Laptops are more frequent in replacing desktop computers every and each day. And, why wouldn’t they? With all the portability, flexibility and mobility you’re allowed to perform your day-to-day actions without a problem. The more high end components and more technological, futuristic designs contribute to great time of using.
Are you looking forward to buying a new laptop that will serve as a badass machine in performing every command you give it? Are you looking for a gaming desktop replacement for enjoying with your favorite game releases? Then you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we’re going to talk about gaming laptops, necessarily their main use, how to find them, how to maintain them and general things you should consider when you’re up to buying one.
Gaming laptops are different on many aspects compared to the regular laptops. The first, more noticeable change is the dedicated memory graphics card utility that is the main factor to consider when equipping not just a laptop but a desktop computer as well. The laptops are equipped with a mobile graphics card with a letter M at the end and are significantly weaker than the desktop computers graphics card. However, that simply can’t stop you from pursuing your gaming dreams.
How To Buying A Gaming Laptops 2018
Please do keep reading this highly intriguing article and in case you’re pursuing a new gaming system, we hope that our guide will be fairly helpful to you and, will help you craft your decision when it comes to gaming. We included all things that you need to consider when you’re buying a new gaming laptop.
1. Guaranteed Mobility and Portability
The vast majority of laptops in general keep getting released in standard 15.6 inch screen release. These laptops weight regularly between 2kg and 3kg and are easy to place in travel bags and carry accordingly. These laptops mostly belong to the mid-ranged budget for gaming laptop, meaning that while it can run what today and tomorrow have to offer, their support will weaken over years and despite its great quality and durability they will start to wear off after 2 to 3 years. Even so, for students and people that work, the 15 inch laptop is the best option that they can find in the market.
As for the more serious gamers, there are options of 17 and 18 inches. However, being more professional and strict in the gaming branch, seeing such high expectations, significantly more expensive than the 15 inch opportunities, these laptops seem like a very legit reason. If you’re driving, rarely encountering the subway and other ways of public transports, traveling with this laptop to LAN parties and competitions sounds like a good idea. On the other side, these laptops can weight up to 3.5kg and cause a lot of pain when being transferred from one position to other.
But, what is that which makes these laptops much better option than the 15 inch laptop? Being so large, they allow the more room for thermal utilities that regulate the cooling system inside the laptop, also fans are quite larger and hence much more effective than the laptop that doesn’t have them. Also, laptops that are larger than 15 inches probably have the solid state drives that allow better transferring speeds inside the laptop and are much better withstanding the system than the SATA mechanical hard drives. Other than that, you will notice that these laptops are usually better looking, more sturdy and generally have better graphics card, most likely of the latest generation.
It may be a difficult task to find a suitable laptop bag for these large machines. But, considering that you won’t be carrying these buddies a lot across the house and environment you’re good to go. Please note that these large laptops are very expensive. Not just because of their large display diagonal but, also features that laptop has to offer such as large and responsive keyboard, vivid, strong display, advanced cooling system and components of the latest generation. Users of these laptops are not just the ones with large wallets but they most likely earn by streaming games and are real computer whizzes who don’t settle with anything less than the best.
2. Gaming Laptops are not for Low-End Games
That’s right.
The vast majority of the old generation games are easily being run with the integrated graphics card. There’s risk that upon the death of your integrated graphics card your whole laptop dies however, if you’re looking for entertainment in term of playing facebook games, World of Warcraft, Old Sims games and Minecraft, you’re good to go with the laptops that are under $500 therefore, laptops that utilize low-end graphics card or graphics card with the shared memory.
You can check out our in-depth list about gaming laptops under $500 where we’ve reviewed some great models.
When you’re buying a gaming laptop, you consider very expensive and demanding components that are far beyond the 2D facebook games. These components are capable of exploring and meeting the open world of MMOs and RPGs. They are designed to transmit the stories many games have to offer whether are they online or offline. Buying a laptop with such strong features is simply humiliation if you’re going to play low-end games, especially because the vast majority of gamers can only dream about a laptop so strong to run these games.
3. Graphics Card
This is very sensitive topic and this being said, we will try our best to explain the importance of graphics cards in the gaming industry. While the older games without a sweat boost through the integrated, Intel HD and AMD Radeon graphics cards the newer ones can only end up killing your laptop with the speed of light. Here we will mention some graphics card that define the quality level of gaming and possibilities in their range.
