[In-depth Comparison] Lenovo Legion Y540 vs Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019, PH315-52) – the latter wins because of its better build and longer battery life


It’s time to have a look at some affordable gaming laptops. The low-to mid-end devices are often preferred over the top-end laptops because people are searching for the sweet spot with the best price / performance ratio that suits their actual needs. So, a mid-range gaming blockbuster has to offer mainly a good overall performance and a PWM-free display (user’s health is the most important thing) – any other useful extras of a particular device count as a bonus and pros.

That’s why we picked two laptops that can meet those requirements – the Lenovo Legion Y540 and Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019). Those are well-known devices by gamers who tend to play on laptops. We picked configurations with the same mid-range graphics card – the GTX 1660 Ti. This one offers decent performance and an acceptable price at the same time. As for the CPUs – both are equipped with a fast 6-core Intel Coffee Lake processor that will not bottleneck the GPU at all and it’ll help for better multitasking experience.

Our test devices are not the fastest, they are not very slim and compact, they aren’t all-aluminum machines but hey, they are one of the best bangs for your bucks and they will probably impress you with good performance and with some other features that we will discuss it in a minute.

Read our in-depth reviews here:
Lenovo Legion Y540: Detailed review
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019): Detailed review

Lenovo Legion Y540 configurations:

Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019):

Contents


Design and construction

The Lenovo Legion Y540 is an all-plastic device but it doesn’t look and feel cheap while using it. It has a repetitive design and a strangely-placed front camera. The lid is easily openable using one hand only but it’s a bit bendable if you put too much pressure on it. The Y570 is a bit bulky and thick device that weighs 2.30 kg and the profile is 25.9 mm. At least the bezels around the display are super slim and the laptop has a modern look thanks to that.

The Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019) has a design of a high-tier premium device. Aluminum is being utilized for the base and lid as the latter has a glowing Predator logo on it. Unlike Lenovo, this one has a normally-placed camera. Its lid is more stable than the Y540 one and you can open it with a single hand as well. The Helios 300 has thin bezels (ok, a bit thicker than its contender) and it has the same weight (2.30 kg) but its profile is slimmer (22.9 mm) when compared with Lenovo Legion Y540 which helps for better portability.

In terms of design and utilized material, the Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019) is better.

Lenovo Legion Y540
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)

Both laptops have great keyboards with backlight (optional for Helios 300), long key travel and decent feedback. The two notebooks have big keycaps and big arrow keys – this is a rare combination and we are happy to see it. The Helios 300 has a dedicated PredatorSense button that ramps the fans at maximum speed – the fans are very noisy in this mode but the CPU and GPU temps are lower and that adds additional performance.

Our contenders have good touchpads that are precise, fast, and comfortable to use.

Lenovo Legion Y540
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)

Opening the bottom panel of Lenovo Legion Y540 isn’t that hard – remove 11 Phillips-head screws and you’re good to go.

The cooling has three thick heat pipes – one common for CPU and GPU and two dedicated pipes for the CPU and GPU. There are two fans and two big-sized cooling plates. The laptop features a single NVMe slot.

Lenovo Legion Y540
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)

The cooling solution of Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019) looks almost the same as the Y540 but it has a bit different design – still, the same amount of heat pipes, fans, and cooling plates as Lenovo. This one has two M.2 slots with RAID 0 support.

HeightWeight
Lenovo Legion Y54025.9 mm (1.02″)2.30 kg (5.1 lbs)
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)22.9 mm (0.90″)2.30 kg (5.1 lbs)

It’s time to check the I/Os.

Every side of the Y540 has its own ports (except for the front one). One the left and the right side we can spot two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports and an audio jack on the left. The biggest bunch of ports is on the back of the laptop – a USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 2) port (with Thunderbolt 3 support), a Mini DisplayPort, USB Type-A 3.1 Gen. ( 1), an HDMI connector, and an Ethernet port.

Lenovo Legion Y540

Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)

On its left side, the Helios 300 has an RJ-45 port, two USB Type-A 3.0 ports, and a headphones jack. On the other side – an HDMI and DisplayPort connectors, a USB Type-A 3.0, and a USB Type-C connector.

Display

Both Lenovo Legion Y540 and Acer Predator Helios 300 15 share almost the same panels – the Y540 has a BOE NV156FHM-N4G and the Helios 300 panel has a model number NV156FHM-N4K. Those are 1080p displays with 144Hz refresh rates and their contrast ratios and excellent – 1160:1 for Y540 and 1170:1 for Acer Nitro 5.

Lenovo Legion Y540
Acer Predator Helios 300 15″

The two panels have the same 94% sRGB color coverage and you can expect vivid and realistic color representation.

Lenovo Legion Y540
Acer Predator Helios 300 15″

Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work.

Below you can compare the score of these panels – both with already applied “Gaming and Web design” profile. After calibration, the two panels become very color-accurate with (again) the same average dE values of 1.6. No matter where you are going to use them – at home or at work, you can enjoy great picture and colors thanks to the good displays and our profiles.

Lenovo Legion Y540
Acer Predator Helios 300 15″

One of the most important things about a display is its safety towards the user. Either of those two units is a PWM-free one so you can use them for a long time before sensing an eye strain.

Lenovo Legion Y540
Acer Predator Helios 300 15″

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa. We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time of 8.6 ms for the Lenovo panel and 10.5 ms for the Helios 300 display. Those are superb scores – no matter what you are doing in front of your display, you can clearly sense the difference when you are using a fast panel like that.

Lenovo Legion Y540
BOE NV156FHM-N4K

Our display profiles

Here at LaptopMedia, we create a set of custom-tailored profiles for every notebook we review. They boost the productivity of display and reduce negative effects such as blue light emissions and PWM. You can read more about them here.

