How to Buy a Gaming Laptop: A Guide for 2021

Posted by Arslan Yousaf on January 29th, 2021

Although the desktop remains the top for many PC gamers, you need something a little bit more portable often. A laptop is a gaming device on the go that allows you to play games of one size with you.

But you're not just looking at specs when you buy a gaming laptop. You look at an entire computer, with an integrated keyboard and monitor. Here, we explain all the choices you need to make when you buy a laptop for games so that you get the best for your needs and budget.

Quick Tips

• Get a decent GPU: GPU relies on most games and you won't be able to upgrade them to laptops. A strong GPU ensures that for a few years your laptop plays high-settings games.
• Consider upgrading afterward: Several, but not all, laptops allow you to upgrade your RAM and storage.
• Choose resolution or speed: The fastest screens, up to 360 Hz, can now only be viewed at 1920 x 1080, so the 4K screen is slower.
• Get a nice keyboard: you don't want anything mushy or rigid to play your games.
• Battery life is likely to be bad: very few game notebooks are charged for 8 or more hours, so you need the power to produce the best results anyway.

What GPU are you looking for?

Although some CPU games are used, most games still have GPU connections, so this is one of the main choices you make when you buy a gaming notebook. Most gaming notebooks are currently supplied with Nvidia GeForce GTX or RTX GPUs.

The newest cards in the range are the RTX 30 series, ranging from the RTX 3060 Max-Q to the RTX 3080. The range of Radeon RX 5000M, consisting of the RX 5500M for budget systems, and the RX 5600M and RX 5700M for higher performance, are available on the AMD front. We believe, however, that a new line of discrete AMD GPUs will hit laptops later this year.

What about the life of the battery?

The short response is that your gaming notebook is not super compact.

If you use your laptop to play games, you have to plug in your laptop to get your full GPU out of results. And if you don't, if your laptop lasts an hour of gambling, you're lucky. 

In our testing experience, many gaming laptops only take a few hours for other activities, but never as long as they are ultraportable without a discrete GPU. If you need to work for 8 hours, it will not be a gaming notebook.

Some last long, but always at the cost of the show, and all your games don't want to play on a dark screen, faint or wrong.

Conclusion

When you purchase a game notebook, get one that lasts a few years. If you can afford it, get a mid-range to high-end GPU, although a better card would have better performance. 

The option is more important than RAM and the CPU, but you should also be careful. Space is best upgradeable, but it is better because games take up plenty of room. 

Decide if you prefer high resolutions or faster displays and think which apps will support you, but know that you will not be able to live with a large battery. How everybody works together decides how well a gaming notebook on the hardware test bench of Tom is finished.