A friend of mine is shopping for a new gaming laptop. He stumbled upon this, which is a little above his price range but he is willing to dish out a little extra if it's a good deal.
Laptop in question: Toshiba Satellite P50-ABT2G22 for $900
I saw this and thought for the specs that price was hard to beat. Especially since Toshiba has a reputation of giving out coupon codes if you play your cards right. My suggestion was the Lenovo Y510, but it is a good $200 more and without Optimus. Lenovo laptops also do not do so well when it comes to cooling, and the battery on the Lenovo Y510 is supposedly very bad.
So does anyone have any better deals? Anyone with experience with this laptop? Pros, Cons, and Other thoughts?
Personally, I'd steer clear of Toshiba. Their laptops aren't bad, but if something breaks in one, good luck trying to get it fixed. The GTX 740m really isn't going to offer that much power when it comes to games. There is a Lenovo with two 750m gpus in SLI for about $1000. I'd look for something like that.
That would be the Lenovo Y510 you're thinking about. I suggested that but it is a little past his price range (more like $1100) and as a Lenovo owner (Y570) I can say that they don't do good cooling wise and require a cooling pad when gaming.
Also how bad is the 740m compared to the 750m really? I mean, I'm only rocking an Nvidia GT 555M and I've yet to play a game i cannot play on mid-high graphics. And from what I’ve read, the difference between the two is very miniscule.
I can see what you mean by price, but more powerful? The Toshiba has an i7-4700QM and the Asus a i5 3210M (14 in) or an i7 3630QM (17 in), neither of which surpass the 4700. Although the GPUs in the Asus are alittle stronger. Also, what about battery life? It doesn't have the power saving factor of Optimus and Asus never has been one to have particularly good battery life even without gaming.
Either the way thanks for the suggestion, I'll be sure to show him and see if those prices work better for him.
EDIT: Scratch that on the battery life. Just noticed that the Toshiba only has a 4Cell battery. Optimus is not going to compensate for that. I sent him the links and he decided that the 14in will suit him just fine. Thanks again for the suggestion!
For future reference go to passmark.com for GPU scores. To put things into context I always compare to the GTX 550Ti desktop card. It is a good midrange card. The 550Ti scores 1925 on passmark while the 740m scores 1000 flat. For even more comparison the GTX 770, which I have in my desktop at home, scores 6314.