Gaming laptop - how to choose the best for the price

Gaming Laptop refers to a mobile device designed to run high-performance games. Moreover, the technique should create maximum convenience for the user. Therefore, when you come to the store for a gaming laptop, you shouldn't be surprised at the price. A worthy product that meets all the requirements of a game lover simply cannot be cheap.

 

Gaming laptop: price points

 

Oddly enough, but even in this highly specialized niche of goods, there is a division into devices of the premium, medium and budget segment. Only two components affect the price of a laptop - the processor and the video card. Moreover, the efficiency of the device in terms of performance-cost ratio directly depends on the correct arrangement of crystals.

 

 

• Premium segment. Laptops are linked only by TOP hardware. This applies to both the video card and the processor. No stripped-down versions or simplified modifications. To make it clear - Core i9 and Core i7 processors (8th, 9th and 10th generation). Graphics Cards - nVidia GTX 1080, RTX 2080 and 2070.
• Medium price segment. More often a video card goes under the knife, less often a processor. The emphasis in such laptops is on the correct selection of hardware to improve the overall system performance. By processors - intel Core i5, i7. Graphics Cards - nVidia GTX 1070, RTX 2060 and 2070.
• budget segment. This is a regular laptop for work, which is equipped with a discrete graphics card. It is difficult to call it gaming, as it pulls high-performance games at minimum settings. But, if we compare it with office and multimedia laptops, then the state employee is better in terms of performance. Again, it all depends on the correct layout of the system. Processor - Intel Core i5 or i3 (not desirable). Video card - nVidia GTX 1050ti, 1060, 1660ti.

 

 

What affects performance in a gaming laptop

 

In addition to the processor and video card, the speed of operation is influenced by the RAM (type and volume), the chipset (motherboard and its technologies) and the storage device (hard drive). The bundle of all components must be perfect. Gaming laptop manufacturers know this and try to install only high-performance hardware.

 

 

• RAM. The minimum size is 8 GB. The norm is 16 GB. The more RAM, the better. In this case, game resources will not be flushed to the cache on the hard drive. This means they will provide faster access to files for the application. This indicator is very critical for games in high resolutions, with non-voluminous natural landscapes and vegetation. Ideally, when the memory works in Dual channel and at the same frequency with the processor.
• Motherboard. More precisely, the chipset used by the board. He simply must support all processor and video card technologies at the hardware level. For overclocking enthusiasts, there should be support for non-standard memory and processor frequencies, the ability to quickly restore to optimal parameters.
• Information storage device. Definitely, a gaming laptop must be equipped with an SSD drive. And necessarily a large volume. All these SSD + HDD combinations are the wrong approach. The system and games should only be installed on a solid state drive. Forget spinning disks - this is the performance bottleneck. Better this variation - SSD M2 +SSD SATA... This is a gaming laptop. If you have an HDD, this is not a gaming laptop.

 

What else to look for when buying a gaming laptop

 

 

Comfort is one of the criteria that game lovers remember after purchasing. Please note that a gaming laptop is a one-piece design. For convenience, the game needs a good picture on the screen, a soft keyboard and decent autonomy. A priori, it is better to choose an IPS screen with a classic resolution of 4K or FullHD. Diagonal 17, 16 or 15 inches. The more, the better, but also the more expensive. The keyboard is better backlit, without a number pad and with multimedia buttons. The less key travel, the more comfortable it is for most users to play. Autonomy is a capacious battery.

 

 

This is not to say that we are ardent opponents of AMD products, but we consider it a great blasphemy to put brand processors and graphics cards in gaming laptops. If with Ryzen 7 processor overheating issues are gone. Then there is no progress with Radeon video cards. We strongly discourage buying a laptop for gaming with AMD graphics cards. A drop in performance due to overheating cannot be avoided. And buying stands with a fan is such a stupid idea, especially for those people who like to run games with a laptop, lying in a chair or on their laps.