Are gaming laptops good yet?

[exochaft]

I don't like sitting on a chair, plus the gfx cards are hard to get.

Depends on the brand, in terms of performance and what you'll get.

My rough rule of thumb is that you'll get roughly half of the performance from a gaming laptop's graphics card compared to a desktop with the 'same' card. For example, there are gaming laptops out there with 3080's, but they're only going to perform at half of what a desktop with similar specs would with a 3080. The general reason for performance drops is because the laptop cards can cut down on other components due to space/power restrictions, as well as the laptops throttling for power saving and heat management. Long-term sessions can be even worse for laptops, as thermals will potentially throttle the entire system even more... which is something desktops generally don't have to worry about beyond extreme rigs. In essence, you'll likely get much better results with a 3060/70 desktop rig than you would with a laptop 3080 considering the specs of the current cards.

When perusing reviews and sales pitches for gaming laptops, you have to be very careful as they may be only telling part of the truth. For instance, it's not uncommon that you see claims of gaming laptops only apply to high power states, but said states may only last 40-60 seconds or so until throttling occurs either due to thermals or restrictions on the system allowing said state to only last so long. While such limitations exist in desktops, they can be overridden or are less restrictive since there's much lower risk of damage, whereas there's much less wiggle room for laptops.

If you aren't going to play games that are resource hogs or at cutting-edge graphical settings, gaming laptops can be a stop-gap measure until you get a desktop (especially if you travel a lot). Portability always comes at a cost, whether it's performance or the increased price tag. Overall, gaming laptops are getting better, but that also means that desktops are getting better. I still have a gaming laptop for when I travel, and it still performs fairly well... but I've also had to change the graphics card three times because of thermal damage despite my best efforts to cool the damn thing (and that isn't cheap!).

[jellmoo]

There are quite a few good options within your price range.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is a great machine, but I think it's due for a refresh. Dell has its G15 lineup of devices which spec pretty well at the higher end and hit your price point well. Razer's lineup is just tad higher than your price point but could be there if you stretch it a bit.

Ultimately, as people have mentioned, heat is going to be your big issue. Most laptops vent downward, which is going to get uncomfortable fast if you are using it in bed on your lap.

One option, if you happen to have or can get your hands on a quality GPU, would be to get a non gaming laptop (so no mobile dedicated GPU) which should save you money, and then get an eGPU to connect. That should offload a good chunk of the heat away from the laptop itself. Granted, you'll have a wireto connect to, but it might make for a more comfortable experience if you are gaming in bed.

[Ashleyxoxo]

There are quite a few good options within your price range.

The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 is a great machine, but I think it's due for a refresh. Dell has its G15 lineup of devices which spec pretty well at the higher end and hit your price point well. Razer's lineup is just tad higher than your price point but could be there if you stretch it a bit.

Ultimately, as people have mentioned, heat is going to be your big issue. Most laptops vent downward, which is going to get uncomfortable fast if you are using it in bed on your lap.

One option, if you happen to have or can get your hands on a quality GPU, would be to get a non gaming laptop (so no mobile dedicated GPU) which should save you money, and then get an eGPU to connect. That should offload a good chunk of the heat away from the laptop itself. Granted, you'll have a wireto connect to, but it might make for a more comfortable experience if you are gaming in bed.

I'm not worried how the heat will feel - I've gotten used to it before - but rather the performance drop from overheating.

[jellmoo]

I'm not worried how the heat will feel - I've gotten used to it before - but rather the performance drop from overheating.

Ultimately it will largely depend on what games you plan on playing and on what settings. Most eSports titles should be fine. Full blown AAA titles? You'll probably lose frames as the machine throttles to reduce heat. Lower settings can help, going with a 1080p display as well will reduce demand.

Gaming laptops have gotten a lot better over the years, but they still aren't desktops. Laws pf physics being what they are. You have to trade in some performance in order to gain the benefit of portability. It's largely up to you if you find the tradeoff worth it.

[Dakara]

“Good” is subjective. Todays Laptops will always be behind Todays desktops due to physics, but do you need (or even want)the best?

I’ve been gaming on Laptops for several years now because my job sees me spend a lot of time away from home. Didn’t see the point in sticking with a desktop when over half my gaming was done from hotel rooms.

Initially I went with a 17 inch monster… an Acer Predator. Did everything I needed it to, but was a nightmare to lug around. The screen might of been 17” but it didn’t fit in any standard Laptop bags due to its size.

I then went to the other extreme with an MSI GS65, slim and light laptop. Again, does everything I need it to but is a bit fragile and now the case has a few cracked vents. My next Laptop will be somewhere between the 2.

I use a Wireless mouse and used to use a wireless keyboard but got sick of carrying it with me and forced myself to get used to the Laptops built-in.

If you’re in the habit of building the best desktop money can buy every year so you can play the latest and greatest AAA titles at 4K with everything maxxed, then a Laptop will not be suitable for you.

