Laptops, gaming or not?

[IntentionalFaceplant]

Hello good folks!

 

I am face to face with a conundrum, I am in the market of a laptop that can handle the following:

 

Light photoshop (or lightroom)

Light gaming (no max settings on witcher 3 for example.)

3D work in autodesk Maya or in the likes.

 

I am however more interested in what personal experiences you people have and where your preferences lie when it comes to laptops.

The price in this case is irrelevant as I wonder, what is it about "regular laptops" and what makes them stand out from their "gaming" cousins. From all I've seen so far gaming laptops often comes with more impressive specs at the equivalent price to the "regular" ones.

 

What is it that makes them equal?

 

Are gaming laptops made from shoddy material that break easily?

Are they heavy and clunky, hence the price?

Perhaps the regular laptops have a more efficient cooling solution?

Or maybe gaming laptops have come so far nowadays that they are competing with their no-"ROGBLADERGB" counterparts?

 

I am curious as I can't seem to find any answers when looking at the specs alone, which leaves me in the dark.

Also, are ASUS any good nowadays? (I've been warned)

 

Thank you!

Regards /Face

 

(Also if you have any advice on a laptop for roughly 1000usd, 14000sek, I would be thankful.)

[Bananasplit_00]

prefrence in laptops for me would be anything bellow 14" in screen size, preferably either 10.1" or 13", with something like a 1050 or gt 1030 and an acceptable CPU. big laptops are barely portable and gameing laptops make no sense to me when you could instead have a thing and light or whatever and a desktop that plays games and so on

[Princess Luna]

Laptops are bad for gaming, period.

 

I personally don't get it the whole "mobility" point, when I'm not home it means I'm out either working or at the college, places that makes no sense to "game"... when I'm home I can comfortably game on my bedroom...

 

Any ways I hate the red but this seems to fit your 1000$ budget nicely:

 

https://us-store.acer.com/nitro-5-laptop-an515-51-79dz

[genexis_x]

24 minutes ago, IntentionalFaceplant said:

Are gaming laptops made from shoddy material that break easily?

Are they heavy and clunky, hence the price?

Perhaps the regular laptops have a more efficient cooling solution?

Or maybe gaming laptops have come so far nowadays that they are competing with their no-"ROGBLADERGB" counterparts?

 

I am curious as I can't seem to find any answers when looking at the specs alone, which leaves me in the dark.

Also, are ASUS any good nowadays? (I've been warned)

Gaming laptops are usually made of plastic (there are 2 types, good and mediocre plastic)(some with a bit aluminum/magnesium) so quality wise, premium regular laptops with full metal construction are better

 

Yes, gaming laptops are usually heavier than the regular ones (thin gaming laptops run hot) as they need more space for the cooling system (more heatpipes, fans etc)

 

Cooling system in regular laptops is only sufficient for everyday use, if you try to stress them then throttling may occur (reach temp limit), however some gaming laptops can run hot too due to bad cooling, too much heat production from GPU etc

 

Gaming laptops are usually flashy (red, RGB)

 

If you're talking about Asus laptops, I can only recommend Vivobooks (poor battery life, keep that in mind) and Zenbooks for you. The mainstream line suffers from poor reliability (from what I heard) while the ROG line suffers from bad design (loud fan, bad cooling, mediocre build quality etc)

 

Edit: If you don't game often, something with 8250U/8550U and MX150 will be powerful enough for everyday use. If you want more power, you may consider consumer laptops with HQ CPUs and GTX graphics (no gaming look) like Dell XPS 15, Asus Vivobook Pro and Lenovo Yoga 720. Though you may want to do some tweaking to make it run cool under load (undervolting for instance)

Edited October 16, 2017 by ZM Fong

[IntentionalFaceplant]

That is one ugly laptop, but thank you!

 

Also I'd like to clarify, I am sitting comfortably on a nice new built PC in my apartment properly geared for all my gaming needs.

In this case, the laptop will be for my university courses along with the occasional time I play an old game or two.

 

So this is by no means -the gaming- machine I will use, far from it.

Thanks for the input so far, though!

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Laptops are bad for gaming, period.

That's simply not true. Most ultrabooks are shit, gaming included, but looking at products from Alienware/Dell, MSI, Acer, ASUS, XMG, Gigabyte, AORUS, etc. They all provide laptops that are great for gaming.

