Gaming Laptops:Are They Really Worth It?

Gaming Laptops:Are They Really Worth It?

   12:25:00       Unknown

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So is it really worth buying that expensive gaming laptop just for that little bit of extra portability? Lets find out.

In this article we'll be looking at a laptop from one of the best companies that produce gaming laptops, Alienware. But before we get into the crux of it, i just want to explain how games usually perform on high end gaming laptops these days. A high end gamin laptop usually has an Intel i5 or an i7 processor, mostly the latter, and most of the time it also has turbo support for that extra bit of horsepower. A good gaming laptop should have 16GB of RAM and an SDD (not a HDD) as these usually give the better performance in read and write speeds. However if you really want more storage then you can also get a mechanical hard drive but i would advise you to use that just for storage and data, and that you should store all your programs on the SDD.

Now what really makes a gaming laptop a "Gaming" laptop is the GPU it's using. Usually Gpu's from Nvidia offer the best performance but if you're on a budget, get an AMD Gpu. These are not as good as their Nvidia counterparts but can get the job done quite easily. Now onto the battery life. One of the reasons why someone would get a gaming laptop is that they can easily carry it around wherever they go and use the laptop on the go. However this experience can be hindered by the battery life of the laptop. being a high powered Laptop, one would expect the components of the device to use more power and thus meaning you get less battery life. However this is not usually the case with modern laptops. If you are doing everyday tasks on your gaming laptop like web browsing , editing documents, using Photoshop etc,then expect the battery life to be average. However when gaming and doing graphic intensive stuff like video editing, then expect the battery life to last you around an hour or an hour and a half. That's somewhere around 60-90 minutes. 

Enough with the boring stuff. How does a Gaming laptop actually perform? i ran some games on a the Alienware laptop running an i7 4720 HQ  2.6GHZ Cpu , 16 GB of ddr3 memory, 256 GB of SDD and a 1TB mechanical hard drive. The graphics chip in here is an Nvidia Gtx 970 and the built in screen measures at 15 inch 4k display. However even though the screen has a resolution of 4k, i would not recommend playing games on this laptop on 4k as this wouldn't give out the best results. Stick to 1080 for most 3d graphic intensive games for the best performance out of your gaming rig. 

Running Cs go on this laptop at 1080p was smooth and there were no hiccups anywhere. The games ran at an fps of about 200 or above in max settings. On battlefield 4 we get around 70 to 100 fps at max settings at 1080p. 

 Do keep in mind that this title is a pretty demanding one and requires a lot horsepower to run smoothly at 1080p ,which fortunately we have in most modern gaming laptops. If you can get a high end laptop then you can surely get a great gaming experience. 

Now that we've established that there are good gaming laptops out there that can give you awesome performance , do you actually need it or should you just get a gaming desktop instead and save the money? Well there's a few scenarios where a high powered gaming laptop would come in handy. If someone doesn't have enough space and still wants the best performance out of there rig then this is the best option for them. Furthermore, this is great for people who move around and travel a lot and need to do their work and game on the go. Another example for use of a gaming laptop is that you ca hook this to the big screen Tv in your living room , considering if you don't already have that in your bedroom already.

So there we go folks! it really boils down to your personal preference in the end though. Many of you may find the desktop route more easy or maybe some of you find that a gaming laptop suites you best. One thing is for sure though, Modern gaming laptops can perform just as well as their desktop counterparts so now, the argument that a gaming laptop doesn't perform quite as well as a high end desktop, is not valid.