need lightweight gaming/work laptop 15" - long battery life a must

jl2cld

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Dec 30, 2012
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need a lightweight 15" gaming/work laptop - ideally should have long battery life. would like to spend under $1500. most of my gaming is q3, some cs, etc.

any recommendations?

thanks
 
It kind of depends on how light weight you want and how much gaming you want as well.

Most laptops now are 14 inches or 15.6inches as well.

Some ideas for you to start with -

http://www.ultrabookreview.com/367-ultrabooks-dedicated-graphics-dvd-touchscreen-rare-commodity/

At the bottom you will find 14/15inch ultrabooks with discrete GPUs. The one's using ULV CPUs should have rather large battery life relatively but they are dual cores only. If you want a quad core though you will likely have to trade off on battery life or size/weight.

Other one's not listed could be laptops based on the Clevo W740SU chassis. Clevo W230ST is another option, albeit possibly too small for you, but it isn't what you would traditionally think of as a lightweight (sleekness) laptop being rather thick but still rather light.

Another alternative is how well you think your games, Q3 and CS not being the most demanding, will run on a modern Intel IGP (non Iris Pro). Then you can forgo the GPU requirement.

Macbook is another option as well with your somewhat high budget.
 
Try for - $1,300 is MacBook Air territory. It’s Lenovo Yoga 13 with 8GB of RAM and 384GB SSD territory. It’s pretty-damn-good gaming. Hell, for $1,500 you can get a Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch or a 13-inch Macbook Pro with Retina display.

Lenovo IdeaPad U410 Touch - £722/AU$915/US$700

Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A - £1,350/AU$1,700/US$1,420

Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus - £1,300/AU$1,600/US$1,400

MacBook Air 2013 - From £849/AU$1,100/US$1,000
 
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thanks for the input so far guys. looks like the new thinkpads have mixed reviews.

any other thoughts?
 
What games do you have in mind to play, that is a big factor as stuff like wow runs great on a min spec ma 13th while cod4 and the like never really max out on current gen hardware.
 
gaming , lightweight and good battery...

possible? with a SHITLOAD of compromise... you will need nvidia optimus to switch between dedicated and on board video.
 
most of the gaming is cs/quake/lol - any final thoughts here guys?

gaming , lightweight and good battery...

possible? with a SHITLOAD of compromise... you will need nvidia optimus to switch between dedicated and on board video.
 
It isn't just about the games but how well you want to play it. For instance with LoL, it is perfectly playable smoothly with a Haswell ULV with the IGP, such as a Surface 2 Pro, just not at max settings at 1920x1080.
 
most of the gaming is cs/quake/lol - any final thoughts here guys?

Thoughts are mostly that you constrained your requirements a bit too much to broaden your options more ;)

Lightweight and 15" is an uncommon starting point. If you went lightweight and 13" you could have better luck.

Gaming on top means you need higher power components, which is usually directly at odds with Lightweight, and good Battery Life.


Anyways I'll throw out two options that don't really fit your stated constraints (mostly price) but might be close enough for you to consider.

XPS15, it is 15", 4.4lbs, basically identical to the MacbookPro Retina 15". Has a 3200x1800 resolution display which may be a plus or minus (can run games at 1600x900 for better framerate, some games have problems with High-DPI still though). Downside is price: $2000 for the version with the larger 91WHr battery which should give 7-8 hours of normal usage, $1800 for the mid-tier with a 33% smaller battery and mechanical HDD. I have the top end model of this and think it is a fantastic machine in the 2 weeks I have had it, very well built.

Razer Blade 14", gaming focused machine with surprisingly strong battery life with normal web browsing usage. Downsides are a poor TN screen and higher price than your stated budget.


If you want to stay within your budget, I think your best bet for something lightweight is to consider just getting a normal 13" ultrabook and using the intel integrated graphics. It will run your stated games just fine on medium-ish settings.
 
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