Hi everyone
I want a laptop for gaming and college, so specs and weight and battery are important for me. I don't want anything heavier than 4.2 pounds and I have a budget of max $1800.
So with that said, I've come down to 3 laptops:
Dell XPS 15 (9560)
Gigabyte Aero 14Wv7-BK4 14"
https://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Aer...N=B01MR0RF9K&ascsubtag=trd-1441035355-20&th=1
MSI VR Ready GS63VR Stealth Pro-034 15.6
XPS was my initial pick but I've heard that it has really bad ghosting!
I would save up the extra bit of cash and get a razer blade 14.
Be sure to get a skin for it to make it look like a shitty laptop. Otherwise someone will try to steal it.
In all honesty though, gaming laptops are a very bad idea for college.
For 1800 bucks, I would get a mini itx gaming machine for 1K, and get a macbook air or the cheapest xps 13 in the line up for the other 800 bucks.
You have no idea how much this will save your ass. I don't care how little room you have, or how dire your situation is.
I also don't care if you want to game around campus.
Having two machines is a life saver. If one machines craps out, you have another to rely on.
Your laptop is going to be your life blood. You really don't want a gaming laptop. You want the battery to last as long as humanly possible. I know everyone likes to hate on apple. However I would urge you to get the older generation macbook pro with student pricing.
You don't want windows to do a random update or get some random virus that slows you down. Get a mac. Disable the automatic updates and keep it simple, lean, and mean.
If you still want to go windows, the dell xps 13 is a great choice.
Having a full desktop with a bigger screen is really going to save your eyes when you are doing larger term papers and other projects. It will also act as your power house for any large projects. Having a full mouse and keyboard is also going to be a blessing at certain points too.
Lastly I would also get a wireless backup hard drive like a WD my cloud. Keep all your homework and projects backed up, and keep it wireless so that you aren't wasting time messing with cables. Trust me you will have times where you come back to the dorm and you will only have 5 minutes to eat and you need to work on a project. Being able to sit in your dining area with your laptop while files are transferring wirelessly is just going to make your life that much easier.
Have you tried them hands-on in a shop?
MSI has a terrible keyboard, at least for my taste, with the button layout, if you do coding - it's unacceptable. Lots of benchmarks state that it is running hot during longer intensive use.
I considered XPS, heard about the coil whine and I didn't wait long enough for it to be released, so got myself an AW15R3, which turned out nearly perfect. If AW13R3 is not too heavy for you, go for it, quality is superb of those machines.
The link to Gigabyte one is not working, but do have in mind that those machines do not have Thunderbolt 3, so no external GPU if you ever consider one, apart from that, it was a very viable choice for me, unfortunately I could not get my hands on one and thus did/could not buy it.
Previously offered Razer - meh... It's literally a mac, it looks cool and nice, but they do have hardware problems, their heatsinks can be bent with little pressure with a fingernail, if you ever do have to open it up. I'd seriously advice against this option.
The mini itx gaming rig
Took the words out of my mouth.
Laptop with long battery life for taking to class for note taking and web browsing. The itx rig for all of the tasks that need performance and for the multitasking thanks to the performance and big screen.
I 100% agree with @Goalkeeper and @Tjj226_Angel. I got a Lenovo Y700 for school, and I've regretted not doing exactly what they're suggesting ever since. My budget was a good deal less than yours, at $800, but that still would have let me set up a basic system that I could upgrade over time, and at the very least a Chromebook with 10hrs of battery life. I'm currently stuck with a mediocre gaming laptop that has 3 hours MAX of battery life. The only redeeming factor of that laptop is it's Linux support. Don't do it, it's really worth it to invest in a solid desktop system and a laptop with a battery that will get you through the day.
Hey Rta,
I have done a good bit of looking and for this type of laptop, I decided that the Gigabyte Aero 15 is the best device in its category. It's a measurably better machine than the 14 in a lot of ways, particularly in its battery size. The other main win it has over any of the laptops you listed is its cooling solution, allegedly it has the 'best ever.' This is prior to the new Zephyrus design existed, though. Finally, it's got a very very thin bezel for the hardware that's crammed in it. IIRC, the Aero 15 has a similar form factor to most 14" laptops.
The Aero 15, I'm not a huge fan of its look (though that's true of the 14 too), but the GS63VR which is my favorite aesthetically has a battery that's about half the size. If you're going to be moving your laptop around and trying to use it unplugged, you'll appreciate having a battery that's close to 100Whr instead of being close to 50Whr. I say this recognizing that it's probably at the very end of or just over your preferred weight class/price range. If I were personally selecting a device in this class, it's what I would go for.
So, if battery life is your concern, I sincerely think the Aero 15 would be the way to go (if you can). That said, the others' suggestion to separate your laptop from your main gaming machine has its own merit. I found this video really persuasive to that effect, but this was made before we had this generation of mobile pascal cards which are very close to their desktop counterparts. I think it depends on what you want and it's fair to go either way:
If you're content with separating your school productivity from your gaming (which can be good for discipline's sake!), definitely consider getting a Chromebook. As long as you're content with ChromeOS, you can get some sexy build quality for very cheap, since build quality is practically all you're paying for.
If you want a proper windows laptop, you'll probably start making compromises for your gaming PC and that will be a balancing act. Especially with Etherium mining demolishing the GPU market. I have an old GTX 980 I would be willing to let go of which would be about on par with an entry level card (~GTX 1060/RX 580) from this current generation.
The thing about choosing between a higher-end laptop is that the nicer thin-and-light laptops without GPUs end up having ~50Whr batteries which gives them about 6-8 hours of battery life (some can do better, depending on brightness and usage). The laptops that have similar batteries and GPUs (like the ones you listed) will get about 2-4 hours of battery life, depending on how good they are at not using their GPU (Optimus is supposedly pretty clunky)--even idling uses some extra power. The Gigabyte Aero 15 is the only current-gen laptop in its size/weight class I'm aware of that has a 90+Whr battery, and it's paired with a GPU and has Optimus. Supposedly you can expect 6-hours of non-gaming usage from it.
I also like the two-machine strategy. If it were me, I think that I'd look for a used ThinkPad T450S, or a T460 (NOTE - the T460S has comparatively poor battery life) and throw my favorite flavor of Linux on it. The 14" form factor is not to big and not too small. It has a great keyboard. It has dual batteries for excellent staying power. It's built like a friggin' tank. And, most importantly, it won't bust the budget.
Another factor not to be overlooked - While they may be workhorses, ThinkPads look pathetically boring and are less likely to attract the attentions of the light-fingered among us.