Good general purpose laptop for gaming and traveling?

I have an Alienware 13 R3. Specs: i5-7300HQ, 8 GB RAM, GTX 1050 Ti.

I can play EU on very high with no issues. This list looks like a solid bunch of recommendations:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Notebookcheck-s-Top-10-Multimedia-Laptops.98608.0.html

These are actually called "multimedia laptops" and not gaming laptops. You said "all-purpose" though, which technically would be more along the lines of multimedia. Plus, most of these have a GTX 1050 or 1050 Ti just like mine does.

Good luck with your purchase. :thumbup:
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mac
Laptops

I just recently went through the idea of Laptop Vs Desktop. I finally decided upon a desktop but before I did, I researched some nice laptops that would work well with game and general use.
Some friends in the game suggested a MSI Gaming Laptop which had a great bang for its buck. I also was surprised Walmart sold them and Amazon for a good price.

Here is a link to check out the stats and what not:

KEY FEATURES
8th Gen Intel Core i7 Six-Core Processor
NVIDIA GTX 1070 8GB
17.3" Full HD 120Hz 3ms Wideview Display (GS73)
15.6" Full HD 144Hz 7ms Wideview Display (GS65)
Up to 32GB DDR4 Memory
802.11ac WiFi / Bluetooth 5.0
SteelSeries per-key RGB Keyboard

https://www.ibuypower.com/site/computer/msi-laptop
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Mac
By the way... whatever is the fancy of the month, I only ever buy used anymore. My experience with new stuff is bad, no matter the brand's reputation. I blew 2400 EUR on a then top-of-the-line Lenovo only for it to go comatose one week after the warranty ran out. Still have the brick lying around. With others it wasn't too much better, component fails here and there. I had used stuff running almost 10 years before I had to change a disk or a fan. Other stuff broke but caused little financial pain replacing it with another used one. Ever since adopting this policy, all my hardware combined costs less than the VAT on new stuff (I know sales taxes aren't so high in the US, but you get the idea). Ebay is your friend and hunting for stuff is actually fun, pretty much like we do in the game itself. Just keep backups of your vital data so that copying it over becomes painless.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mac
By the way... whatever is the fancy of the month, I only ever buy used anymore. My experience with new stuff is bad, no matter the brand's reputation. I blew 2400 EUR on a then top-of-the-line Lenovo only for it to go comatose one week after the warranty ran out. Still have the brick lying around. With others it wasn't too much better, component fails here and there. I had used stuff running almost 10 years before I had to change a disk or a fan. Other stuff broke but caused little financial pain replacing it with another used one. Ever since adopting this policy, all my hardware combined costs less than the VAT on new stuff (I know sales taxes aren't so high in the US, but you get the idea). Ebay is your friend and hunting for stuff is actually fun, pretty much like we do in the game itself. Just keep backups of your vital data so that copying it over becomes painless.

that has to do with company policies. the companys know what the average use time of an item in a 2 year warranty time span is. then they build in components (for example a capacitor) which is used in for example a 230 volt circuit while it should only be used for up to 150 volts according to its datasheet. they can calculate how long these components who are too weak for the usecase will hold so that the laptop, tv, whatever will die down shortly after the warranty. they are aiming at about 6 to 12 months after. if you use your item a lot more than the average user odds are it will break inside the warranty span. if you are average it will break shortly after and if you use it less it will break later.

thats from my personal experience repairing all kinds of shit and seeing the built-in factory components of different devices.
 
that has to do with company policies. the companys know what the average use time of an item in a 2 year warranty time span is. then they build in components (for example a capacitor) which is used in for example a 230 volt circuit while it should only be used for up to 150 volts according to its datasheet. they can calculate how long these components who are too weak for the usecase will hold so that the laptop, tv, whatever will die down shortly after the warranty. they are aiming at about 6 to 12 months after. if you use your item a lot more than the average user odds are it will break inside the warranty span. if you are average it will break shortly after and if you use it less it will break later.

thats from my personal experience repairing all kinds of shit and seeing the built-in factory components of different devices.

This makes me sad :(
 
This makes me sad :(

even sadder is that this is kinda necessary as if the devices would last 10 years or 15 or longer the company would go bankrupt if there is not enough technical innovation to encourage people to buy new before the old one is broken...
 
I didn't have a price in mind, I was gathering requirements, why do you ask?

Because that's the price prediction from the article you linked.
 
Because that's the price prediction from the article you linked.

From your question, I couldn't tell if you thought that was a good price or a bad price, I assumed you were trying to make a point about the price, which was lost on me.
 
From your question, I couldn't tell if you thought that was a good price or a bad price, I assumed you were trying to make a point about the price, which was lost on me.

2k-3k is a pretty hefty price tag. in that range you can get good custom build notebooks which are usually a lot better than the ones preassembled.
a good price for a regular "gaming" notebook is somewhere around 1k - 1.5k tops
 
Last edited:
2k-3k is a pretty hefty price tag. in that range you can get good custom build notebooks while are usually a lot better than the ones preassembled.
a good price for a regular "gaming" notebook is somewhere around 1k - 1.5k tops

Thanks for clarifying!
 
I'd personally go for a light weight laptop/ultrabook.
But that depends a bit on how you're going to travel.

I'd love that. 13 inches would be great. Any recommendations?
 
I recently acquired my first laptop ever after a bad decision last year when I got on asus 17' with better components than my desktop machine.

Asus laptops I don't recommend to anyone actually. They had very nice components in the past (motherboards), that's where they built their reputation but if we talk about a full machine from them they are always poorly designed. That one I got was a super machine even better than my desktop but the GPU died after only one week of use. Very bad cooling and lot of noise. From my point of view the chassis was never designed for gaming. In short they have nice specs but the machine as a whole is very bad, it's like they throw a bunch of components to make a machine without build it from scratch.

So they refund me the money and after wait some time for another good deal I went for HP Omen instead. I was a little reticent about the HP but this one is a new sub brand just for gaming. The cooling system is much different from the Asus one, this one have really nice air vents, the quality and materials very cool, I can say i m very satisfied with it. Entropia in medium/high graphs like nothing. HP Omen 15-dc0004np. Intel I5 8º gen, 8 gigas ram and a 1050 with 4gigas dedicated for 850 Euros.

One brand that inspired me some trust but couldn't find a good deal was the laptops from MSI. They look nice and well designed, would like to try one in the future.
 
Went for a MSI creator.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top