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Looking to buy a laptop soon, for gaming
GrubbsGrady
Member UncommonPosts: 371
Howdy folks,
I am here to get some opinions on what laptop(s) you think I should be looking at. I will provide some links so you can see the things I have been checking out, but I am still very open to anything you think may be a better fit for me.
For use, I just got a new job that will have me traveling somewhat frequently and I would like to be able to play some games on the road/in hotel rooms. Also wouldn't mind being able to use my computer in bed/on the couch from time to time. As for budget, ideally I would like to keep it sub ~2000 range. If a little more gets me something a lot better than awesome if a little less still gets me something great then even more awesome.
I've been checking out laptops from falconNW: http://www.falcon-nw.com/laptops/tlx
MSI: http://www.xoticpc.com/msi-gt60-dominator423-p-6954.html
Sager: http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np9377-clevo-p377sma-p-6982.html
Digital Storm: http://www.digitalstormonline.com/gaming-laptops.asp
When it comes to laptops I really know nothing, except that people usually complain about how much theirs suck. Feel free to point me in a different direction if you feel I am looking at the wrong products.
Thanks much!
Edit: I'd like to add that I do prefer the have a lit keyboard 
Comments
Have a similar budget. My inner debate has been strength vs. battery life. Which doesn't seem like a concern to you. Feature wise. What's important to me is 15"+ touchscreen. If the device has a touchscreen there's really no reason for the device not to completely fold up like a large tablet anymore. That's the conclusion I am at currently if I buy a laptop and not a tablet. Probably doesn't help you much. But that's where I am at this point while waiting to see some more of the new AMD stuff to hit market.
Thanks sir, read a few people who swear by them. I've never heard of the brand, but then again I don't know much about laptops or prebuilts. I'll check them out more in depth.
I think the laptop you buy and how much money you spend should depend on what your going to do with it.
If your going to spend 2 nights every other week in a hotel, game 2-3 hours before bed. Totaling about 12 or so hours a month gaming time, then I would go with something cheap that will do a well enough job and not cost you $1800.
If your spending 3-4 nights a week out of town then maybe get something that is a true gaming laptop. Just be aware that a "gaming" laptop is heavy and runs hot in pretty much every case.
I travel for my job as well. I am out of town 10 days a month roughly. I personally went with a laptop that will do some gaming at med setting and cost about $700 vs a $2000 true gaming laptop. For me that was a good option as I can play a few games in the hotel like Guild Wars 2, Diablo 3, Fallout NV, Skyrim, Borderlands 2, ect. More recently Divinity Original Sin.
If you are like me then after a long day of Driving / Flying & working gaming for a couple of hours is about all I am up for. Then its movie time on netflix while kicking back. Hotel gaming for travel is not all its cracked up to be. It sounds nice but after a long day i use my laptop to stream movies more than anything now days.
If you have the funds to buy an uber laptop and just want one then there is nothing wrong with that for sure. IMO just dont overspend on something that weighs 12 lbs and you use 10 hours a month in a hotel. A cheaper laptop and a nice desktop at home may be better use of the money.
Just my 2cp
You make a good point man. In all honesty I probably won't be using it as much as I think, and it won't really be worth spending that much money for something that get such little use. I guess what my focus should be on is simply a laptop that has good value. I'm the type of person who goes for really high end/reliable things that cost more- or really cheap.
Do you have anything I should look at that is more middle of the road and could play games on medium settings at least, but isn't going to break on me? What brands are known to be good?
My main choices would be MSI and Sager. Bang for buck, you will get the most out of those 2 brands.
MSI has 3 main series of gaming notebooks, the GX, GS, and GT. On newegg just clicking on one of these series allows you to make customizations for that series. Like picking 15" or 17", sata drives, and memory choices. The GX series uses an AMD APU and a powerful GPU. The GPU is held back by the CPU but its a whole lot cheaper and can pretty much play any modern game on maximum settings. No options due to its design. The GS series are a thinner chassis so they will deal with heat and weight differently. The choices are also not as deep as the GT series. The GT series has a lot of options and comes in a large heavy chassis. The 15.6" versions come with a 3k monitor opposed to the standard 2k monitor. Its also possible to option them with 3-mSata SSD in raid0 which is overkill. That's what the 128, 256, 384 options are. How many SSD to pair together. The memory configurations are not fantastic, some of the matching is poor so look out for that. The 17" uses 3 dims of memory, and the 15" uses 2 dims.
