Medium-High End Gaming Laptops

[logmein3546]

I made a similar post about 6 months ago when I was trying to decide on a laptop then. In the end, I ended up buying a Sager NP8153 (basically an NP8157 but with a Sky Lake CPU before Kaby Lake came out). For the most part I liked it. The screen had a nice matte finish, the keyboard felt great, the hinge felt really solid, and it performed extremely well for the price. It did have some problems though, such as the annoyingly placed ethernet port on the center of the right side, the fact that the fans always seemed audible, the lack of TB3, and the very mediocre speakers compared to my Lenovo Y700 (which was half the price). Before my 30 day guarantee was up one of the USB ports had collapsed so I returned it and decided to wait a little longer to see what else hit the market.

 

Now I'm back to looking around again and there are definitely more options. At this point, I've made a spreadsheet with my preferences vs laptop specs, asked friends, and bored family members trying to figure out what to get but I can't decide. I plan to use this laptop as both my work and personal computer, meaning that I will be spending >12 hours a day with it so I'd really like to make sure I get one that I won't regret for the next 2-3 years.

 

Things that matter to me:

• Good CPU: The laptop will mostly be used for compiling code and running VMs for my job and hobby as a software developer, so this is really important to me. I will be getting 32GB of RAM to go with it.
• Good GPU: I have been dabbling in machine learning and would like to see what I can do with it. I don't play many games (mostly esports-y games ATM) but I'd like to be able to run them at near maximum settings at 60fps.
• NVMe SSD support: My job specifically is in filesystem development at a backup company. I kind of wanted to see what I could do with RAID0 Samsung 960 Pro SSDs, but I know this is probably unnecessary at best. I understand the law of diminishing returns here.
• > FHD display with wide viewing angles: I can see the difference between FHD and 4k (although I know many say they cannot), and I use the additional real estate for cramming more lines of code onto the screen at once. I've been using 4k screens for 3 years now and I think it would be hard for me to go back to FHD.
• 4k 60fps external monitor support: I know this is kind of a given at this point, but my current Lenovo Y700 doesn't have this and it really sucks trying to use it with my 4k TV and my 4k external monitors. Ideally, I'd like to be able to run 2 of these at once.
• Good speakers: I use my laptop in bed watching Youtube videos, playing music, etc, and was very disappointed with the speakers on the Sager NP8153. I don't expect 5.1 surround sound or anything from a laptop but I guess the speakers on my current laptop kind of spoiled me here.
• Good chiclet keyboard with numpad and full-size arrow keys: I have a very hard time typing on other people's keyboards. I liked the keyboard on the MSI laptops I've tried at Best Buy and the Sager NP8153. I strongly considered an Alienware 15 until I tried the keyboard. RGB lighting doesn't really matter to me, realistically just want to be able to set it to red at the dimmest brightness for use in the dark.
• Good thermal / noise performance: When I got my Sager NP8153, I was disappointed when I found that the fans were audible even when just doing some web browsing. I would also appreciate not getting noise complaints from coworkers in the next cubical when I'm running a compile job with headphones on.
• Bulky IO on the left / back side: My current laptop has HDMI, ethernet, and USB ports all along the right side and it is very annoying to use a mouse when everything is plugged in.
• Build quality: I will be taking this to work and home every day, as well as longer trips so it needs to be able to last.

Things that are less important to me:

• Weight: I will take this laptop everywhere, but I always carry a backpack with me. I won't notice a few pounds of difference.
• Battery life: as long as it gets more than 1.5 hours I don't care too much. I'm almost always plugged in.
• Aesthetics: Ideally, I'd like something that looks very plain. I don't really want the gaming laptop look, but I'm willing to compromise here.

 

With that in mind, I've basically narrowed it down to the following options:

• Aorus x5 v7: On paper this one has all of the features I want and even a bunch of things I don't care about. However, I've heard complaints about noise levels and temperatures. This video in particular is also very concerning. That said, I have also heard that this can be alleviated a good bit by dialing back the factory overclock, but I don't know how true this is. I would love to hear from someone who owns this laptop (or any of its cousins). I said before that I don't care too much about aesthetics, but I will come out and say it right now; the Aorus logo is really stupid looking and I don't know why they plastered in bright orange on the trackpad. In general, all of the reviews I have seen of this laptop are "love it or hate it".
• Gigabyte Aero 15: This one doesn't have great speakers (which isn't surprising considering its size), and I'm a little worried about the keyboard feeling a bit cramped. Also, the UHD model isn't out yet but I can wait a little while longer if its worth it. On the plus side though, it has a much better battery life, a less gamer-y feel, and the brighter, thin-bezel display seems very elegant. On paper, this seems objectively worse than the Aorus with the weaker CPU and GPU, but reviewers just seem to like it a lot better. Both of the M.2 slots here are PCIe, but I don't see anywhere that says they can be RAID'ed...
• MSI GE62MVR: This one is interesting mostly because I can't seem to find much info on it. I have found 1 review on Youtube and nobody seems to carry a UHD SKU despite the fact that MSI advertises it as an option on their website. My first impression was that it seems "correctly" sized for the components inside and could probably cool them fairly efficiently. I tried other MSIs in stores and admired their general build quality, keyboards, and speakers (on the non Stealth models). Perhaps this one might be worth waiting for as well.
• Sager NP8157: This one is currently my "safety pick". I liked it while I had it, although the USB port collapsing in < 30 days scares me a bit and I wasn't thrilled with the idle noise it made and the speakers, but otherwise it really wasn't bad. It also is definitely the best value per dollar by a pretty good margin.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with any of these (or other similar laptops) or could give me some advice on which one to choose. When I started out on this search my goal was simple: My Y700 is nice, but it has a bunch of really weird quirks (4k 60 fps display with no 4k 60 fps external output, awkward paring of a 4k screen with a GTX960M, all bulky ports on the right where the mouse is, a creeky hinge, keyboard sometimes double-presses keys, a bunch of software glitches that required hard resets to fix, etc). I would pay twice as much money for the same laptop without these issues. However, it seems that when you go to spend more money you don't necessarily end up with a flawless machine; you just get more stuff. It also really doesn't help that I can't try any of these out in a store somewhere....

