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Gaming laptop - $1k or less

FlharfhFlharfh Member UncommonPosts: 24
in Hardware
My ancient ASUS G75V is on its last legs and needs to be replaced. I haven't bought a computer in years and have no idea what the better options are in the current market. No crazy styling or RGB (unless it's easy to permanently disable) as I may occasionally need to use it in a professional setting for light office type work and don't want to look like I just came from a rave. I might spend a few hundred $ over 1k if it made a really meaningful difference in performance. Any thoughts?  - Thanks! 

Comments

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
    First of all, why do you need a gaming laptop?  What are you going to do with it?  Do you need to run it on the battery for long periods of time, or will it always be plugged in?  Are you going to use it at home, at work, take it with you when you travel, or more than one of the above?  What you should get depends tremendously on your use case.

    A cursory look found this, which is a good enough deal to be worth mentioning:

    https://www.newegg.com/bonfire-black-asus-tuf-gaming-a15-fa506iu-nb53/p/N82E16834235505

    It only comes with 8 GB of memory, but you can probably fix that yourself, and still within the stated budget.

    But whether that particular laptop (or any other, for that matter) makes sense for you depends on your use case.
  • TwistedSister77TwistedSister77 Member EpicPosts: 1,144
    edited August 2020
    For a gaming laptop, that's a bit tight.  Not the biggest fan of CNET, but here is a decent write up from Aug 2 on 1000 and less gaming laptops.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/best-cheap-gaming-laptop-under-1000-in-2020/
    Flharfh
  • FlharfhFlharfh Member UncommonPosts: 24
    Quizzical said:
    First of all, why do you need a gaming laptop?  What are you going to do with it?  Do you need to run it on the battery for long periods of time, or will it always be plugged in?  Are you going to use it at home, at work, take it with you when you travel, or more than one of the above?  What you should get depends tremendously on your use case.

    A cursory look found this, which is a good enough deal to be worth mentioning:

    https://www.newegg.com/bonfire-black-asus-tuf-gaming-a15-fa506iu-nb53/p/N82E16834235505

    It only comes with 8 GB of memory, but you can probably fix that yourself, and still within the stated budget.

    But whether that particular laptop (or any other, for that matter) makes sense for you depends on your use case.


    Thanks for the response. I have a desktop system at home so I'm looking for something to use a few days a month while travelling. It will almost always be used where it can be plugged in so a super long battery life is not a priority.

  • TwistedSister77TwistedSister77 Member EpicPosts: 1,144
    edited August 2020
    Cool, before you buy, PM us or post a link... just to make sure you're not overlooking anything critical. 
  • ZhenocnraZhenocnra Member UncommonPosts: 41
    edited August 2020
    What games are you planning on playing on the laptop? At that price point it might not make much of a difference at least with the current selection of laptops these days but I thought I'd ask since it's still a factor.

    Either way, the Asus ROG G14 for the extraordinary 7nm Ryzen and doable GTX 1650. Unless you're a diehard Intel fan and need Thunderbolt, this is an easy choice for anyone with a brain. There is a catch or two but I'll let Lisa from MobileTechReview detail those.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDcRmtA_syE

    BestBuy has it for $950. Better hurry if you want to keep it under $1,000 though. Honestly, I would spring for a RTX 2060 MAX-Q with 16GB of RAM and 1 TB SSD for $1,450 if it was my money though.

    https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-14-laptop-amd-ryzen-7-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1650-512gb-ssd-eclipse-gray/6403425.p?skuId=6403425

    8 GB of RAM is really small but I use a ton of Chrome tabs and love to multitask. 16 GM of RAM is bare minimum for me but that's me. 1 TB is fine for me but I don't play tons of games that need tons of storage space anyway.

    I would buy this ROG G14 if I was in the market at the very moment. Honestly, I'm waiting for more concrete details around USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 since I don't need a gaming laptop at this very moment.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
    Flharfh said:
    Quizzical said:
    First of all, why do you need a gaming laptop?  What are you going to do with it?  Do you need to run it on the battery for long periods of time, or will it always be plugged in?  Are you going to use it at home, at work, take it with you when you travel, or more than one of the above?  What you should get depends tremendously on your use case.

    A cursory look found this, which is a good enough deal to be worth mentioning:

    https://www.newegg.com/bonfire-black-asus-tuf-gaming-a15-fa506iu-nb53/p/N82E16834235505

    It only comes with 8 GB of memory, but you can probably fix that yourself, and still within the stated budget.

    But whether that particular laptop (or any other, for that matter) makes sense for you depends on your use case.


    Thanks for the response. I have a desktop system at home so I'm looking for something to use a few days a month while travelling. It will almost always be used where it can be plugged in so a super long battery life is not a priority.