If however, like me, you were getting the best “bang for buck” desktop every few years to keep up with newer games, but are now needing portability, then you can absolutely find a best of both worlds Laptop.

Most of my friends (we’re all in our 40’s now) have swapped over to Laptops for their portability. Those who haven’t are the ones who never need to travel for work. An added bonus is we get together for Lan sessions more often than we used to.

[Gaidax]

Given just how much power CPUs and GPUs pack as of recent, you can for sure get decent laptop that will do gaming just fine.

People are a tad too wild here - is same priced desktop PC going to be a better gaming machine? Yeah... But I'd say any decent laptop with something like 3060 is absolutely fine for all modern titles as well, more than fine even.

Laptops do have a huge advantage of mobility and I can totally see why one would just buy it and not bother with desktops anymore, especially given the GPU prices. All in all it will do gaming just fine and you score extra with being able to do it anywhere.

As a tip though - max out at ~15 inch, and don't buy some of those monstrosities that weigh a ton that stick way overspecced CPUs and shit inside. You don't want all that weight on your back and heat on your lap.

[Syri79]

Gaming laptops are a lot better now than they were a few years back, mostly as the hardware has become more powerful without needing as much power (wattage) to get that performance, meaning there's not as much heat. This doesn't mean the issue of heat has gone though, you still need to have good ventilation for a gaming laptop, that means having it on a flat surface at the very least, with nothing right up to the vents on the sides and/or back.
I have an Asus TUF-15, which set me back about £1030 after upgrading the RAM and storage, which has an 11th gen i7 and a 3060. It's not as powerful as a similar desktop spec would be, but it's not as far off as they used to be. What is surprising though is how thin and light it is, compared to older gaming laptops.
As for performance, I've mostly played Valheim and Final Fantasy XIV so far, both of which it handles easily, but have also had a quick go on Control, just to see how it handles it, and that was also very playable with high settings and ray tracing at 1440p (using dlss sampling up from 1080p). It's certainly good for what I want, and has the option of taking it away easily as well.

[LCDArcade]

I haven't had a gaming laptop in quite a few years but when I did, it worked great and ran what I wanted at good framerates.
Gaming laptops in theory will never be able to keep up with a desktop because games are getting more graphically/CPU inensive and the hardware/thermals can't keep up.

Unless you really want one and are willing spend $2000+ for a good one, I'd stay away from them and just get a desktop.

[Takure]

Are you able to play for hours without frying your laptop?

He means you'll need a lap pad to stop a gaming laptop from cooking your legs.

If you go with a gaming laptop I 100% suggest getting some high quality thermal paste (I used Arctic MX-5) and reapplying to all the components.

I have nitro 5 (acer) with a 2060 and a i7-10750H. CPU doesnt go over 75c under full load (mind you I have it undervolted) and GPU rarely over 60c.

[ati87]

Given just how much power CPUs and GPUs pack as of recent, you can for sure get decent laptop that will do gaming just fine.

People are a tad too wild here - is same priced desktop PC going to be a better gaming machine? Yeah... But I'd say any decent laptop with something like 3060 is absolutely fine for all modern titles as well, more than fine even.

Laptops do have a huge advantage of mobility and I can totally see why one would just buy it and not bother with desktops anymore, especially given the GPU prices. All in all it will do gaming just fine and you score extra with being able to do it anywhere.

As a tip though - max out at ~15 inch, and don't buy some of those monstrosities that weigh a ton that stick way overspecced CPUs and shit inside. You don't want all that weight on your back and heat on your lap.

Are they really mobile though? I mean like you said, they are heavy machines and from experiencing I can tell you that carrying heavy laptops like that sucks (used to have a Lenova thinkpad for work).

Frankly I would either get a Switch or wait for a Steamdeck if you want to play portable games (in bed), if steamdeck is going to become a thing I fully expect gaming laptops to become a bigger niche then what they currently are.

[Kagthul]

"Good" is subjective obviously. You'll never approach the performance, upgrade and repair potential of a desktop. Cost used to be a factor but now that parts, especially GPUs, are worth their weight in gold laptops damn near pull out ahead in this department. You're definitely going to want a pad not only to be able to play it on your lap, but to insulate whatever you're playing on in general. Back then I murdered the varnish on my desk by playing games on it with my old laptop. Be wary also of long gameplay sessions, a friend of mine gamed a lot on his laptop and performance started to noticeably dropped after a while. I don't know if that was an issue with his machine however.

"PS5 quality" is pretty general, my guess is that you'd need something with at least a 3070 for a smooth 1440p experience with all but the most demanding/poorly optimized games, which might strain your budget a bit, in order to approach the quality of a 4K capable console. Going for 1080p means a 3060 will be more than enough and might be more towards what you want but falls off the PS5 mark.

