I had posted a post regarding wanting to buy a gaming laptop, but it turned out to a discussion about budget and such I didn’t get much much info from it…
Forget about budget and other stuff and all. If you HAVE to buy a laptop and gaming IS a requirement, what would you look? which brands are good or bad?
Dude, you’re looking at a sub 1K laptop. There isn’t going to be any brand at that price that isn’t going to be cheap plastic, not so great build quality and components. That’s just going to be the reality of that price range unfortunately, every laptop in that range is going to be about compromise and more prone to be on the edges on the bathtub curve for early life failures and premature timeline failures.
All the major brands, MSI, ASUS, Lenovo, Razer are going to be very similar at that price point.
There were several 2022 models that came with a 3080Ti. It must be the Ti version. This is a 16GBV GPU. That is the largest VRAM of any laptop so far. I have one, but for AI, (I’m just passing by while browsing the ‘All’ feed). For me, after the experience thus far with AI, I would be looking for any potential options that have support for 96GB of system memory not just 64GB. I would go out of my way to buy anything that has proven AVX512 support too, but that is another one that won’t matter for gaming.
I’m interested in Framework’s new laptop with an upgradable GPU. That’s one my biggest gripes with gaming laptops, GPUs can be outdated pretty fast compared to the rest of the system. I know it has been tried by other companies before, but upgrading is Framework’s entire business model so it has a better chance of succeeding then a one-off laptop by a different company.
I love framework’s ideology and their execution seems on point. I preordered a 16 and I’m super excited about it (even though it’s pretty pricey compared to other gaming laptops).
Oh for sure, there’s a premium you’re paying. And (hopefully) you’ll end up saving money by delaying another laptop purchase by doing an upgrade instead. Or at the very least break even and just be a bit more environmentally friendly.
I used to work with customers who didn’t want to share any specifics and asked questions in general. Which product is good? I’m looking for something really good quality, what would you recommend? Tell me which product is the best and tell me why.
While the questions are 100% valid, from the seller/support persons point of view is a huge pain in the ass. These types of people usually expect XY product training 101 for dummies or even a small essay on the topic as they usually don’t want to do their own research.
So where is my comment heading? Just a life pro tip, if you take one OP: give some specifics, share your requirement even on the most basic level. You will be more likely to get useful answers, as people on the internet most likely will not write you a multi-paragraph answer to touch all aspects of the topic.
Down in this price range it’s all cheap plastic and lowest-bidder components. Doesn’t matter which brand you buy, it comes down to how well you take care of it and a bit of luck.
Actual well-built and well-designed machines are close to double your budget.
I would highly recommend watching the YouTube channel Jarrod’s Tech. His channel focuses almost exclusively on laptops. And gaming ones at that. He’ll review $3000+ beasts, but will also review sub-$800 laptops and everything in between. And he looks at quite a bit of things on them.
If you want to learn more about laptops and which ones are good, his videos are absolutely worth the time.
A buddy of mine got an Acer nitro last year. I think he’s been pretty happy with it once they shipped him a replacement (the first one they sent wouldn’t actually charge!).
I’ve had reasonable luck and been reasonably happy with Asus laptops, specifically the G14 and G15 models.
Currently have a 2022 G14 (the all AMD one wth a 6900hs and 6700s) and it’s… fine. It’s hot, loud, and has lousy battery life but that’s just gaming laptop life.
Only thing I would comment on Asus laptops is their fans are absolute shit and you will - not may - have to replace them after about a year. I’ve had 4 Asus laptops and all 4 of them have fallen prone to this specific failure. It’s easy enough to do (a couple of screws) and like $15 for the fans, but still, it’s a pretty consistent failure.
I don’t have any personal experience with TUF laptops, so I can’t really offer an informed opinion on it. But I assume that’s just the slightly more plastic version of their other laptops, so it’s probably no worse than any other Asus laptop, though maybe a little less durable if you’re dragging it around everywhere.
I have an msi GE75 raider laptop. I have a powerful desktop, but I use my laptop when I travel away from home; roughly 3 months out of the year I’m using my laptop for gaming. It gets the job done for me, I’m able to play world of warcraft at a fairly high level without issue and it’s been running acts 1 and 2 of Baldur’s Gate decently. However, I wouldn’t recommend it. I wish I could go back and get the Lenovo Legion I was looking at. I have no experience with a Legion, but everything I’ve read since purchasing the msi has made me regret it.
My msi has a TON of bloatware on it that I can’t get rid of and it all slows the laptop down significantly on startup. It also likes to turn automatic updates for said bloatware back on, as well as make them run on startup if I’ve been allowed to turn them off. The keyboard is also garbage.
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