- May 28, 2014
- 7
- 0
- 4,520
Helping my friend pick a new gaming/school work laptop and figured I'd ask the gents here in the laptop section.
Budget: ~900 dollars. Less is great, shouldn't be more than 925.
Form Factor: 17.3 or 15.1 inches
Resolution: 1600x900 or 1920x1080, if it's 1366x768 I'll really have to look at it close to decide
Purpose: Gaming and School Work (friend is in college so it must be quiet in lecture halls, therefor slim form factor is out)
Games he plays: League of Legends, Skyrim, Left 4 Dead 2, Dead Island Riptide, Call of Duty (older ones like MW2 and Black Ops), Heroes of the Storm.
Battery Life: When not gaming, the best battery life would be awesome, no specific, but at least above two and a half or three hours, anything higher would be awesome.
Extra software: None really, Microsoft Office is always cool, but most laptops in this price bracket come with it, or can be added in for a small fee.
Storage: SSD for boot would be awesome but not required, 1TB or 750GB would be the best for storage.
Retailers: Anywhere, Amazon, Newegg, in the US so retailers are plentiful.
Optical drive: Not required but would be nice
Brand preference: I am partial to HP and Dell, owning both an HP Folio 13-1020us, and a Gen 1 Dell XPS 13 Linux Dev Edition. He has no brand preference, but he is sufficiently hard to impress coming from a Toshiba Satellite S75-A7221, which had an i7-4710, 16GB of RAM, 1600x900 display and awesome speakers. The hardest part is he got that laptop for an abnormally low price on Black Friday a couple years ago, ~600 dollars.
Other info: Cannot be refurbished, even if he would tolerate it, I refuse to have refurbished computers. I would take a new 17 inch HP with HD 4600 and an i7 over a refurbished GT80 Titan for the same price.
Must include OS. (Windows 7 is great, but his Satellite has 8, so either 7, 8, or 8.1 would work
Needs to have something better than the Intel HD 4600 graphics from his Satellite. Whether this is going to be Iris Pro, or a GTX 850M is fine, as long as the budget is right. I know HD 4600 can actually do some good stuff on desktop, especially if you have adequate cooling and overclock it, but that's not a mobile chip. His HD 4600 can barely run BF3 and Skyrim, but can sort of run L4D2 and of course it can run League.
Other features: Backlit keyboard, lighter weight, but not thin (see note above about being quiet), decent speakers, screen brightness keys, etc. These are all extras that as a student he would appreciate. Another thing that would be nice is durability, I will persuade him to buy a soft CaseLogic carrying bag, but this thing can't burst into flames if he has to throw it in his backpack with a textbook once or twice.
Budget: ~900 dollars. Less is great, shouldn't be more than 925.
Form Factor: 17.3 or 15.1 inches
Resolution: 1600x900 or 1920x1080, if it's 1366x768 I'll really have to look at it close to decide
Purpose: Gaming and School Work (friend is in college so it must be quiet in lecture halls, therefor slim form factor is out)
Games he plays: League of Legends, Skyrim, Left 4 Dead 2, Dead Island Riptide, Call of Duty (older ones like MW2 and Black Ops), Heroes of the Storm.
Battery Life: When not gaming, the best battery life would be awesome, no specific, but at least above two and a half or three hours, anything higher would be awesome.
Extra software: None really, Microsoft Office is always cool, but most laptops in this price bracket come with it, or can be added in for a small fee.
Storage: SSD for boot would be awesome but not required, 1TB or 750GB would be the best for storage.
Retailers: Anywhere, Amazon, Newegg, in the US so retailers are plentiful.
Optical drive: Not required but would be nice
Brand preference: I am partial to HP and Dell, owning both an HP Folio 13-1020us, and a Gen 1 Dell XPS 13 Linux Dev Edition. He has no brand preference, but he is sufficiently hard to impress coming from a Toshiba Satellite S75-A7221, which had an i7-4710, 16GB of RAM, 1600x900 display and awesome speakers. The hardest part is he got that laptop for an abnormally low price on Black Friday a couple years ago, ~600 dollars.
Other info: Cannot be refurbished, even if he would tolerate it, I refuse to have refurbished computers. I would take a new 17 inch HP with HD 4600 and an i7 over a refurbished GT80 Titan for the same price.
Must include OS. (Windows 7 is great, but his Satellite has 8, so either 7, 8, or 8.1 would work
Needs to have something better than the Intel HD 4600 graphics from his Satellite. Whether this is going to be Iris Pro, or a GTX 850M is fine, as long as the budget is right. I know HD 4600 can actually do some good stuff on desktop, especially if you have adequate cooling and overclock it, but that's not a mobile chip. His HD 4600 can barely run BF3 and Skyrim, but can sort of run L4D2 and of course it can run League.
Other features: Backlit keyboard, lighter weight, but not thin (see note above about being quiet), decent speakers, screen brightness keys, etc. These are all extras that as a student he would appreciate. Another thing that would be nice is durability, I will persuade him to buy a soft CaseLogic carrying bag, but this thing can't burst into flames if he has to throw it in his backpack with a textbook once or twice.
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