If you’re looking for a bit above than the low-end gaming here are the GTX 940 MX and GTX 950M 9-series of the NVidia’s GeForce graphics card. These are the cheapest dedicated graphics card that you can possibly find and run the games that came out in the previous games. The GTX 940 MX can run games that came out in the 2012, 2013 and eventually 2014 but will crumble before the high end games such as Far Cry, Witcher 3 and others. On the other side, the 950M can offer much better performance than its ancestor it can run Witcher 3 on Medium at around 30-35 frames per second. Although this is not the perfect benchmark it is still sufficient for the most of games enthusiasts. While there is no significant difference between the 950M and 960M except that the 960M successor is slightly better and smoother, there are very good laptops under $900 and $1000 that can run games. If you’re looking for a gaming laptop that will last around 2 years and despite your love for games you’re not too strict about the resolution and settings, this graphics card is the right one for you.
The mid-ranged laptops are much stronger than the graphics card we’ve mentioned. The 970M offers large variety of features and much more framerate for the newer releases. The 980M is the latest release of the 9 series of graphics card and the best graphics card in its range. It is able to run the vast majority of games that will come out in the following years. The 10-series Pascal Architecture based 1060M offers much higher and demanding performance than all the graphics card we’ve mentioned but still far weaker than the graphics cards we’re going to talk about.
If you’re looking towards spending a lot of money on a gaming laptop, the NVidia GeForce GTX 1070M and 1080M will make sure you don’t spare even a cent when purchasing a gaming laptop. Just like the GTX 1060, these graphics cards are capable of running Virtual Reality based games just on a much higher level than their ancestor. Aside from the Virtual Reality capability the 1080M offers enhanced textures, large view distance, smooth performance on 1080p and 4K. Buying a laptop with 1080M will make you go broke, but provide never seen before framerates that you could only dream about on a gaming laptop.
4. Display
Display is very important when it comes to gaming laptop. The latest Asus ROG models allow the users to share their screens up to 3 monitors but so do the MSI and HP Omen laptops. The display allows your graphics card to show its power and provide you with the clearest, sharpest and the most vivid textures possible on a gaming laptop. Whether it’s a mid-ranged or high-ranged graphics card it is all noticeable on 1080p or even 4K screen.
Important thing to consider when getting yourself a gaming laptop is the panel your screen is using. IPS panels ensure the high viewing angles and a finish matte texture that prevents the reflections or screen darkening from the certain angles. On the other side TN panels cannot take pride in good viewing angles or textures. They are mostly seen in cheaper versions of laptops while the IPS panel is mostly seen in laptops that cost more. Besides, what’s the point of the best gaming GPU when your screen can’t cope with its power?
There’s also an OLED panel that is featured in the latest Alienware gaming laptop and is soon enough we expect it to see it in other laptops as well. The OLED stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diode, organic compounds produce light when there’s electrical current. As a result of this high technology the thin panels convey better color and contrast and much more effective textures displayed to us.
5. CPU, RAM and Storage
Aside from the graphics card, this triangle supports better operations and tasks in the computer, smoother running of the operating system and much, much more.
The CPU is mostly Intel, as currently there’s not competitive AMD processor strong enough to surpass the Skylake processor. When picking the processor my best pick is Intel Core i7-6700HQ quad-core processor that handles multiply operations, contribute to a long and durable battery life and allow overcrowded online games to run without lags. There are newer releases to come in the 2018 but until then we’re sticking with our 6th generation favorites.
About RAM, anything between 8GB and 16GB is just as much as you need in both terms of medium and high settings. The vast majority of high demanding games require 8GB RAM to 12GB RAM on recommended settings and for now, there’s no need to spend a lot of money in order to reach the 32GB or the impossible 64GB of RAM. Perhaps in the future this will change but mostly, the RAM serves in backing up graphics card that runs slower than better releases.
About storage. As much as you can, never aim for the 5400rpm SATA drive. They are slow and will most likely drive you insane. They can make Windows start over several minutes and will in general affect your gaming experience straight to the negative happiness meter. Quite better replacement is a 7200rpm mechanical hard drive especially if it’s accompanied with the solid state drive that can pick on the Windows and some more data.
The best solutions are certainly the SSDs between 256GB and 512GB but with the price they are not going to be that popular yet. You can have the combination of a fast and smooth mechanical drive of 1TB and a 128 GB to 256 GB solid state drive and settle with that as long as your wallet is big enough.
Summary
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and so applies for the gaming laptops. It always depends how hardcore of a gamer you are, how much money and portability are you to risk in order to enjoy everything you’ve ever asked from a laptop dedicated to the gaming. Choosing a gaming laptop is a difficult task, especially on the internet but hopefully this guide has helped you make the right decision.
