15 inch gaming/business laptop recommendations, MSI GS65 stealth?

[ttoks]

Hey all, so my wife Is looking to purchase a laptop for gaming and business use, to try and make it simple I'll dot point it.

 

Our budget is $3'000 AUD, I think in terms of purchasing power that's roughly $2000-$2200 USD with currency conversion and out taxes added

 

1. She run's her own business and from time to time has meetings with clients and supplier's, so doesn't want it to look to "gamery"

2. With that said, it needs to be able to run games, something with a GTX 1660Ti/RTX2060 is sort of where we're looking in terms of gaming performance, we like to play some AAA titles together at home (I have a decent desktop, 6700k and 980Ti and we'd like squad up together in bf5, pubG, overwatch ect) and some lighter games while traveling for work like ANNO 1800 and cities skylines.

3. We often travel for work and want to use it for media consumption while on planes ect so good battery life (6ish hours on a dim screen watching movies would be enough) and the option for a 2.5inch HDD for bulk storage of media would be great if possible, but we can compromise on the storage and use an external hard drive for bulk storage.

4. and a decent panel is important, we'd rather a good 1080P with 120-144hz and good pixel response and viewing angles than a lower quality 1440P, and 4k is out as a 1660Ti or RTX2060 wont drive the games we play in 4K.

5. needs to be fairly light, under 2.5 kg at the absolute max, but under 2kg would be ideal.

 

Sh'e coming from a 2015 macbook pro which gave up the ghost and of course apple will only replace the logic board, so I've finally convinced her to go to a windows based machine with enough oomph that she can play the games she likes on the road as well.

 

So far we've come up with the MSI GS65 stealth 9SD that seems to tick almost all of our boxes except for the 2.5" hdd storage, and from what I've read it has an inverted MB which may make upgrading the NVME storage fairly difficult and risky later and it does look a little "gamery" but by far not the worst offender out there, but it's under 2kg, has the GTX1660Ti and an i7 9750H, 16GB ram, 512GB NVMe SSD, an 82 watt hour battery which isn't class leading but is pretty good and a 144Hz 1080P panel and is $400 under our budget.

 

Are there any other options out there that anyone can think of that might fit the bill, she would actually prefer something in the 13 inch range rather than 15 inch for portability, but it seems to be impossible to find anything with a decent discrete GPU in a 13 inch frame, thanks heaps in advance for taking the time to read through, I appreciate it.

[ttoks]

9 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

I would look into something like a gigabyte aero for high portability, 15/14” options and good performance with minimal aesthetic aggressiveness.

They look like average black boxes. 9 hours of battery life, high end spec options available, and they’re pretty OK thermally and acoustically for being a gaming thin and light.

2.5” drives are gonna be hard to find with small and light laptops, multiple nvme drives are much more common 

Yeah I've come to realise that it seems to be either battery capacity or a 2.5" bay and more weight, would much rather lighter with a bigger battery so seems she will be toting an external hard drive which isnt a big deal.

 

As for the Gigabyte Aero, I've found two models at my prefered retailer that are similar that fit the bill, the Gigabyte Aero15-X8 with an 8th gen 8750H and a GTX 1070 for $2899, or the Gigabyte Aero 15 with the 9th gen 9750H and a GTX 1660Ti for $2699, which would you think is the better deal? i dont think the newer CPU is a big deal but from what i understand the 1660 Ti and 1070 are pretty comparable right?

 

otherwise the specs are near identical to the MSI G65 stealth, but slightly heavier, a fair chunk better battery, and from the LTT review a worse keyboard, and it does look more professional.

[ttoks]

1 minute ago, Genwyn said:

The 1660ti option would be the better of the two, better power consumption with nearly identical performance.

 

alright excellent, thank you for your help! I think the Aero 15 with the 1660ti will be what we go with, cheers mate.

[ttoks]

1 hour ago, Genwyn said:

The 1660ti option would be the better of the two, better power consumption with nearly identical performance.

 

I just made my purchase,I ended up finding another well regarded retailer selling the gigabyte for $100 the GS65 from mwave.com.au, $2399 with free insured shipping seems like a great price to me! 

[ttoks]

Just now, Genwyn said:

Nice

theyre decent laptops from my experience handing them and from what others have said about them

a good balance of performance and looks with really nice display options 

I have to agree looking at it, it seems that overall the performance should be almost on par, or maybe a little better than my 3 year old desktop (980Ti and 6700k) which cost me $2800 AUD at the time, it's always astonishing how quickly performance increases in the tech industry, my wife will be very happy with it, and we wont have to share the desktop for gaming anymore which is a great bonus.