Budget gaming laptops - Acer 7740g vs toshiba l670-14p

[tdickson]

I've been doing alot of research recently on the cheapest gaming laptop with acceptable performance. To be honest, in the UK at least there only seem to be two viable choices.

http/www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?searchString=l670-14p&go=go

and

http/www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?searchString=7740g&go=go

Both run the radeon 5650 mobility which seems to be the best graphics card on the market in terms of performance per pound considering the laptops available and both have core i5s which have some nice features for non-gaming tasks over the core i3s but aren't as much of a rip off as the i7s. Both are 17 inchers with equivalent screens and both have the same ram and hdd speed and size (slightly put off by the 5400 rpm but what can you do?).

Basically I'm asking for advice on which one others would pick and if there are any options I missed. I'm a student so I don't want to lug a desktop around to lan parties and also therefore am not loaded with cash. As far as I can see the tosh is running 1gb less ram and has 2 less usb ports but tosh's generally have a better rep for reliability than acer. Thoughts welcome.

 

[buwish]

In terms of reliability, I'd personally shoot for the Toshiba, as I think you'll get the most use out of it without any issue, at least in the short term.

What is your budget?

 

[tdickson]

Well both are around 650 and will be around 750 with an extended warranty. The next option up is probably dell but that would increase the price to about 850 and to be honest I don't want to pay over 800 in total. Plus I don't really want to give dell the business when they take advantage of people who don't know with ridiculous price hikes for small upgrades on their system builder. They are better than they used to be for that though.