 

Any advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot.

[genexis_x]

P775DM3?

[Xaring]

Why not an Eurocom Sky MX5R3 (Clevo P651HS-G)? A reputable seller from notebookreview has just opened this store (@woodzstacks).

 

(Basically same as the sager)

 

 

[logmein3546]

2 minutes ago, ZM Fong said:

P775DM3

I looked at that one and the 15 inch model. I had it on my list originally until I heard that they keyboard kind of sucks and when I realized just how thick it was. I do need it to fit in my (pretty big) backpack, and I'm not sure that this will. The non-mobile CPU also is probably overkill for me and with the rest of the specs I wanted its getting a bit expensive (2,814.00 USD from Sager right now). The most expensive alternative is the Aorus at 2675 USD, which was previously pushing what I felt comfortable spending with diminishing returns as they are. I had hoped that they would have come up with a updated model in the last 6 months but it doesn't look like they did.

 

Thanks for the suggestion though.

[logmein3546]

9 minutes ago, Xaring said:

Why not an Eurocom Sky MX5R3 (Clevo P651HS-G)?

Yeah the Sager / Eurocom is pretty good. I'm not sure why the price on the store you mentioned is a few hundred dollars more than it is on Sager's website. That aside, I'm definitely still considering it. It has the best value-for-dollar by a good margin. When I had the NP8153 though I was not a fan of the mediocre speakers, constant fan utilization (even on quiet modes), and the fact that one of the USB ports collapsed on me within the first 30 days. I actually spent a good deal of time trying to see if I could mod in some better speakers but couldn't figure out a good way to do it. I might be convinced that the USB collapsing was a fluke, but to me that didn't scream "this will last for 2-3 years of being carried around"

[logmein3546]

It would probably also be a good idea to mention, I'm buying in the US.

[Xaring]

Just now, logmein3546 said:

Yeah the Sager / Eurocom is pretty good. I'm not sure why the price on the store you mentioned is a few hundred dollars more than it is on Sager's website. That aside, I'm definitely still considering it. It has the best value-for-dollar by a good margin. When I had the NP8153 though I was not a fan of the mediocre speakers, constant fan utilization (even on quiet modes), and the fact that one of the USB ports collapsed on me within the first 30 days. I actually spent a good deal of time trying to see if I could mod in some better speakers but couldn't figure out a good way to do it. I might be convinced that the USB collapsing was a fluke, but to me that didn't scream "this will last for 2-3 years of being carried around"

I preconfigured it for you with 32Gb and a 4K display on it, that's why it was more expensive I think

My friend has been carrying it around to uni for the last 6 or 9 months and he's had 0 issues. Can't talk about fan noise Im afraid. I haven't payed attention.

[sicily428]

58 minutes ago, logmein3546 said:

I made a similar post about 6 months ago when I was trying to decide on a laptop then. In the end, I ended up buying a Sager NP8153 (basically an NP8157 but with a Sky Lake CPU before Kaby Lake came out). For the most part I liked it. The screen had a nice matte finish, the keyboard felt great, the hinge felt really solid, and it performed extremely well for the price. It did have some problems though, such as the annoyingly placed ethernet port on the center of the right side, the fact that the fans always seemed audible, the lack of TB3, and the very mediocre speakers compared to my Lenovo Y700 (which was half the price). Before my 30 day guarantee was up one of the USB ports had collapsed so I returned it and decided to wait a little longer to see what else hit the market.

 

Now I'm back to looking around again and there are definitely more options. At this point, I've made a spreadsheet with my preferences vs laptop specs, asked friends, and bored family members trying to figure out what to get but I can't decide. I plan to use this laptop as both my work and personal computer, meaning that I will be spending >12 hours a day with it so I'd really like to make sure I get one that I won't regret for the next 2-3 years.