“PS5 quality”, you have to remember, is not “4k @ PC Ultra settings”. When Gamers Nexus compared PS5 native 4k games to their PC versions, (they had a guy spend days tweaking settings on the PC to get them as visually identical as possible). the average quality of PS5 4k was… 4k Medium on average, but with some stuff Low.

They got equivalent framerates and settings on like a 2060.

Now, as it seems the OP is fine with 1080p, a laptop 3060 will be plenty powerful.

[Trumpcat]

I have an MSI GS75 Stealth with i7-10875, RTX2080, 1TB m.2 nvme. It's 17inch 240Hz display. 230 W power adapter.

So that beautiful laptop is unusable without a powerful cooler pad and air conditioner in summer. And I don't just mean that the 80+ degrees can't touch your legs, but it shuts down for overheating if you don't set it at "medium" performance and meet the above cooling conditions. If you set it at full power, aka gaming mode, it will skyrocket the FPS and will overheat in few minutes. I've spent $150 on external cooling to get the best I could find and still don't use the gaming mode.

It's very thin and sleek and those specs are only for marketing sell points and if you want to brag about what you have without saying you can't really use it at its full power. Maybe those thick beefy gaming laptops have it better with much more room for cooling fans and tubes. But it's just physically impossible to cool such powerful specs with tiny fans and minimalistic tubes.

On the other hand my desktop with Ryzen 1600, Sapphire Vega 64 Nitro and nvme drives cased in a sound isolated Corsair Carbide can run at "turbo" indefinitely.

In terms of performance the laptops can't compare to a well built desktop at all, but that's never been their strength anyway. I can bring my Stealth anywhere in this fancy backpack I got for it. Dimension: (WxDxH) 396x259x18.95mm, weight 2.25kg again do consider it is 17' display. It's the mobility you pay for and bragging specs.

[Gaidax]

Are they really mobile though? I mean like you said, they are heavy machines and from experiencing I can tell you that carrying heavy laptops like that sucks (used to have a Lenova thinkpad for work).

Frankly I would either get a Switch or wait for a Steamdeck if you want to play portable games (in bed), if steamdeck is going to become a thing I fully expect gaming laptops to become a bigger niche then what they currently are.

I'm not talking about those plastic pieces of garbage like these Eurocom Frankenstein machines.

There are plenty sub 2kg laptops with decent specs that can offer good gaming capabilities nowadays.

The advantage of laptop is obvious, because in the end of the day it's a PC that lets you do everything you may ever want while still being portable.

[UniqueMU]

Depends on how much money you're willing to pay and what games are you playing.
Generally- gaming laptops can be very strong and useful.

[JDL49]

I've a use for a less powerful 'gaming' laptop than what you guys have been talking about. I don't want to raid or even run dungeons. I want to do SP Torghast, leveling, command table, and Covenant Assaults at 1080p. I would think that would call for something less than what you guys have been discussing or does my perceived lower resource demand not really make much of a difference ? Suggestions on equipment would be appreciated.

[Qck]

Just be careful with conflating the laptop component models with their desktop counterparts; a laptop 3080 is not as powerful as a desktop 3080, and the same can be said for every single model of GPU. It's honestly not even close, for the 3080 it's about 40% slower, and borderline false advertising to call them the same name, IMO.

Gaming laptops can certainly play modern games fine, just don't expect desktop level performance from the parts in them. If you push them hard and try to use them on a blanket on your lap or something, though... you're probably not going to get very far. They're designed to be portable in a sense, but not really to be used in bed for any real gaming.

[Temp name]

It's honestly not even close, for the 3080 it's about 40% slower, and borderline false advertising to call them the same name, IMO.

That depends on the model of 3080 in the laptop.
The best laptop 3080's are pretty close to desktop performance, the worst ones are below 3070 laptops. I'm not even joking.

There's a HUGE difference between a 3080 with 90W tdp and one with a 155W tdp

[kranur]

They're good enough but not as good as desktop.

They really come with only 1, maybe 2 advantages over desktops and that's mobility and space (if an issue). If not travelling a lot, there's really no reason to consider a laptop over a desktop)

Otherwise there is a long list of cons such as: more expensive, lower performance, very noisy and hot in load, a cooling pad is very much required, harder to clean up and required more often, in most cases if gpu dies a full motherboard replacement is required, peripherals (monitor, keyboard) may still be needed for a great experience

[nocturnus]

Yikes, I plan on playing for hours at a time. Maybe I should get a handheld PC (gpd win 3) instead?

You should. Windows "gaming" laptops get hot and loud as fuck.

Obviously this isn't in your price range, but I have a M1Max Macbook and I can play anything at max settings with close to mobile 3080 performance and my fans don't even start spinning. You won't find anything like this on a windows pc.

Have you considered a Nintendo Switch? The Steam deck could be a solution for you, but it's been delayed.

[stevenLu]

I think yes, I have a gaming laptop and it works well, like games and various programs for work, and this is very important for me