The world of gaming and eSports has exploded over the last few years and it has become a massive industry that attracts fans from all works of life. While consoles such as the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 make up a good chunk of the gaming industry, the so called “Glorious PC Master Race“ still reigns supreme.
The ability to change your performance settings and the ability to upgrade your hardware gives PC gaming the edge over its console brethren. Gaming desktop computers can be built up to be extremely powerful, but they lack portability and always require for them to be plugged into a socket.
This is where the gaming laptop comes into play, ranging from entry level budget friendly laptops, to powerhouse solutions for the demanding hardcore gamer with deeper pockets.
Before we look at the different categories, here are a couple things to avoid when looking at a gaming laptop.
Things to Avoid
Here are a few things to avoid when choosing a gaming laptop
Buying more power than you need
If you are only planning to play Candy Crush, old titles such as Age of Empires II, or browser based games, then don’t waste your money. A basic laptop with either Intel’s or AMD’s integrated graphics will be more than sufficient for those games.
While touchscreen displays are a great feature for some laptops, they are usually a draw back when it comes to gaming laptops. With most gaming laptops sporting lower figures in the battery life department, a touchscreen will further drain your battery life.
Gaming laptops with a single SSD drive under 512GB will fill up extremely quickly. Games have increased in size over the years and Battlefield 1 already takes up a massive 40GB without any DLCs, so smaller drives are not optimal for people with larger game collections.
Age of Empires 2 HD Version
Only going for the latest gaming laptops
New is usually always better, or is it? There are some gaming laptops that sport fourth and fifth generation Intel processors that offer far more processing power than some of the lower end sixth generation i5 and i7 processors.
Some great deals can be found on these slightly older laptops. The same can be said for graphics cards. Second generation GeForce GTX 980M laptops for example are only around 25% slower than most GTX 1080M based laptops, but are often for sale at half the price.
ASUS Republic of Gamers G751JY with GeForce GTX 980M
Which gaming laptop is right for you
So, with so many great options on the market, how do we choose a gaming laptop that will best suit our needs and also our budgets?
Budget gaming laptops
Let’s start off with the budget friendly options that are on the market at the moment. Most of them sport either the NVIDIA GeForce 940M or the GTX 950M, which are both entry level graphics cards.
But for the gamer with a tighter budget and slightly lower expectations, these cards will perform perfectly fine for their gaming needs. But you will have to run some of the latest AAA titles on lower settings.
Try to avoid laptops with 5400rpm mechanical hard drives. They offer far more storage space, but they are very slow and you will notice the slower performance while booting or loading games.
Luckily, most laptops allow you to replace the hard drive with ease, so you will be able to install a faster solid state drive. Try looking for a laptop that offers a Full-HD display (1920 x 1080), as the cheaper 1366 x 768 display panels offer inferior image quality and lower resolutions while gaming.
Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575G-53VG with GTX 940M
Mid-range gaming laptops
Most gamers will rather save up a little bit more for a mid-level gaming laptop. You will be able to find a laptop with a Skylake-based Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor, but it will take some searching.
This processor offers far better gaming performance than the i7-6500U or the i5-6300U, which are both ultra-low wattage CPUs. You are also more likely to find a laptop that offers a larger 17-inch display.
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