 

Things that matter to me:

• Good CPU: The laptop will mostly be used for compiling code and running VMs for my job and hobby as a software developer, so this is really important to me. I will be getting 32GB of RAM to go with it.
• Good GPU: I have been dabbling in machine learning and would like to see what I can do with it. I don't play many games (mostly esports-y games ATM) but I'd like to be able to run them at near maximum settings at 60fps.
• NVMe SSD support: My job specifically is in filesystem development at a backup company. I kind of wanted to see what I could do with RAID0 Samsung 960 Pro SSDs, but I know this is probably unnecessary at best. I understand the law of diminishing returns here.
• > FHD display with wide viewing angles: I can see the difference between FHD and 4k (although I know many say they cannot), and I use the additional real estate for cramming more lines of code onto the screen at once. I've been using 4k screens for 3 years now and I think it would be hard for me to go back to FHD.
• 4k 60fps external monitor support: I know this is kind of a given at this point, but my current Lenovo Y700 doesn't have this and it really sucks trying to use it with my 4k TV and my 4k external monitors. Ideally, I'd like to be able to run 2 of these at once.
• Good speakers: I use my laptop in bed watching Youtube videos, playing music, etc, and was very disappointed with the speakers on the Sager NP8153. I don't expect 5.1 surround sound or anything from a laptop but I guess the speakers on my current laptop kind of spoiled me here.
• Good chiclet keyboard with numpad and full-size arrow keys: I have a very hard time typing on other people's keyboards. I liked the keyboard on the MSI laptops I've tried at Best Buy and the Sager NP8153. I strongly considered an Alienware 15 until I tried the keyboard. RGB lighting doesn't really matter to me, realistically just want to be able to set it to red at the dimmest brightness for use in the dark.
• Good thermal / noise performance: When I got my Sager NP8153, I was disappointed when I found that the fans were audible even when just doing some web browsing. I would also appreciate not getting noise complaints from coworkers in the next cubical when I'm running a compile job with headphones on.
• Bulky IO on the left / back side: My current laptop has HDMI, ethernet, and USB ports all along the right side and it is very annoying to use a mouse when everything is plugged in.
• Build quality: I will be taking this to work and home every day, as well as longer trips so it needs to be able to last.

Things that are less important to me:

• Weight: I will take this laptop everywhere, but I always carry a backpack with me. I won't notice a few pounds of difference.
• Battery life: as long as it gets more than 1.5 hours I don't care too much. I'm almost always plugged in.
• Aesthetics: Ideally, I'd like something that looks very plain. I don't really want the gaming laptop look, but I'm willing to compromise here.

 

With that in mind, I've basically narrowed it down to the following options:

• Aorus x5 v7: On paper this one has all of the features I want and even a bunch of things I don't care about. However, I've heard complaints about noise levels and temperatures. This video in particular is also very concerning. That said, I have also heard that this can be alleviated a good bit by dialing back the factory overclock, but I don't know how true this is. I would love to hear from someone who owns this laptop (or any of its cousins). I said before that I don't care too much about aesthetics, but I will come out and say it right now; the Aorus logo is really stupid looking and I don't know why they plastered in bright orange on the trackpad. In general, all of the reviews I have seen of this laptop are "love it or hate it".
• Gigabyte Aero 15: This one doesn't have great speakers (which isn't surprising considering its size), and I'm a little worried about the keyboard feeling a bit cramped. Also, the UHD model isn't out yet but I can wait a little while longer if its worth it. On the plus side though, it has a much better battery life, a less gamer-y feel, and the brighter, thin-bezel display seems very elegant. On paper, this seems objectively worse than the Aorus with the weaker CPU and GPU, but reviewers just seem to like it a lot better. Both of the M.2 slots here are PCIe, but I don't see anywhere that says they can be RAID'ed...
• MSI GE62MVR: This one is interesting mostly because I can't seem to find much info on it. I have found 1 review on Youtube and nobody seems to carry a UHD SKU despite the fact that MSI advertises it as an option on their website. My first impression was that it seems "correctly" sized for the components inside and could probably cool them fairly efficiently. I tried other MSIs in stores and admired their general build quality, keyboards, and speakers (on the non Stealth models). Perhaps this one might be worth waiting for as well.
• Sager NP8157: This one is currently my "safety pick". I liked it while I had it, although the USB port collapsing in < 30 days scares me a bit and I wasn't thrilled with the idle noise it made and the speakers, but otherwise it really wasn't bad. It also is definitely the best value per dollar by a pretty good margin.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with any of these (or other similar laptops) or could give me some advice on which one to choose. When I started out on this search my goal was simple: My Y700 is nice, but it has a bunch of really weird quirks (4k 60 fps display with no 4k 60 fps external output, awkward paring of a 4k screen with a GTX960M, all bulky ports on the right where the mouse is, a creeky hinge, keyboard sometimes double-presses keys, a bunch of software glitches that required hard resets to fix, etc). I would pay twice as much money for the same laptop without these issues. However, it seems that when you go to spend more money you don't necessarily end up with a flawless machine; you just get more stuff. It also really doesn't help that I can't try any of these out in a store somewhere....

 

Any advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot.

MSI GT62VR 7RE

MSI 16L13