What to look for in a gaming laptop: Portable power comes at a price
Beyond just the price.
Got your eye on that shiny Alienware M18 laptop? Buying a gaming laptop isn’t as straight forward as it seems. There are many nuances to take note of; with some of them being a little less obvious than others.
With this quick guide, we hope to show you some of the things you need to consider before completing your purchase, even if you’ve never ventured into the realm of buying tech.
Here are a few considerations that we think you should have before you go buying a new gaming laptop:
What to look for in a gaming laptop: How portable do you want it?
Laptops are primarily built for mobility. And with mobility come compromises elsewhere in the machine such as more compact cooling solutions, lower powered components, a significantly reduced ability to upgrade, and most importantly, a higher price to performance ratio. So, ask yourself this, do you really need mobility? If the answer is still yes, then read on!
Get the specifications right for what you need
The most obvious first steps are to look at the specifications of the gaming laptop in question. Does the laptop you want have all the necessary specs you want to run your games at a desired framerate? Let’s break this down a little further.
Laptop components are very often lower powered chips to ensure that it consumes less power and produces less heat. What does this mean to you? So, means that your shiny new laptop RTX 4080 card is going to be slower than its desktop counterpart with some benchmarks indicating about a 45% difference in FPS at 4K. Same goes with the CPU with laptop variants performing slower than their desktop counterparts.
So you could stand for lower performance, what about noise? Gaming laptops are renowned for sounding like a jet taking off during gaming sessions. This is because the system needs to work harder with more compact cooling solutions to remove the heat being generated.
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. With the right specs, you do have the ability to game practically anywhere if there’s a power plug point and Wi-Fi access. A friend is inviting you over for a gaming session. Just bring your gaming laptop with you and you’re all set. No need for a monitor, keyboard, or external audio device. It’s all right there at the tips of your fingers.
Note that gaming laptops are known to further reduce the power of their components when not plugged in to maintain battery life.