Buy our profiles from here:

15.6”, Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels), 144 Hz, IPS (BOE NV156FHM-N4G): Buy our profiles

15.6”, Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels), 144 Hz, IPS (BOE NV156FHM-N4K): Buy our profiles

Specs sheet comparison

More information about Intel Core i7-9750H and its position in our Top CPU Ranking you can find HERE.

More information about the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (Laptop) and its place in our Top GPU Ranking you can find HERE.


Battery

Battery life here we go. The Lenovo Legion Y540 is equipped with a 57Wh battery pack and the life in it is disappointing – 2 hours and a half of Web browsing and 3 hours of videos. A really unimpressive result.

Acer Predator Helios 300 battery unit has the same battery capacity but we measured over 8 hours of Web browsing and almost the same time for video playback. In terms of Web browsing, this machine is almost 4 times better than its rival – nice.


Hardware and Gaming tests

Our test samples come with an Intel Core i7-9750H – a 14nm Coffee Lake processor with 2.60 GHz – 4.50 GHz base and boost frequencies, 12MB of cache size, and a 45W TDP. The video card is the same for the laptops – the GTX 1660 Ti which is a fast Turing GPU that isn’t too far away from RTX 2060 in terms of performance.

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, MAX (Check settings)
Lenovo Legion Y540124 fps (+8%)68 fps (+1%)43 fps
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)115 fps67 fps45 fps (+5%)

 

Far Cry 5Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Lenovo Legion Y54096 fps (+2%)89 fps (+2%)84 fps (+1%)
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)94 fps87 fps83 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, MAX (Check settings)
Lenovo Legion Y540109 fps63 fps42 fps
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)120 fps (+10%)65 fps (+8%)43 fps (+8%)

 

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Lenovo Legion Y54076 fps (+8%)67 fps (+2%)44 fps (+2%)
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)74 fps66 fps43 fps

 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Highest (Check settings)
Lenovo Legion Y54075 fps73 fps47 fps
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)80 fps (+7%)76 fps (+4%)49 fps (+4%)

Lenovo Legion Y540 and Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019) perform almost identically with small ups and downs for one or another here and there.

Temperatures

In this test, we load the CPU cores to 100%, while monitoring the fluctuations in their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column is indicative of the computer’s response under a short load (between 2 and 10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of whether the laptop is suitable for heavy and continuous loads such as video rendering.

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

Intel Core i7-9750H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Lenovo Legion Y5402.78 GHz (B+7%)@ 74°C3.08 GHz (B+18%)@ 90°C2.87 GHz (B+10%)@ 79°C
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)2.98 GHz (B+7%)@ 63°C3.03 GHz (B+18%)@ 68°C2.98 GHz (B+10%)@ 72°C

No matter the load, short, medium or long, the Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019) shows lower CPU temperatures than its competitor and a bit higher frequencies in most cases.

Real-life GPU temperatures

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 TiGPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (Turbo Mode)
Lenovo Legion Y5401761 MHz @ 76°C1752 MHz @ 82°C
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)1610 MHz @ 72°C1568 MHz @ 81°C1712 MHz @ 69°C

Just as in the CPU temperatures test, the GTX 1660 Ti of Helios 300 is a bit cooler than the same GPU that is fitted in the Y540. However, the latter has almost 200 MHz higher GPU core clock during our 30-minute gaming test than its competitor. Job well done, Lenovo.

Anyway, if you need more performance, you can push the PredatorSense button of Helios 300 – this will “unleash the Kraken” because the fans are loud as an F1 car (with naturally aspirated engine) in this mode. Even then, the video card clock can’t reach the 1752MHz score of Y540 but at least the core temperature drops significantly.

Gaming comfort

When it comes to comfort during load, both laptops aren’t the best out there. The Lenovo shell reaches 50°C which is too hot for some situations but the hot spot is away from the palm rest area. The laptop isn’t very quiet during gaming but it’s not too loud like a straight-piped Lamborghini.

Almost the same story with Acer Predator Helios 300 – not the quietest devices, but the noise during load is somehow acceptable. Well, if you push the PredatorSense you will awake the fans and you can expect close to a vacuum cleaner levels of noise.

Verdict

It’s a bit hard for us to say which one is the clear winner. Both laptops perform really closely and they don’t have big flaws. Let’s make a quick summarize. The build of Lenovo Legion Y540 is all-plastic, it has a thicker profile and the same weight as Helios 300. The latter utilizes batter materials in its build – aluminum for the lid and base. In terms of ports, no one has a distinct advantage.

The displays of our test devices are almost the same with 94% sRGB color coverage, 144Hz refresh rate, superb average dE values, and fast reaction times. When it comes to battery life the Acer Predator Helios 300 definitely wins with almost 4 times longer Web browsing. During gaming, the two machines have close FPS result and there is no winner in this category.

Temperatures wise, the results are a bit of a mixed bag – the Helios 300 has better CPU temperatures and higher boost clocks during any kind of load, but its competitor has the upper hand when it comes to GPU performance with 184MHz higher GPU clock during long gaming sessions. The gaming comfort isn’t a strong side for both devices – they are noisy under stress but the noise isn’t too intrusive.

Oh, wait here, here is your winner – the Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019). It’s better built, better to look at, it has longer battery life, and two NVMe slots.

Read our in-depth reviews here:
Lenovo Legion Y540: Detailed review
Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019): Detailed review



Why choose Lenovo Legion Y540?

  • Higher GPU clock under load
  • PredatorSense button




Why choose Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019)?

  • Two NVMe ports with RAID support
  • Long battery life
  • Better build quality
  • Better CPU temperatures


Lenovo Legion Y540 configurations:

Acer Predator Helios 300 15 (2019):

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