    In that case, on your stated budget, I don't think you're going to do better than the one I linked.  We'll see if anyone else has a better idea.  For those who don't want to follow the link, the specs are:

    Ryzen 5 4600H
    GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
    512 GB PCI-E over NVMe SSD
    144 Hz, 15.6" IPS monitor
    8 GB 3200 MHz DDR4

    That 8 GB sticks out as a potential problem, but the laptop says it has two memory slots and supports up to 32 GB.  You can surely upgrade the memory yourself and while staying well within the stated budget.  The rest of the specs are about as good as you're going to find on that budget.

    For comparison, in TwistedSister's link, three of the four recommended laptops have a much slower GeForce GTX 1650, and the fourth is listed by the site as unavailable so Dell won't tell you what it has.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
    Zhenocnra said:
    What games are you planning on playing on the laptop? At that price point it might not make much of a difference at least with the current selection of laptops these days but I thought I'd ask since it's still a factor.

    Either way, the Asus ROG G14 for the extraordinary 7nm Ryzen and doable GTX 1650. Unless you're a diehard Intel fan and need Thunderbolt, this is an easy choice for anyone with a brain. There is a catch or two but I'll let Lisa from MobileTechReview detail those.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDcRmtA_syE

    BestBuy has it for $950. Better hurry if you want to keep it under $1,000 though. Honestly, I would spring for a RTX 2060 with 16GB of RAM and 512 SSD for $1,450 if it was my money.

    https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-14-laptop-amd-ryzen-7-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1650-512gb-ssd-eclipse-gray/6403425.p?skuId=6403425

    8 GB of RAM is really small but I use a ton of Chrome tabs and love to multitask. 16 GM of RAM is bare minimum for me but that's me. 1 TB is fine for me but I don't play tons of games that need tons of storage space anyway.

    I would buy this ROG G14 if I was in the market at the very moment. Honestly, I'm waiting for more concrete details around USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 since I don't need a gaming laptop at this very moment.
    The only reason I see to get that laptop over the one I linked is if you highly value it being smaller and lighter so that you can carry it around more easily.  Yours costs more for a much slower video card.  It also doesn't say the monitor technology anywhere, whether on Best Buy's site or on Asus's, so it probably has a markedly inferior monitor.
  • ZhenocnraZhenocnra Member UncommonPosts: 41
    Quizzical said:
    Zhenocnra said:
    What games are you planning on playing on the laptop? At that price point it might not make much of a difference at least with the current selection of laptops these days but I thought I'd ask since it's still a factor.

    Either way, the Asus ROG G14 for the extraordinary 7nm Ryzen and doable GTX 1650. Unless you're a diehard Intel fan and need Thunderbolt, this is an easy choice for anyone with a brain. There is a catch or two but I'll let Lisa from MobileTechReview detail those.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDcRmtA_syE

    BestBuy has it for $950. Better hurry if you want to keep it under $1,000 though. Honestly, I would spring for a RTX 2060 with 16GB of RAM and 512 SSD for $1,450 if it was my money.

    https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-14-laptop-amd-ryzen-7-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1650-512gb-ssd-eclipse-gray/6403425.p?skuId=6403425

    8 GB of RAM is really small but I use a ton of Chrome tabs and love to multitask. 16 GM of RAM is bare minimum for me but that's me. 1 TB is fine for me but I don't play tons of games that need tons of storage space anyway.

    I would buy this ROG G14 if I was in the market at the very moment. Honestly, I'm waiting for more concrete details around USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 since I don't need a gaming laptop at this very moment.
    The only reason I see to get that laptop over the one I linked is if you highly value it being smaller and lighter so that you can carry it around more easily.  Yours costs more for a much slower video card.  It also doesn't say the monitor technology anywhere, whether on Best Buy's site or on Asus's, so it probably has a markedly inferior monitor.
    Uh, it costs more because the G14 is using Ryzen 7 where as yours is using the Ryzen 5 but feel free to not read the specs or watch the video. I couldn't care less.
  • TwistedSister77TwistedSister77 Member EpicPosts: 1,144
    edited August 2020
    OP, if you want to get more opinions too.  I highly recommend Tom's Hardware forums.  That's where I learned to build PCs and ask questions about computers.
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,499
    Zhenocnra said:
    Quizzical said:
    Zhenocnra said:
    What games are you planning on playing on the laptop? At that price point it might not make much of a difference at least with the current selection of laptops these days but I thought I'd ask since it's still a factor.

