, a 3.5 mm audio jack, an HDMI 2.1 port, and an SD card reader.

MSI GP66 Stealth (12Ux)

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)


Spec sheet comparison


Disassembly, Upgrade options

Both notebooks are held together by 9 screws, with the MSI using Phillips head screws, while the Predator has Torx screws. In terms of upgradeability, the MSI Stealth comes with two SODIMM RAM slots, which support up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM and two M.2 PCIe x4 drives. On the Predator, there are up to 64GB of soldered RAM and two M.2 slots, which support Gen 4 drives.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Display quality

The MSI device offers three displays with 15.6-inch diagonal and IPS panels. There is a Full HD display with a 360Hz refresh rate, a QHD display with a 240Hz refresh rate, and a UHD 4K display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The Predator has a single display option with a 16-inch diagonal, QHD+ resolution, and a 240Hz refresh rate. We tested the 240Hz QHD panel on the MSI Stealth and the QHD+ display on the Triton 500 SE. The displays have pretty much identical specs with a pixel density of 188 and 189 PPI for the Stealth and the Predator, respectively, a pitch of 0.13 x 0.13 mm, and a Retina distance of 46 cm or 18″.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Both laptops come with excellent viewing angles. Here are images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

The display on the MSI laptop doesn’t get very bright, maxing out at 269 nits in the middle of the screen and 267 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 6%. The contrast ratio is pretty good at 1120:1.

The Predator nearly doubles the brightness with  500 nits in the middle of the screen and 482 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 11%. The contrast ratio is higher at 1290:1.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Color coverage

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows the color coverage of both the MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) and the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s).

Both laptops fully cover the sRGB gamut, while also showing substantial coverage of the DCI-P3 gamut with 96% for the MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) and 99% for the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s).

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Color accuracy

We tested the MSI Stealth GS66 using both the stock settings and our Design and Gaming profile applied. The first test is in the sRGB gamut, while the second test adjusts the white point to D65 and in the DCI-P3 gamut. Regardless of the white point adjustment and which gamut we tested in, the result stayed similar, with the dE value hovering around the 1.8 to 1.9 mark.

We also compare the scores of MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right) against the P3-D65 color space.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)

Here are the results of the sRGB gamut test.

Here are the results of the DCI-P3 gamut test.

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

We did the same with the display on the Predator Triton 500 SE, and got much better results in the DCI-P3 space with a D65 white point, reaching a dE value of 0.9.

Here are the results of the sRGB gamut test.

Here are the results of the DCI-P3 gamut test.


Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” methods from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

Both laptops are very fast, but the MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) comes in with a quicker Fall + Rise time of 7.4 ms.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Health Impact / PWM (Blue light)

PWM – Screen flickering

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable by the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Both laptops use no PWM across all brightness levels, meaning that the displays are comfortable to use, without presenting any excessive eye strain in this aspect.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Buy our profiles

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) 15.6″ QHD IPS Sharp LQ156T1JW04 (SHP153C): Buy our profiles

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s) 16″ WQXGA IPS BOE NE160QDM-NZ2 (BOE0AB5): Buy our profiles

Sound

The MSI device comes with front-firing speakers, with a large grill above the keyboard. As for the Predator, it comes with bottom-firing speakers, with two small grills on the bottom panel. Both setups deliver quality audio, but the speakers on the Predator do deviate from quality in the low, mid, and high frequencies.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Battery life

Both laptops come with similarly sized battery packs, with 99.9Wh for the MSI Stealth and 100Wh for the Acer Predator. Both of them also arrive with the same processor, the Core i7-12700H. This is why it’s so shocking to see that the Triton 500 SE performs a lot, a lot better, having leads of 4 hours and 43 minutes in Web browsing and 2 hours and 29 minutes in video playback. This was done using the Windows Better performance setting, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.


Performance

In terms of hardware, both laptops offer the Alder Lake H-series of processors and the RTX 30-series Ampere graphics.

CPU benchmarks

Here we tested the Intel Core i7-12700H inside both laptops. The MSI Stealth brings better performance in both the 3D and 2D Rendering tests, scoring 12% higher in Cinebench 20 and finishing the Photoshop benchmark just a tad quicker, by a margin of 0.1 seconds.

Results are from the Cinebench R23 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)

Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)


GPU benchmarks

Here we tested the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti inside both laptops, with the Triton laptop getting a slightly more powerful 115W version, while the Stealth dons the 105W version of the GPU. The small TGP increase seems to be doing the trick, as the 3070 Ti inside the Triton scores 6% higher in 3DMark Fire Strike and 5% higher in Unigine Superposition.