GX - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152563
GS - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA57X1N49013
GT - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA57X1NG5711
Sager pretty much asks you what you wanna do and how much do you wanna spend. They build their specs to task so it does not take a lot of research or balancing.
AMD's new chips are slowly hitting market. Quizzical talks about them and then a bit of back and forth in my thread about them. It's why I'm in a holding position, Waiting to see price / performance as well as configuration options. My technical knowledge is very limited and not trying to sway you one way or the other. I am just going through the same process. No idea what I am going to purchase at this point.
If it were me and knowing what I use a laptop on the road for I personally would buy something like this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834231521&ignorebbr=1&cm_re=PPSSAZTZYZSDRO-_-34-231-521-_-Product
Cheap and able to game, stream, work, ect. on. That is similar to what I use now. Personally I am fine with not playing MMOs while on the road, mainly play D3 and used to play GW2. I just pick a game or three to play on my laptop while in the hotel. Playing at med. settings for a two day stretch is OK with me.
If you want something a bit nicer and more gaming capable then maybe something like this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152563
It only has one memory module but that should be an easy fix, just buy and add another 8gb stick i would think. You may can configure one on another site that is comparable in price / configuration.
But I am not a laptop expert by any means. Other can advise you better probably.
As a gamer who travels I just wanted to give you my opinion based on my experience with hotel gaming. A cheaper laptop does me just fine. If you have the funds and just want something badass then there are plenty of options too.
Either way good luck to ya
If you want a high end gaming laptop, I'd go with this:
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8278s-clevo-p170sma-eta-march-p-6985.html?wconfigure=yes
Switch the memory to two 4 GB modules rather than one 8 GB module, set the SSD as an OS drive, add an OS of your choice, and consider skipping the Blu-Ray drive. That comes to a little under $1500.
Be warned that if you get a high end gaming laptop, gaming on it will be restricted to set it on a flat desk and plug it in, and strongly consider buying an external keyboard and mouse to use with it because it's going to get hot under gaming loads.
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The only companies that make high end gaming laptops anymore are Clevo, Alienware, and sometimes MSI, depending on how they feel that generation. A high end gaming laptop that doesn't say MSI or Alienware is probably Clevo--and in particular, Sager's are Clevo. In particular, Asus makes some mid-range gaming laptops, but avoids the high end.
AMD's Beema/Mullins chips are for low power, low performance devices. They're really not gaming laptops. Kaveri is higher performance, but still, that's primarily for playing games on the integrated graphics. It's still far behind Intel's Haswell CPUs, and the integrated graphics is far behind what you can get in a discrete card.
FalconNW used to have a fabulous reputation and warranty for gaming laptops but OP is the first person I've seen mention them in years. Has their brand taken a nosedive?
Do they build their own laptops, or do they just rebrand Clevo or MSI laptops? I'd bet on the latter, as they don't have the volume to justify the expense of engineering their own designs.
Clevo does try to make their laptops customizable, so that the vendor selling the final product can offer a different monitor, different storage, different memory, different CPU, different video card, and some other options. But it's still a Clevo laptop, and a Clevo laptop from brand X is going to be the same as an identically configured Clevo laptop from brand Y. Why buy a Clevo laptop from Falcon Northwest if you can get exactly the same thing from Xotic PC for $1000 cheaper? That's why Falcon Northwest doesn't get talked about much anymore: they're wildly uncompetitive in prices.
I forgot to mention, you really can't lose on support for any of these brands. Sager, MSI, Falcon Northwest, and Digital Storm offer terrific customer support. I actually really like what MSI has been doing for the last few years. It used to be MSIs support was garbage, but they have really stepped up and also reduced their failure rate. MSI in particular has historically expected the end-user to alter their components. Up until recently, doing something like replacing the heat sink on one of their GPUs did not void the warranty which for another company is crazy. You would just get the, we can't help you with how to install a 3rd party heatsink response from support.