Advice please on a gaming laptop

tiernsee

My son (15y) currently has a Toshiba Satellite Pro but wants to upgrade as it is incredibly sluggish and won't play the games he wants. He has saved up some money but when we started searching for a "gaming laptop" both of us were surprised at the prices.
I would really welcome some advice as I am not a computer expert. What he is after is (in order):
Good graphics card - the system we are currently looking at is a Novatech machine with an Nvidia GT 650M card
Fast processor - he wants an i5 or i7 and would prefer an i5 with a faster speed over a slower i7 (is this sensible)? The above machine has an i5 with 2.5 GHz processor
RAM - preferably 8MB as the Novatech has
Hard disk drive - minimum 500GB (he is looking at above machine with 1TB)
The price for the system he is interested in is £725, I have no idea if this is good for the spec or if we could get better for the money. He has saved really hard for this (some will be his Christmas present) so I'd like to make sure he gets the best he can and I really would welcome some expert Techie moneysaving suggestions! Many thanks

Darksun

Consider whether he really needs a laptop. You will get much more bang for your buck if you go for a desktop machine, only get a laptop if portability is absolutely essential

Notmyrealname

£725 is cheap for a gaming laptop. As Darksun has said, he would be better going for a desktop. You could build a gaming desktop for a lot less. Building a computer is not hard and he would get some additional satisfaction and skills from doing it.

BottomRung

Also look on the Dell Outlet site at the XPS range of laptops. Reasonable spec for the prices when I was looking but opted for an Alienware laptop at horrendous prices. They are generally customer returns on there so go for good prices.

Herzlos

Darksun wrote: »

Consider whether he really needs a laptop. You will get much more bang for your buck if you go for a desktop machine, only get a laptop if portability is absolutely essential

What he said; You could get a desktop with a similar spec for half of the money, and it'll be a lot better for playing games on, as well as more upgradeable in a few years when the games need higher specs again.

I get that PC's are uncool now and that everyone wants laptops, but if he doesn't need the portability it's worth considering.