I put the Triton 14 AI through our usual suite of benchmark tests to gauge its performance and pit the results against those of the following laptops…
The Razer Blade 14 ($2,699.99 as tested) and its equivalent GPU is the closest comparison laptop to the Triton. Larger-screen gaming machines are more common, so those models fill out the rest of this group. Our $1,499.99 Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 review configuration and the Alienware 16X Aurora ($1,649.99 as tested) are two larger laptops with an RTX 5060; the former is a more affordable option in a 15-inch frame, and the latter a premium 16-inch build. Finally, our $3,198 Framework Laptop 16 review build isn’t strictly a gaming laptop, but it demonstrates how an RTX 5070 fares in a larger chassis.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
Our primary overall benchmark, UL’s PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC’s storage throughput.
Three more tests we use are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Creators rates a PC’s image-editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25.
The Triton was generally quick for these workloads, but you can also see its limitations compared with the others: it was the slowest system in this batch on every test. The Lunar Lake V-series chip, even at the Ultra 9 tier, just could not keep up with H- and HX-class alternatives. Even the equally compact Blade 14 and its comparable AMD chip outperformed the Triton, hanging closer to the larger laptops than its 14-inch counterpart.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. The first two we use, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), stress the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The next pair, Steel Nomad’s regular and light subtests, assesses gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to Solar Bay to measure ray-tracing performance in a synthetic environment.
Our real-world gaming testing is based on the in-game benchmarks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at the system’s full HD (1080p or 1200p native) resolution—represent competitive shooters, open-world games, and simulation games, respectively. If the screen supports a higher resolution, we rerun the tests at the QHD equivalent of 1440p or 1600p. Each game runs at two sets of graphics settings per resolution for up to four runs total on each game.
We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Minimum graphics preset—aimed at maximizing frame rates to test display refresh rates—and again at the Extreme preset. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs to the limit, so we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again on the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 2024 serves as our test of DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems), demonstrating a GPU’s capacity for frame-boosting upscaling technologies. The capacity of these frame-rate boosts varies with the version of frame-generation tech available: DLSS 2 and 3 stitch one AI-generated frame between every originally rendered pair of frames, while DLSS 4 inserts up to three additional frames. (FSR can generate up to four new frames per original, while XeSS can only stitch in one new frame per original frame.)
The Triton’s processor results were just as blah as its graphics numbers, though it hung closer to the pack (or at least the Blade 14) in some instances. On the whole, it posted scores that were broadly acceptable but somewhat underwhelming for the cost of the laptop, even accounting for the performance concessions for portability.
The gaming frame rates dropped below what you may expect from an RTX 5070 on paper. We’ve noted for years that the wattage and implementation are as important as the GPU in make and model, and you can see that in action here. The Triton had a particularly tough time at its native resolution, which you’d normally hope an RTX 5070 could handle. Nvidia’s DLSS becomes crucial here, which we expect is the case for most RTX 50-series GPUs. The F1 scores show how much a performance gap can narrow with resolution upscaling and frame generation.
Acer’s Triton trailed every other system tested here, even those with RTX 5060s. These frame rates are playable, but in some cases, only just, hovering right at or under the 60-frames-per-second mark (or 30fps, depending on resolution expectations). As with the other tests, the frame rates are reasonable, but considering the price and comparisons with the competition, the results are underwhelming. Portability always brings a performance cost, but here it’s more extreme than with the Blade 14.
Battery Life and Display Tests
We test each laptop and tablet’s battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
To gauge display performance, we use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor-calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
The Triton’s battery uptime was one of the best in the batch, cracking the 10-hour mark. That supports the laptop’s physical portability, since you can rely on the battery to keep running for your work and entertainment on the road. And misgivings about its patterned appearance aside, the Triton’s display delivers broad color-gamut coverage, second only to the Legion laptop in Adobe RGB. Its maximum brightness is a bit behind most, but not enough to be noticeable in everyday use.
