Gaming laptop buying advice

[MarkYork]

Hello everyone,

 

I'd like to get all of your experience with gaming laptops to help to decide what to do here. Let me explain my situation. For the past year I've been struggling with Lenovo Premiere support to solve some problems I had with a new laptop I bought on November 2020. I originally bought an AMD based T14 Gen 1 laptop, which was fantastic for what it is, a lightweight enterprise laptop, with good battery life, excellent performance for a small package, decent display, good temperature and sound output, but it had some issues with the motherboard, so Lenovo came to my house a couple of times to replace different components, and after 6 replaced parts they offered me for a refund or to change my unit for something similar or better. They didn't have stock of for the T14 series at the moment, so they offered me a P15v, which is a more expensive laptop (or mobile workstation), has a beautiful looking 4K display HDR 400 compatible and a lot of other stuff, excellent keyboard and touchpad, but the processor (an Intel Xeon W-10855M 6c/12t) did not perform as well as the AMD Ryzen 7 4750U Pro for the things I do with the computer. Granted, the P15v has a Quadro P610 GPU and gaming performance is way better than the T14. But the P15v is a loud and hot machine, however it's a very comfortable and strongly built computer. So, I had some problems with this computer too, they had to replace the motherboard, display (a few times) and had to work the Lenovo's engineering team to fix some temp problems. Lenovo is offering me a refund again, they don't have units like this one to be replaced, so they ran our of options. I made a counter offer and told them I would be fine if they replaced this unit with a Legion 17 gen 6 with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, 16.0" WQXGA with all the features (500nits Anti reflex, 165Hz, 100% sRGB, Dolby Vision, HDR 400, Free-Sync, G-Sync, DC dimmer), RTX 3080 Max-Q, 32 GB of DDR3 3200, a 1 TB nvme disk. It is a nice computer, and the display has a 16:10 aspect ratio which is something I've been looking for. But I have no clue how the build quality would be compared to the P15v; I'm really tempted especially because of the GPU, but I want to have a computer that has excellent build quality, that's why I picked the ThinkPad series.

 

Sorry for the long text, I wanted to give you the context.

 

What do you think? Should I wait for a few months to see if they restock the ThinkPad workstation series? or just go all in with the Legion?

[Bombastinator]

34 minutes ago, MarkYork said:

Hello everyone,

 

I'd like to get all of your experience with gaming laptops to help to decide what to do here. Let me explain my situation. For the past year I've been struggling with Lenovo Premiere support to solve some problems I had with a new laptop I bought on November 2020. I originally bought an AMD based T14 Gen 1 laptop, which was fantastic for what it is, a lightweight enterprise laptop, with good battery life, excellent performance for a small package, decent display, good temperature and sound output, but it had some issues with the motherboard, so Lenovo came to my house a couple of times to replace different components, and after 6 replaced parts they offered me for a refund or to change my unit for something similar or better. They didn't have stock of for the T14 series at the moment, so they offered me a P15v, which is a more expensive laptop (or mobile workstation), has a beautiful looking 4K display HDR 400 compatible and a lot of other stuff, excellent keyboard and touchpad, but the processor (an Intel Xeon W-10855M 6c/12t) did not perform as well as the AMD Ryzen 7 4750U Pro for the things I do with the computer. Granted, the P15v has a Quadro P610 GPU and gaming performance is way better than the T14. But the P15v is a loud and hot machine, however it's a very comfortable and strongly built computer. So, I had some problems with this computer too, they had to replace the motherboard, display (a few times) and had to work the Lenovo's engineering team to fix some temp problems. Lenovo is offering me a refund again, they don't have units like this one to be replaced, so they ran our of options. I made a counter offer and told them I would be fine if they replaced this unit with a Legion 17 gen 6 with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX, 16.0" WQXGA with all the features (500nits Anti reflex, 165Hz, 100% sRGB, Dolby Vision, HDR 400, Free-Sync, G-Sync, DC dimmer), RTX 3080 Max-Q, 32 GB of DDR3 3200, a 1 TB nvme disk. It is a nice computer, and the display has a 16:10 aspect ratio which is something I've been looking for. But I have no clue how the build quality would be compared to the P15v; I'm really tempted especially because of the GPU, but I want to have a computer that has excellent build quality, that's why I picked the ThinkPad series.

 

Sorry for the long text, I wanted to give you the context.

 

What do you think? Should I wait for a few months to see if they restock the ThinkPad workstation series? or just go all in with the Legion?

Laptops are always a trade off between contents, size, build quality, and price.

Low priced laptops with good specs tend to be more fragile for example.  Things that could impact:

-Use case.  You want a gaming laptop, but is it actually just for gaming?  What kind of gaming?

-budget. One can always get more stuff for more money but there tend to be diminishing  returns as price increases (or at the low end decreases) 

-screen size/quality. Less or slower resolution, cheaper price.  Gaming laptops tend to be high refresh which is really needed for some kinds of games, but is near useless for anything else.  And there are costs for it.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Bombastinator

[MarkYork]

7 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Laptops are always a trade off between contents, size, build quality, and price.

Low priced laptops with good specs tend to be more fragile for example.  Things that could impact:

-Use case.  You want a gaming laptop, but is it actually just for gaming?  What kind of gaming?

-budget. One can always get more stuff for more money but there tend to be diminishing  returns as price increases (or at the low end decreases) 

-screen size/quality. Less or slower resolution, cheaper price.  Gaming laptops tend to be high refresh which is really needed for some kinds of games, but is near useless for anything else.  And there are costs for it.

Thanks for your reply.

