Looking into a laptop

[murph0981]

I was looking for a laptop that I could use while in Uni for my major (comp sci) and gaming on the side, came across this. It’s $800 on Amazon. I have heard Acer is hit or miss with their laptops, would this be a good purchase?

[TylerD321]

I always am wary about recommending a gaming laptop for college. Especially for anything except for engineering. Gaming laptops are heavy and I made the mistake of using a gaming laptop as a college student (Mechanical Engineering major with lots of cad/cam software). Having a big laptop along with textbooks will quite literally hurt your back to walk around campus.

[decrazy1]

thats a damn strong laptop cpu wise, but pretty weak gpu wise, stepping down to an i5 and up to a  3060 if possible should be much better, as for build quality its barely passable, but for your budget its good

[murph0981]

16 hours ago, TylerD321 said:

I always am wary about recommending a gaming laptop for college. Especially for anything except for engineering. Gaming laptops are heavy and I made the mistake of using a gaming laptop as a college student (Mechanical Engineering major with lots of cad/cam software). Having a big laptop along with textbooks will quite literally hurt your back to walk around campus.

From what I have seen, a majority of my textbooks at the Uni will be E-books, so I should be fair off in that department. That was my first fear too, more so because in my head gaming laptops are still big and bulky space heaters like 7 years ago.

[TylerD321]

3 hours ago, murph0981 said:

From what I have seen, a majority of my textbooks at the Uni will be E-books, so I should be fair off in that department. That was my first fear too, more so because in my head gaming laptops are still big and bulky space heaters like 7 years ago.

I had the Dell g16 with a 1060. This is the laptop I referred to as breaking my back. I replaced it with a lighter non gaming lenovo laptop. The newer laptop was quite literally lighter than just the charger of the g16. (Both the laptop and charger combined lighter). 
 

Even if you get a gaming laptop I do not recommend anything bigger than 13-15 inches ideally.