BUYING A GAMING LAPTOP IN 2019

Laptops have came a long way since their release transforming from bulky suitcases to ultra thin notebooks but what today we’re going to discuss about is GAMING LAPTOPS. Yes, gone are the old days and now laptops can also game though not quite match your gaming desktop but it can game significantly at the cost of 5-10 fps due to thermal resistance in laptops.

Here are certain few things I’m going to tell you about before buying your gaming laptop in 2019.

BUILD

Not much to say about this here, but gaming laptops generally come with bulky builts to house those powerful components and to give them their recommended, but recently some companies released gaming laptops with thin body but with beasty specs, though they are not like ultra thin notebooks. For example look at the MSI’s GS lineup which has some great laptops with thing builts like MSI GS65 STEALTH THIN and MSI GS75 with NVIDIA’s new RTX GPUs. Razer also is not a slouch as it also have its own gaming laptops with thin and light builds better than MSI’s. For example the all new Razer Blade 15 advanced houses a powerful Intel I7 8750H with 6 core 12 thread CPU and also has a RTX 2080 option. Another thing to note is that if you want all those flashy looks of a gaming computer then you might get gaming looking flashy laptop but these manufacturers looks more into these aesthetic changes. One important thing to note is that see if your laptop has a sturdy build and lesser screen flex. A sturdy build laptop means a good materials were used there.

MSI GS65 STEALTH THIN BUILD

DISPLAY

This is the area where gamers becomes conscious as these day all those battle royale rage and MMORPG game needs a very good smooth display panel. The more the refresh rate the greater is your winning of chances and lesser screen tearing means more CHICKEN DINNERS. A laggy slow display can decide between your life and death in a game. So how to choose your gaming laptop’s display,

Firstly look for the resolution as 1080p is all the rage now and 1440p is still getting popular, 4K laptops comes at its price and if you’re planning to buy a laptop with 4K display then check of its GPU can handle games at 4k resolution. 1080p is the most common and most budget gamers can live their lives with it. Don’t buy a gaming laptop having resolution below 1080p.

Secondly look for the refresh rate. Well first let me tell you what a refresh rate means. A refresh rate means the amount of time your screen refreshed per second. A 60Hz refresh rate monitor screen refreshes 60 times a second while a 144Hz refresh rate monitor refreshes 144 times a second. The more the refresh rate the more good looking your games will be. Gamers usually buy a high refresh rate monitor because it helps the eye to catch those little thing in a game. In 2018 120hz refresh monitor was the norm, so loom for a laptop having refresh rate of 120 Hz or higher, 240Hz refresh rate might be a overkill but it comes at its cost.

Thirdly look for the display panel. Gaming Laptops usually come in two types of display, one is TN panel, while other is IPS panel. TN panels are quicker but they have rubbish viewing angles, a slightly red screen. While IPS panels are great for both gaming and content creation as they have great viewing angles, no tints but they are not advanced yet.I would suggest go with a IPS panel

And fourth, look for the response time, as response time in display sometimes become a factor of life and death in games. Lower the response time faster will be the monitor. This is one of the most important factors gamers look for. 1ms response time monitors is best.

Now you should know a monitor with 1080p display, high refresh rate, great IPS panel and lower response time will make your game buttery smooth.

RAZER BALDE'S DISPLAY

Ram

Really not much to say in this section as for gaming you pretty much need 8GB minimum or 16GB maximum, though some laptops comes with 32GB of ram but 16GB will be alright but 8GB will do the work but its getting lower this days for gaming as some games recommends 16GB ram and their minimum spec is 8GB. Say for example PUBG, go to PUBG website and you will find minimum specs defined 8GB while recommended defined 16GB. But if you want to stream and do productivity works like video editing aside gaming then you may go with 32 GB ram, but as like desktop gaming PCs, it might be a overkill.

CPU

Now this is the area where you’ll get most of your performance out of your laptop and CPU is second most important thing in a gaming machine. A good CPU is essentially needed for gaming and with some thermal optimizations intel released some great gaming CPUs for laptops with 4 core 8 thread or 6 core 12 thread, but as always due to thermal restrictions laptop CPUs are not much capable like their desktop counterparts and also cannot be overclocked as high as desktop CPUs.

