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I've been looking at gaming laptops and would like some opinions.

PopetherevXXVIII

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I think it's time to slowly start to transition to PC. I'm buying more and more games digitally and it just seems like where I should be heading.

So here are the ones I'm looking at one is out of my price range the other two I'm torn between. I think I know what I want but I thought I'd ask for some opinions before I make this rather large investment.


The beast with non existent battery life

Better screen and battery life, Not sure on the Graphics card

What I really want but it's out of my price range.
 

Arcadia

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I'd go with the first one, seeing as neither of them has a long battery life anyway. You just won't see that in gaming PC's this size.

If battery life and mobility is important, you'll have to go down in size. There are decent laptops 14" now, with 120Hz+, powerful Ryzen CPU, and RTX GPU's in this price range.

Me though, I'm waiting for the RTX 30 series to find their way into laptops. But that may take a while.
 

la-li-lu-le-lo

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Do you specifically need a laptop? Like, do you think you'll be using it in other places besides your home? If not, then I'd say you should build a desktop, since the result will be much cheaper and/or more powerful than a comparable laptop. Also, like Arcadia said, regardless of whether you're getting a laptop or desktop, it'd be a good idea to wait until the RTX 3000 series is available in whatever form factor you want. The first desktop cards are supposed to be available later today.
 

GoTeamScotch

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The Sager seems to be more gamer-oriented. The gfx card is slightly better, the screen is higher refresh rate, and it's cheaper too. It's also much thicker, which means you'll notice it more carrying it around. It has a dekstop Ryzen CPU in it, which may be overkill depending on what you're using it for. You definitely don't need a 12-core CPU to play most games out there. The Asus has a slightly higher resolution display and it's also geared towards creators, so expect better color reproduction and picture quality on the screen. If you're going purely from what's a better gaming machine, the Sager seems the better option. I personally have had good experiences with Asus laptops and am not as familiar with Sager. I also like the look of the Asus. I would expect the Asus to be a little more polished with less rough edges (both figuratively and literally). Objectively, the Sager has better specs but I personally would prefer the Asus. That's also because I do graphics design on my laptop, so a good screen is important for me personally. It depends on what you're going to be using it for really. Sager = slightly better gaming experience, Asus = good overall experience.

I was shopping for a laptop last year (Oct 2019) and spent a long while looking into different options and landed on the Aero 17 by Gigabyte. I have been extremely happy with it. All-metal build, small bezels, very compact, and reasonably powerful. Link: Aero 17. Their Aorus line is very similar, just geared more towards gamers rather than creators.
 

PopetherevXXVIII

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There are 4 things I'm doing, Game development, You Tube videos, Music Production and actual gaming. I don't really have room for a desktop PC and I'll probably be working in different parts of the house anyway due to my unique living situation.

I am leaning towards the sager because I think it might be slightly more future proofed. If I could get that Asus with a Ryzen that's probably what I'd be getting.
 

GoTeamScotch

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Food for thought- The asus has a thunderbolt port, which gives you the option of getting an external GPU years down the line once desktop RTX cards come down in price and you want an upgrade (w/out getting a whole new laptop).
 

PopetherevXXVIII

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Food for thought- The asus has a thunderbolt port, which gives you the option of getting an external GPU years down the line once desktop RTX cards come down in price and you want an upgrade (w/out getting a whole new laptop).

The Asus having a Metal build is a mark in the plus column the 2060 and the i7 is a mark in the minus column.

The Sager seems close to a PS5 which This laptops is a stand in for (and Hey it can play upscaled legacy PlayStation games.....)

I wouldn't have this problem if I had the room for a PC Tower. But If I start DJing I'll need to take this with me anyway.
 

FamilyGuy

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There are 4 things I'm doing, Game development, You Tube videos, Music Production and actual gaming. I don't really have room for a desktop PC and I'll probably be working in different parts of the house anyway due to my unique living situation.

I am leaning towards the sager because I think it might be slightly more future proofed. If I could get that Asus with a Ryzen that's probably what I'd be getting.
Sffpc then? You could build something very small and easy to move from room to room and get a better bang/buck.

Gaming laptops are really only a good idea for rich people or people traveling all the time.
 

la-li-lu-le-lo

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Even if you specifically need a laptop, I still think it'd be wise to wait until laptops with Ampere-based graphics become available. You shouldn't have to wait long for that (unless there are shortages) - so I don't see what reason you would have not to wait, unless you're really in a hurry to get a new PC for some reason. I've been thinking about building a new PC myself for quite a while, but I've decided to wait for now, possibly until Intel's next gen of desktop CPUs is announced.
 

FamilyGuy

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4K, which I guess mean 60Hz.
Not to say that a 4K laptop screen isn't exactly a good investment. At that size, 1440 is more than enough not to notice pixels. Even 1080 would be good honestly. Shift the budget elsewhere.
 