Gaming tests

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Metro ExodusFull HD, Low (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Extreme (Check settings)
MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) – RTX 3070 Ti (105W)156 fps (+3%)67 fps35 fps
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s) – RTX 3070 Ti (115W)151 fps75 fps (+12%)38 fps (+9%)

Borderlands 3Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Badass (Check settings)
MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) – RTX 3070 Ti (105W)131 fps90 fps71 fps
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s) – RTX 3070 Ti (115W)132 fps (+1%)98 fps (+9%)77 fps (+8%)

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) – RTX 3070 Ti (105W)109 fps (+10%)95 fps (+9%)63 fps (+9%)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s) – RTX 3070 Ti (115W)99 fps87 fps58 fps

Temperatures and comfort

In terms of cooling, both devices deliver pretty well. The MSI Stealth comes with a total of seven heat pipes, three fans, and four heat sinks. Six of the pipes are entirely dedicated to the CPU and GPU. The seventh one targets the VRMs and the GPU memory.

On the side of Acer, we have a total of four heat pipes, with three that cool down both the CPU and GPU. The fourth one covers the GPU memory. The three fans siphon the heat away from the mainboard.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i7-12700H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)3.84 GHz @ 2.82 GHz @ 83°C @ 124W3.55 GHz @ 2.67 GHz @ 85°C @ 107W3.19 GHz @ 2.42 GHz @ 83°C @ 85W
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)3.25 GHz @ 2.52 GHz @ 89°C @ 80W3.10 GHz @ 2.46 GHz @ 90°C @ 73W2.93 GHz @ 2.38 GHz @ 91°C @ 66W

The MSI’s CPU dominates, delivering higher clock speeds and lower temperatures across all three stages of our stress test.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 TiGPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Max Fan)
MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)1277 MHz @ 71°C @ 92W1250 MHz @ 75°C @ 91W1314 MHz @ 64°C @ 92W
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)1270 MHz @ 87°C @ 115W1200 MHz @ 87°C @ 105W1320 MHz @ 87°C @ 113W

Here we also see the MSI GPU running cooler, with significant temperature differences of around 10°C to 20°C, while the clock speeds are relatively similar.

Comfort during full load

The MSI laptop is better on the outside as well, being 3°C cooler while the laptop ran at full throttle.

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)
Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)

Verdict

These two machines come with more similarities than differences, but there are still some defining features that will help you to choose the right device for you. Both the MSI and Acer laptops arrive with a metal unibody that is durable and sleek.

The designs are grown-up and minimal, minimizing the gaming characteristics as much as possible. Maybe they went too far in the other direction, as the keyboard on both the Stealth and the Triton were unimpressive, delivering shorter than ideal key travel and decent, but not great feedback. They compensate, however, with wide I/O that can support multiple external monitors, if there is a need.

We were shocked to see the soldered RAM on the Triton 500 SE, as we believed that a large 16-inch notebook cannot be this bad, offering no RAM slots, but only two M.2 slots. The Stealth, on the other hand, supplies both RAM and SSD slots and takes the win for upgradeability. The displays here are of great quality providing great color coverage and accuracy, while also being very quick, resulting in an excellent gaming and Creator experience.

The MSI laptop also delivers front-facing speakers with no deviations from quality across all frequencies. What the Acer does better, is to bring more efficiency to the field, providing excellent leads in the battery life tests. In terms of performance, the MSI Stealth is better at CPU-intensive tasks, while the Triton 500 SE is slightly more powerful in GPU-related benchmarks.

Lastly, when it comes to cooling, MSI has finally fixed the horror that was their cooling in 2021 and before. The Stealth deals with the problem by throwing six heat pipes at it, along with three fans, resulting in low temperatures and high speeds. The Acer also does really well in that regard, but not as good as its competitor.

If it were up to us, we would go with the MSI device, simply because we are suckers for performance and cannot imagine using a gaming laptop with no RAM upgradeability. Yes, you are losing in terms of battery life, but most of the time you will be plugged into a socket when gaming anyway. Then you have to add the speakers and the cooling, which overall round out the result for us.


Why choose the MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux)?

  • + More performance
  • + Better cooling
  • + Front-firing speakers
  • + Better upgradeability


Why choose the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s)?

  • + Longer battery life
  • + Integrated display has G-Sync

MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux): Full Specs / In-depth Review

Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s): Full Specs / In-depth Review

All MSI Stealth GS66 (12Ux) configurations:

All Acer Predator Triton 500 SE (PT516-52s) configurations:

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