Gaming Laptop Considerations

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May 29, 2019
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Hi all, new member, long time lurker. With the shutdown of hardocp, what other sites are you still trusting for quality reviews?

I ask because I'm looking for a Gaming Laptop. My budget is around 700 cash or 1.5k finance. I'm looking for something fairly lightweight, solid battery life, durable, and I am not too worried about playing games at full resolution with maximum graphics.

I would research myself, but I'm not sure which sites are dependable for quality reviews. I only just found out Hardocp was shut down, I haven't checked here in years.

Thanks for reading.
 
I picked up some returned laptops at BB for my kids to play overwatch with me on... generally $500-600 last summer/fall for Dell gaming laptops with a 1050ti. I'll eventually be in the market for a laptop and a requirement will be thunderbolt for an eGPU/dock which should increase the lifespan of the laptop.
 
Best advice, especially on a budget?

Don't.

Don't look for a 'gaming laptop'. This is code for 'poorly built boat anchor'.

You need to specify what games you're looking to run and what your performance expectations are. You also need to recognize how much you're going to be moving the system around.
 
Most of the games I will be playing are iso RPGs and RTS, the most recent of which is Pillars of Eternity 2. I will also be using it to play Borderlands 3 when released. I don't need to play games at an ultra 4k resolution, I'm ok with a high level of detail. The laptop will also be carried around often and used for work, and some design elements using Photoshop or Gimp.
 
Look at financing an XPS15. Light for what they are, mid-grade mobile GPUs, top-end CPUs (that aren't straight desktop parts). They have a refresh just announced and they'll likely be having 'back to school' sales soon.
 
The new Dell Inspiron 15 7000 looks promising as well. It has XPS level hardware in a new chassis with hopefully better thermals. I'm in the market as well and will probably go with it or the XPS 15 but the XPS 15 is known to throttle under load. There are some videos with people putting heatsinks on the VRMs to try and combat the throttling.
 
I wouldn't get the XPS 15 for gaming, they overheat pretty quick and don't seem to perform as well as other gaming laptops

Well, it's not a gaming laptop. It's actually portable, and is built to an extremely high quality standard, which is the polar opposite of 'gaming laptops'.
 
You need to decide if gaming or portability is more important. The XPS 15 or new Inspiron 15 7000 (7590) will be portable but only handle light gaming. There are a few thin and light gaming laptops that will be slightly worse build quality and weigh a pound more but have much better GPUs. The Lenovo Legion Y740 is one example that should be in your finance price range, and the one Drozdov linked above is another option. I'm trying to make a similar decision and can't really figure out what I value more.
 
Well, it's not a gaming laptop. It's actually portable, and is built to an extremely high quality standard, which is the polar opposite of 'gaming laptops'.

and yet the OP is looking for a gaming laptop. As you said, the XPS 15 isn't one.
 


There are a few nice laptops coming with Ryzen 3750hs and GTX 1660 ti for around $1000-1200. For $1500 you could step up to an i9 8750h and a GTX 1070 or even an RTX 2060. I'd be looking in that direction.

For OP, I'd go with a GTX 1660 ti laptop within my budget. No way someone should be putting a discretionary piece of gaming hardware on finance - that's ridiculous.
 
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