Flash

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You don't need 4k in 15-17 inch laptops for games, even rare 19 inch ones. To really see the difference between 4k and 1080p you need 32 inch screen. At least 25+. The only real reason to have 4k display in a laptop is if you'll be editing 4k videos on it so you won't have to deal with downsampling.

For games it's just more resources used, more heat and problems with interface being too small in some games. I have two 17 inch laptops side by side, just ran the same game at once (Street Fighter V with highest possible settings) on 1080p and 4k one and i don't see any difference at all from the normal distance for playing games.

Same for seeing individual pixels. Yes, you can see them if you'll get so close to the screen that your nose will be almost touching it. But... you can see them on 4k display also. But you won't be using any computer like this.

Also if you have a 1080p laptop with GTX1080 or higher you'll be able to run 90% of modern games with high/max settings. And when you'll really need 4k - just connect external monitor.


Also - don't go for all that no bezel marketing blah-blah. The thicker it is the better, also thick lid that doesn't bend is always better - for gaming/workstation laptop you don't need it to be ultra thin and lightweight, you need it to be durable, have good cooling and last for 5-7 years for those 1500-5000+ bucks you'll be spending on it.
 

PopetherevXXVIII

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I'm leaning towards this one.


The power it's packing should last me a while. I'm trying to decide between more storage or more ram. Get a 2 tb SSD or get 64gb of ram and use external storage.

Even if you specifically need a laptop, I still think it'd be wise to wait until laptops with Ampere-based graphics become available. You shouldn't have to wait long for that (unless there are shortages) - so I don't see what reason you would have not to wait, unless you're really in a hurry to get a new PC for some reason. I've been thinking about building a new PC myself for quite a while, but I've decided to wait for now, possibly until Intel's next gen of desktop CPUs is announced.

Currently I'm sharing a computer with family members and everyone is hogging it so I'm working off a shitty phone I can't do anything on. I can't get any work done so I absolutely need a computer. Waiting would just drive me into further madness.
 

FamilyGuy

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I'm leaning towards this one.


The power it's packing should last me a while. I'm trying to decide between more storage or more ram. Get a 2 tb SSD or get 64gb of ram and use external storage.



Currently I'm sharing a computer with family members and everyone is hogging it so I'm working off a shitty phone I can't do anything on. I can't get any work done so I absolutely need a computer. Waiting would just drive me into further madness.
Sager laptops are typically easy to upgrade, so you should check whether it's cheaper to take the smaller amount of SSD and upgrade yourself. You very likely don't need 64GB of RAM¹, buy groceries with that money instead.

Again, you'd get a much better computer and screen with an SFFPC desktop for that price though.



¹ I use a 128GB ram system for research and a rarely use over 32 GB, even when doing complex data processing of petabytes of data over more than 64 logical cores. My advice would be to either get 16 or 32 GB and work for a few weeks while monitoring the usage. If your usage is frequently over 90%, then you could upgrade.



[EDIT]

To really see the difference between 4k and 1080p you need 32 inch screen. At least 25+.
I use two 24" 1200p 16:10 screens, at a reasonable distance of 2 to 3 feet from my eyes, for work/programming, and a higher resolution would be useful too get crisper smaller text for less important stuff. I'm lucky to have good eyesight though. But if I'm playing games, I can't notice the pixels all. My point is that high DPI is more relevant for productivity than gaming.

We'll be getting a 32" 4K screen soon though, and I can't wait to put vim fullscreen on that bad boy.
 
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PopetherevXXVIII

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This is what I ended up with A Sager with these specs

  • AMD Ryzen 9 3900 Processor ( 12 Cores, 70MB Gamecache, 3.1GHz )
  • 15.6" Full HD 144Hz, Wide View Angle 72% NTSC Matte Display (1920x1080)
  • 30 days No Dead Pixel Guarantee
  • NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 GPU with 8GB GDDR6 Video Memory
  • Stock Standard Thermal Compound
  • Windows® 10 Pro 64-Bit Edition Preinstalled [+$35.00]
  • 32GB Dual Channel DDR4 SDRAM at 3200MHz - 2 X 16GB
  • 1TB WD Blue SN550 M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD
  • 2TB WD Blue SATA3 Solid State Disk Drive [+$250.00]
  • Killer Dual Band Wireless-AX 1650X M.2 Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Module
 

Flash

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15.6" Full HD 144Hz, Wide View Angle 72% NTSC Matte Display (1920x1080)
Wording like that always makes me suspicious that they are trying hard to hide two letters - "TN". And i'm not a huge fan of TN displays - even if modern more expensive ones got much wider horizontal viewing angles and better colors, vertical ones are still not that great, like if you just want to lean back on your chair you often need to adjust the screen angle. On other hands when it comes strictly to gaming TNs are a little faster than IPS.

Other than that it looks like very decent laptop.
 

PopetherevXXVIII

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if the screen is a disaster I could always get a monitor, there's an HDMI out and what not.
 

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