    Either way, the Asus ROG G14 for the extraordinary 7nm Ryzen and doable GTX 1650. Unless you're a diehard Intel fan and need Thunderbolt, this is an easy choice for anyone with a brain. There is a catch or two but I'll let Lisa from MobileTechReview detail those.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDcRmtA_syE

    BestBuy has it for $950. Better hurry if you want to keep it under $1,000 though. Honestly, I would spring for a RTX 2060 with 16GB of RAM and 512 SSD for $1,450 if it was my money.

    https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-rog-zephyrus-g14-14-laptop-amd-ryzen-7-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1650-512gb-ssd-eclipse-gray/6403425.p?skuId=6403425

    8 GB of RAM is really small but I use a ton of Chrome tabs and love to multitask. 16 GM of RAM is bare minimum for me but that's me. 1 TB is fine for me but I don't play tons of games that need tons of storage space anyway.

    I would buy this ROG G14 if I was in the market at the very moment. Honestly, I'm waiting for more concrete details around USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 since I don't need a gaming laptop at this very moment.
    The only reason I see to get that laptop over the one I linked is if you highly value it being smaller and lighter so that you can carry it around more easily.  Yours costs more for a much slower video card.  It also doesn't say the monitor technology anywhere, whether on Best Buy's site or on Asus's, so it probably has a markedly inferior monitor.
    Uh, it costs more because the G14 is using Ryzen 7 where as yours is using the Ryzen 5 but feel free to not read the specs or watch the video. I couldn't care less.
    And you think that having 8 CPU cores instead of 6 justifies paying more for a much slower video card and likely an inferior monitor?
  • TwistedSister77TwistedSister77 Member EpicPosts: 1,144
    Quizzical said:

    For comparison, in TwistedSister's link, three of the four recommended laptops have a much slower GeForce GTX 1650, and the fourth is listed by the site as unavailable so Dell won't tell you what it has.
    Yeah, I wasn't necessarily recommending those over your suggestion.  Just giving him a very recent write up on the topic.  I dont hardcore laptop game, I use my self built deskop rig for that.

    I would definitely suggest the OP look at the GPU benchmarks, (Tom's Hardware should have them) and CPU benchmarks.  

    At a 1k budget, they'll need to be some tradeoffs.  But I'd prefer to have a few less cores on my CPU and a better GPU any day.  If I were a video editor and not gamer, obviously different.  Ram for desktop is cheap, not sure about mobile, but you can grow into it.
  • FlharfhFlharfh Member UncommonPosts: 24


    is slightly over budget, but the 16gb of memory and 1tb SSD make it significantly more attractive to me. The SDD space especially as some games are running 150+ gb these days.

    Of course it is back ordered with no estimate as to when it might be available. Thanks everyone for the suggestions so far.
    Asm0deus
  • AmatheAmathe Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
    Rather than come in at the budget end of the spectrum, have you considered a console?
    Ridelynn

    EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests

  • FlharfhFlharfh Member UncommonPosts: 24
    Amathe said:
    Rather than come in at the budget end of the spectrum, have you considered a console?
    Thanks for the response. I already have a PS4 and desktop rig, I need a laptop for traveling.

    For those who are interested, this is what I ended up buying: 

    https://www.newegg.com/black-pavilion-hp-16-gaming-entertainment/p/2WC-0001-01C47?Item=9SIA6V6BN17749&nm_mc=TEMC-RMA-Approvel&cm_mmc=TEMC-RMA-Approvel-_-Content-_-text-_-

    I did stretch my budget a bit, but it seemed like a good balance of price and performance, especially storage space, which from what I saw is sorely lacking on a lot of laptops. I want to thank everyone who responded to this thread with advice and suggestions. 
    Amathe
  • WizardryWizardry Member LegendaryPosts: 19,332
    That is a pretty good laptop,you bought that in American dollars?

    I was skeptical on this I5 being 4.5 so i had to check for myself.

    So it is Intel turbo boost,no way is 2.5 good enough so for gaming this will be always on turbo and eating up your battery.
    I don't use my laptop for travel i just use it to move around connecting to my big screen or to another room for whatever reason.Point is i don't rely on my battery hardly ever.

    I also am not tech saavy enough to know what kind of overall performance will happen when in turbo mode only testing could determine that and not benchmark but actual testing on games you actually play.

    A game i play now ATLAS is the biggest hog game i have ever played,i need a 3k+ machine to play it on max,which i don't have.

    Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.

  • VarrborVarrbor Newbie CommonPosts: 12
    Hey,

    hopefully I can offers some help as well. I would really recommend checking out this website. It offers some insight into gaming laptops but also has a few recommendations of its own. I found them very helpful to make a decision and am very happy with it.

    Best regards!
  • VarrborVarrbor Newbie CommonPosts: 12
    Hey,

    hopefully I can also give you some input! It would not be a bad idea to check out this website with some really cool recommendations for a good gaming laptop but also still in a range that it is affordable.

    Best regards!


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