Decent Gaming / All rounder Laptop up to £800

motorguy

Whilst my trusty old laptop is doing its job just fine its getting rather long in the tooth, and as i travel a lot with my job and find myself in hotels on weeknights i'm pondering a decent spec laptop on which i can play games.

I've an xbox one at home and we get a fair bit of use out of it but i've never really been in to PC games before.

A couple that spring to mind are an Alienware 13 OR an MSI Ghost?

Are they worth the extra over and above a decent ish mid range laptop at say £400-500?

Has anyone any other suggestions?

Gavin78

Try http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

jaydeeuk1

If you're happy with a mid range laptop capable of playing most games at mid settings you won't get better than this for the price. OOS at the moment, hopefully more will come in next week (I'm considering getting one, only display model in store near me). 5th gen i5 and 840m, I'd probably swap out the HD for an SSD and it will fly.

£499

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/lenovo-flex-2-pro-15-6-2-in-1-black-10106837-pdt.html?gclid=Cj0KEQjwkv-rBRDwoMLav-2l9KIBEiQAUTkDU2QlsCAn_fxLpPj1ouTWZh1xjzoFYND3o-i6_4s5shYaAgmg8P8HAQ&srcid=198&cmpid=ppc~gg~~~Exact&mc!!!!!gg_goog_7904&s_kwcid=AL!3391!3!70196847500!!!g!102866984420!&ef_id=VW2nbAAABIECuSzF:20150616112116:s&awc=1598_1434579970_7765ddbf7b66e4e5b303d13b03412ddc&srcid=369&xtor=AL-11&cmpid=aff~HotUKDeals~Communities%20%26%20UGC&istCompanyId=9a35962d-802d-4e67-9721-0a3328ca1f02&istItemId=qqpxmxaa&istBid=t

Spotted on hotukdeals. Its the pro version too which is much much better than the standard one judging by reviews.

You could spend £1000+ on a gaming laptop which will be hot, noisy, heavy, uncomfortable, bad for your posture, poor battery life (you'd need it plugged in to mains for best performance) and poor resale value.

Also the new skylake processors will be released in Aug/Sept, which either means bargain priced 5th gen kit, or the 6th gen stuff lives up to its hype and blows the 5th gen apart in performance/watt.

Gavin78

I configured one from the link I gave, comes with

Optimus Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4720HQ (2.60GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo)

8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

750GB WD SCORPIO BLACK WD7500BPKX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 16MB CACHE (7200 rpm)

GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1525 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 4.0

ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Quote Value: £908.00

Comes with the standard windows 8.1 or you can have win 7, inc the usual dvd drive and I think this particular laptop can hold 2 HD's

Gavin78

I have the same laptop but got mine last year so the case design is a little different and mine doesn't have a back lit keyboard or the 960m

Mine has a 2.5ghz i7 and an 860m

gonzo127

do you need a 750gb hard drive if its primarily for gaming on the go? would a 250gb hard drive do just for windows and games? if so a SSD would be much better, just thinking windows and basic programs upto 40gb then gives 150gb for games (need a little bit of free space to allow the SSD to function at its best)

also do you need 17.3 inch screen? the 15.6 will save quite a bit of weight and cost to put into other areas

also wireless, nice to have top of the range, but if you are using it in hotels etc, you will be limited to their broadband and wireless speed, which i very much doubt will ever get close to saturating a top speed wireless card, i doubt it will saturate a basic one if i am honest!

Proteus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4720HQ (2.60GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo)
8GB KINGSTON SODIMM DDR3 1600MHz
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M - 2.0GB DDR5
250GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N CARD INC. BLUETOOTH 3.0

£815

you can upgrade to the gtx970 which takes it to £930

or change to a 500gb normal hdd and add a 240gb mssd which takes it to £867 or just bump upto a 480gb SSD for £863

grumpycrab

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

If you're happy with a mid range laptop capable of playing most games at mid settings you won't get better than this for the price. OOS at the moment, hopefully more will come in next week (I'm considering getting one, only display model in store near me). 5th gen i5 and 840m, I'd probably swap out the HD for an SSD and it will fly.

£499

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/lenovo-flex-2-pro-15-6-2-in-1-black-10106837-pdt.html?gclid=Cj0KEQjwkv-rBRDwoMLav-2l9KIBEiQAUTkDU2QlsCAn_fxLpPj1ouTWZh1xjzoFYND3o-i6_4s5shYaAgmg8P8HAQ&srcid=198&cmpid=ppc~gg~~~Exact&mc!!!!!gg_goog_7904&s_kwcid=AL!3391!3!70196847500!!!g!102866984420!&ef_id=VW2nbAAABIECuSzF:20150616112116:s&awc=1598_1434579970_7765ddbf7b66e4e5b303d13b03412ddc&srcid=369&xtor=AL-11&cmpid=aff~HotUKDeals~Communities%20%26%20UGC&istCompanyId=9a35962d-802d-4e67-9721-0a3328ca1f02&istItemId=qqpxmxaa&istBid=t

Back in stock. Good deal.

Fightsback

motorguy wrote: »

Whilst my trusty old laptop is doing its job just fine its getting rather long in the tooth, and as i travel a lot with my job and find myself in hotels on weeknights i'm pondering a decent spec laptop on which i can play games.

These days the TVs in most hotels have HDMI input so you can plug the laptop into the TV removing the need for a 17inch screen, just shove a decent length HDMI cable in the bag.

jaydeeuk1

Fightsback wrote: »

These days the TVs in most hotels have HDMI input so you can plug the laptop into the TV removing the need for a 17inch screen, just shove a decent length HDMI cable in the bag.

You'll find you'll need to take it out of 'hotel mode' on a lot of them

motorguy

Thanks for the responses.

Just to update the thread, I had a look at the FLEX machine, but it seems to be out of stock everywhere now on PCWorlds site at that price.

I had a look at the Dell Outlet for both XPS machines and Alienware 13s.

There was an Alienware 13 with the following spec on Dell Outlet :-

5th Generation Intel® Core™ i5 Processor
Windows 8.1
8GB Memory
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 960M with 2GB GDDR5

with the following upgrades:-

13 inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS-Panel Anti-Glare 350-nits Display
1TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gb/s HDD

which overall would take it to £1050. Got it for £690 delivered which seems like good value.

Due to arrive here in 10 days or so - Dell arent the quickest at posting.

RAM seems upgradeable if i wanted to take it 16GB at some point and i could swap out the 1TB drive at some point and fit a SSD drive.

carsong

Get something with at least a 4GB graphics card. should work with today's generation of games. Hp and Lenovo are the best options for laptop buyers