Laptop gaming CPUs from intel generally has an H at its end. There are some examples of great gaming laptop CPUs like Intel core I7 8750H, it's one of the most common CPU in 2018, and recently at CES 2019 though laptop manufacturers changed their gaming GPUs from GTX to RTX, the I7 8750H remained the norm and it might remain for some of 2019 until intel shows their 9th gen CPUs. I5 laptop CPUs are also good but most manufacturer use I7 for better performance with no compromise. And remember choose it wisely as laptop’s CPU is not upgradable and you have to live with it until the laptop lives. If you want to know more about gaming CPUs then check out my BUILDING A GAMING PC review.

GPUs

And now comes the first most important part of a gaming machine, its GPU. in every gaming machine GPU is them most important thing and this might decide the cost of your laptop. Though laptop GPUs are not as powerful as their full-fledged desktop counterparts due to thermal restrictions but they are only 10 to 15 FPS lower.

Now the statement of 2019 for choosing a GPU in laptops is IF YOU WANT TO GET THE LATEST AND THE GREATEST GENERATION OF GPUs THEN GO WITH RTX. Yes you heard it right, recently NVIDIA launched their laptop compatible RTX gpus for next gen gaming and to bring all those fancy Ray-Tracing and DLSS features on the laptops. It doesn’t mean that you have to buy a super bulky laptop to get a RTX GPU as companies like Razer and MSI launched thin and light gaming laptops like Razer Blade 15 Advanced and MSI GS75. RTX GPU laptops comes with all the types of RTX GPUs RTX 2080, RTX 2070, RTX 2060. If you buy a laptop with RTX 2080 then you have to pay heavy price while laptops with RTX 2060 comes a bit cheaper. You can also previous generation laptops with GTX GPUs at slightly lower cost but it’ll make you feel old.

STORAGE

Make sure your gaming laptop comes with both an SSD and HDD as SSDs are required for speeding up your windows while HDDs are required for storing large games. Some manufacturers give two SSDs upto 1tb including both, but this might increase the price, but don’t buy gaming laptop with only one 512GB SSD as games these days average from 50GB to as long as 150GB.

BATTERY

This is not a very important thing in gaming laptops as most of the time while you’ll be playing games, your laptops is going to be connected with its charger as while gaming due to high GPU and CPU power consumption your battery will not last longer than 1 hour and maximum 1.5 hours. And also if you play games while charging your laptop it’ll boost your GPU performance as by default windows lower the GPU power in laptop while not charging to reduce the power consumption. But if you want to do other productivity works then have a look for battery measurements but take my word, even with productivity workload your laptop is going to be ON BATTERY for only 2.5 to 3 HOURS. This is due to high CPU performance on gaming laptops. I’ll be making an article on buying laptops for works that is non gaming laptops in 2019, so stay tuned and subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t overlook any important article.

KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD

This is also not very important to look for in gaming laptops as you are not going to play games with your touchpad and if you do then you might never get any wins in your game, coming to keyboard, though you may not use your laptop’s keyboard but at least for future proofing look for the keyboard built.

WEBCAM

This may be important in your laptop if you want to do streaming. Otherwise it might not be an issue, but you can look for a decent webcam as it might help you in video conferencing.

THERMAL VENTILATIONS

This one of the key thing you must look for in a gaming laptop, as laptop does not have that large space like your desktop PC so thermals might me a limiting factor in your game. Sometimes due to thermal throttling, though you have seen high FPS at first when you turned on your laptop but as time goes you will see a dip in performance. This is mainly due to either your GPU or your CPU or both is throttling due to high temps. Just keep in mind, that your gaming laptop must come with two or more fans and at least five copper heat pipes inside it, though to check the heat pipes you need to open the lower part of your laptop. More the heat pipes more will be the thermal dissipation. I’ve seen manufacturers packing I9 9900K, RTX 2080 and all the latest and greatest specs in their laptops but due to bad thermal it get throttled and you do not get the performance you should get.

Interior of a laptop with 5 heatpipes

This is everything you need to look before buying a gaming laptop and if you don’t have the money to buy a laptop with all the bells and whistles then you can opt for previous gen gaming laptops with GTX series of GPUs and intel’s 7th Gen CPUs as due to new products they are getting huge price cuts.

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