Gaming laptops comes with powerful components, they are built to give you the best performance and wonderful game playing experience. There are lots of brands available like Dell, MSI, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, Acer. Each gaming laptop has different hardware and software specifications, therefore it totally depends on your need, budget, and types of games. You can spend $400- $4000 on gaming laptops depends on your budget. As we know gaming desktop still has no match in-game playing experience but the laptop has its own advantages like portability.
Entry-level gaming laptops are also capable to play some high-end games like The Witcher 3, Assassin’s Creed, Metro Exodus, Grand Theft Auto V, etc. but with lower and medium resolutions. There are a lot of factors that have to be considered before buying a gaming laptop. There are different kind of hardware on the laptop which totally depends on individual budget and need. Therefore we are here providing you detailed information about gaming laptops.
GPU: Graphics card is one of the most crucial parts of a gaming laptop. Every gaming laptop needs a graphic processor unit because It delivers you a lag-free game playing experience. Graphics cards are of two types, integrated and dedicated (discrete). Generally, the integrated graphics card is built into the CPU and uses the inbuilt memory, on the other hand, the dedicated graphics card is a separate unit having its own memory.
Integrated cards are not the best choice for mainstream gamers, if you want to play small games with your day to day work then you can consider an integrated graphics card, otherwise, beast performance is expected from a dedicated GPU. There are two top-notch brands NVIDIA and AMD which are leading manufacturers of powerful graphics cards. There are three categories according to which you can choose the best graphic card for your laptop.
i.) Beginners- If you are new to the gaming world and also searching for an entry-level gaming machine, then you can go with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or AMD RX 570. If you can spend more money, GeForce GTX 1660Ti or AMD RX 5500M are the better options.
ii). Mainstream- There are plenty of options available for mainstream gamers. They can choose NVidia’s GeForce RTX 2060 which is also good for VR streaming or you can go with AMD RX 5700M. Laptops configured with these cards come with a price range of $1200.
iii.) Highest Resolution- These cards give you extraordinary game playing experience, you will also enjoy VR streaming with maximum resolution. In this category, NVidia’s GeForce has three cards RTX 2070, RTX 2080, RTX 2080 Ti. RTX 2080 series of graphics cards is the most powerful series till now. These cards are configured with the most expensive laptops, you need to spent nearly $2000 or more.
Display: Users generally do not care much about the display. They just look at the display size and bezels around the screen, but there are lots of more important factors such as refresh rate of the display, NVIDIA G-Sync, and AMD Free-Sync, Resolution, Glossy/Anti-glare, etc. that you should consider before buying a gaming laptop.
Screen Size- Some gamers prefer a 17-inch display while some gamers are happy with 14-inch screen size. So the size of the display totally depends on an individual choice. Although a 17 inch gives you more enjoyable gaming experience and on the other hand, a 14-inch display gives you more compactness.
Resolution- Full HD or 1920*1080 resolution is the minimum requirement of the gaming laptop. For more crispy and accurate colors you should prefer QHD (2560 x 1440) or UHD 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution. Laptops with UHD resolution are getting popular nowadays. Some gamers choose laptops having 720p resolution, the frames rate may improve with this resolution but colors are faded away.
The display that comes with a glossy finish looks brighter and colors look crispy but the shiny surface gives annoying glare. On the other hand, matt display gives a glare-free experience but the colors are not vibrant. Laptops come with panels that support G-sync and AMD Free-synch provides you anti-ghosting and eliminates unsightly graphics tears.
Keyboard- A good looking keyboard with some extra features further enhance your gaming experience. In an entry-level gaming laptop, you get a chicklet keyboard with a white backlit. When you go further you find a mechanical keyboard having the best key travel. The key travel is how far you down a key while pressing normally key travels 1.5mm in keyboards. But the keyboard with 2mm key depth is considered to be the best keyboard.
There are other parameters like actuation, anti-ghosting, macro keys, RGB backlit, etc. that should be considered before buying a gaming laptop. Actuation is the parameter to measure the amount of force needed to press a key and it should be in the range of 60-70 grams, it gives you comfortable springy bounce. Anti-Ghosting is the feature that allows you to press multi keys at a time for any operation. An RGB backlit led enhances the overall look of the laptop.
CPU- It is considered as the brain of the computer, if the brain is sharp then automatically laptop is powerful. CPU handles everything such as GPU, memory, storage, I/O devices, etc. All the data sent or received by connected devices is processed by the central processing unit. Faster data process speed of CPU implies to the powerful performance of the laptop. The data processing speed is count is called the clock speed of the CPU and it is GHz.
Further to increase the performance there are quad-core, octa-core processors configurations. The combination of these processors embedded in a single chipset. CPU for laptops is manufactured by the two brands Intel and AMD. They make chipset for all kinds of customers. For moderate gaming laptops, we recommend you to go with either Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 3000 series. And for powerful laptops, you can go with the latest generation Intel i7, Intel i9, or AMD Ryzen 4000 series.
RAM and Storage (HDD/SSD)- RAM provides you lag-free multitasking experience. More is the RAM better is the multitasking handling of the laptop. The clock speed (in MHz) of RAM is also matters, it denotes how fast the temporary store data in RAM is accessible by the CPU. For better performance, you can go with RAM of 16GB-64GB with a clock speed in the range of 3200Mhz- 4600Mhz.
SSD storage is far superior to HDD storage in terms of speed, boot time, and the overall performance of the laptop. SSD data transfer speed is a hundred times faster than the HDD data transfer speed. But there is one disadvantage to SSD, it is having gates and capacitor which stores the data. If you do not your laptop for a very long time(more than a year) then there is a possibility that you lose your data due to leakage current flowing in capacitors. The flow of leakage current totally depends on the quality and the designing of the SSD.
Conclusion:
There are lots of other factors such as battery backup, build quality, connectivity ports, and customization, etc. that are also matter while purchasing a gaming laptop. A good gaming laptop totally depends on the budget and needs of gamers. It is your choice what you would expect from your gaming machine.
We hope this guide helps you to get the best gaming laptop for yourself. If you have any concerns about this guide, feels free to write us in the comment section below.