 

What I want to know is how good the quality of the Legion laptop display is compared to a laptop that has a display oriented for color accuracy. I know the Legion does not have this type of display, but is it decent in terms of color accuracy or is it a mess?

 

The P15v display is a beautiful display. colors look very good, watching movies is great and pictures look awesome. If I'm doing the trade, I want to make sure I get something approximate to this display.

[Bombastinator]

Having trouble finding specs on the p15v panel.  All I can find is a statement saying that the p15v panel is a downgrade from the p15 no one I can find so far seems to be saying what panel it is exactly.  I did find data that it’s 15.6” 1080p  LED sidelight ips.  But not who makes it or the model, which is what I would need to compare itThing also isn’t cheap and is apparently still being sold. It’s 1,700$

 

im not finding a legion 17.  I did find a legion 71 which is a $2500 machine with wuxga so it’s going to have a lot more Rez and costs a lot more. Makes them hard to compare if it’s even the same machine.   Also not finding a refresh rate for either of them.  The p15v is a business machine though so I strongly suspect 60hz

[MarkYork]

On 1/14/2022 at 6:58 PM, Bombastinator said:

Having trouble finding specs on the p15v panel.  All I can find is a statement saying that the p15v panel is a downgrade from the p15 no one I can find so far seems to be saying what panel it is exactly.  I did find data that it’s 15.6” 1080p  LED sidelight ips.  But not who makes it or the model, which is what I would need to compare itThing also isn’t cheap and is apparently still being sold. It’s 1,700$

 

im not finding a legion 17.  I did find a legion 71 which is a $2500 machine with wuxga so it’s going to have a lot more Rez and costs a lot more. Makes them hard to compare if it’s even the same machine.   Also not finding a refresh rate for either of them.  The p15v is a business machine though so I strongly suspect 60hz

The P15v unit I have has a 4K display, here are the details:

 

15.6" UHD (3840x2160)
Dolby Vision
HDR 400
antireflex
600 nits

60Hz refresh rate
100% Adobe

(Additionally it comes precalibrated with different profiles like Adobe RGB, DCI-P3, sRGB, etc)

 

Here is a link with extra details: Lenovo ThinkPad P15v review – it’s all about the software and the amazing UHD display (laptopmedia.com

 

 

Here are the details for the Legion 7 6th edition that Lenovo is offering me in exchange:

 

16.0" WQXGA (2560x1600) IPS
500 nits
Anti Reflex
165Hz refresh rate
100% sRGB
Dolby Vision
HDR 400
Free-Sync
G-Sync
DC dimmer

 

Here is a link with extra details: Lenovo Legion 7 (16″, 2021) review – vapor chamber is the way to go (laptopmedia.com

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, MarkYork said:

The P15v unit I have has a 4K display, here are the details:

 

15.6" UHD (3840x2160)
Dolby Vision
HDR 400
antireflex
600 nits

60Hz refresh rate
100% Adobe

(Additionally it comes precalibrated with different profiles like Adobe RGB, DCI-P3, sRGB, etc)

 

Here is a link with extra details: Lenovo ThinkPad P15v review – it’s all about the software and the amazing UHD display (laptopmedia.com

 

 

Here are the details for the Legion 7 6th edition that Lenovo is offering me in exchange:

 

16.0" WQXGA (2560x1600) IPS
500 nits
Anti Reflex
165Hz refresh rate
100% sRGB
Dolby Vision
HDR 400
Free-Sync
G-Sync
DC dimmer

 

Here is a link with extra details: Lenovo Legion 7 (16″, 2021) review – vapor chamber is the way to go (laptopmedia.com

The one thing the old machine has that the new one doesn’t is hdr400. The problem is that feature is supposed to be near useless.  I’ve heard it said that there is very little point to any hdr below hdr 1000.  Note the new one has a hundred bits more brightness so it could have hdr 400, but they didn’t even bother.  Given the data I would say the new machine isn’t just better, it’s a lot better.

[MarkYork]

19 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The one thing the old machine has that the new one doesn’t is hdr400. The problem is that feature is supposed to be near useless.  I’ve heard it said that there is very little point to any hdr below hdr 1000.  Note the new one has a hundred bits more brightness so it could have hdr 400, but they didn’t even bother.  Given the data I would say the new machine isn’t just better, it’s a lot better.

Ok, so after thinking about this for a few days, I don't know why I doubted to accept the new deal. It is a better display on paper, and the reviewers have excellent opinions about color accuracy (though I'm not expecting it to be the most accurate display out there). The only thing I will miss about the ThinkPad is its keyboard, I believe this is the best laptop keyboard, it is so comfortable. The touchpad is excellent also, especially with the dedicated left, middle and right buttons. But  that's a tradeoff I'm willing to accept, I'll get my first gaming computer, I'm so happy.

 

Thanks a lot @Bombastinatorfor your opinions.

[MarkYork]

Ok, new update. I've got the Legion 7 6th gen and had the chance to compare it live with the ThinkPad P15v. I've got to say, 165Hz is insane, I don't think I'll be able to get back to anything lower than that in the future, and the 16:10 aspect ration is perfect for my workflow. However, the display quality of the ThinkPad (in terms of color accuracy and image definition) is a lot better than the one on the Legion. The keyboard on the Legion is ok, it has a good tactile feedback and it feel very good to the touch, but the ThinkPad keyboard has no comparison, I will miss it. Overall, the Legion 7 is a nice laptop and I'm getting incredible performance for its form factor. If Lenovo ever makes a ThinkPad workstation with an AMD CPU and an RTX GPU, I would take it without a doubt.