Hell, a MacBook Pro with the Radeon Pro 555 is pretty good at gaming.

[Princess Luna]

Just now, Drak3 said:

.

Alright let me rephrase myself, Desktop gaming will always outcome laptop gaming, even more if "mobility" is not an appeal like it isn't in my case.

[Drak3]

Just now, Princess Cadence said:

Alright let me rephrase myself, Desktop gaming will always outcome laptop gaming, even more if "mobility" is not an appeal like it isn't in my case.

That's not rephrasing, that's changing your stance outright.

[Princess Luna]

Just now, Drak3 said:

That's not rephrasing, that's changing your stance outright.

No, personally to me they still suck for gaming, I just allowed more broad reading for people like you don't feel their tails step on.

[IntentionalFaceplant]

Alright folks, this is not the place for that.

 

Kindly stick to the topic.

[genexis_x]

11 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

but looking at products from Alienware/Dell, MSI, Acer, ASUS, XMG, Gigabyte, AORUS, etc. They all provide laptops that are great for gaming.

Not all of them are good (not performance but quality wise)

 

Just keep in mind that every brand has good and bad products

 

Oh yes, I just noticed that you missed out Lenovo. Their new Legion lineups are better than the previous Ideapad Y series. Y520 and Y720 both are good (not best) laptops for money, however Y920 isn't.

[Thermosman]

Get a refurbished MSI GP62VRX or a refurbished GE62VR from ebay

https://www.ebay.com/i/272885396442?chn=ps&dispItem=1&ul_ref=http%3A%2F%2Frover.ebay.com%2Frover%2F1%2F711-117182-37290-0%2F2%3Fmpre%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ebay.com%252Fi%252F272885396442%253Fchn%253Dps%2526dispItem%253D1%26itemid%3D272885396442%26targetid%3D365060243461%26device%3Dm%26adtype%3Dpla%26googleloc%3D9001782%26poi%3D%26campaignid%3D936468374%26adgroupid%3D46132792949%26rlsatarget%3Dpla-365060243461%26abcId%3D1129676%26merchantid%3D8258354%26gclid%3DCj0KCQjwsZHPBRClARIsAC-VMPCHPHbqj2vjndSV9fn1vk3DPEbrvbyihas0bDjPaZFsA4GV9VsohsQaAkstEALw_wcB%26srcrot%3D711-117182-37290-0%26rvr_id%3D1337406941339

Or

https://www.ebay.com/i/222668363003?chn=ps&dispItem=1&ul_ref=http%3A%2F%2Frover.ebay.com%2Frover%2F1%2F711-117182-37290-0%2F2%3Fmpre%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ebay.com%252Fi%252F222668363003%253Fchn%253Dps%2526dispItem%253D1%26itemid%3D222668363003%26targetid%3D335659946822%26device%3Dm%26adtype%3Dpla%26googleloc%3D9001782%26poi%3D%26campaignid%3D884207728%26adgroupid%3D44025483563%26rlsatarget%3Dpla-335659946822%26abcId%3D1128996%26merchantid%3D114707945%26gclid%3DCj0KCQjwsZHPBRClARIsAC-VMPBFUnb-WMePqsVj3aeDVN9U0mpJtD-KDWbenIWU8eNHpVwqRkKSEaIaAtY8EALw_wcB%26srcrot%3D711-117182-37290-0%26rvr_id%3D1337434726866

[genexis_x]

Just now, Thermosman said:

Get a refurbished MSI GP62VRX or a refurbished GE62VR from ebay

GP and old GE series...mediocre quality

No for me.

[Thermosman]

Just now, ZM Fong said:

GP and old GE series...mediocre quality

No for me.

It are good laptopa

[genexis_x]

Just now, Thermosman said:

It are good laptopa

Cooling almost reach it's limits even though there are many heatpipes (throttle), chassis has too much flex, runs loud under loud (compared to competitors), difficult maintenance, no battery life for all MSI laptops and the infamous bloatwares. That's all I can think about, maybe even more.

 

GP has a bad TN display (don't be fooled by the 94% sRGB display advertisement, MSI only knows how to advertise well), 'OK' keyboard even though it's 'Steelseries' made (again advertisement)

 

There are many better laptops for the same price