Yet, with attempting to choose one of these can be a stressful time for us, and picking the wrong one could be a costly mistake. So reviewed here are 5 of the top gaming laptops, aimed at all price ranges, so if you haven’t got the money for the majorly overpriced Alienware brand, there’s an option for you to.
Alienware M15x
Most people who know much about gaming laptops will have heard of the Alienware brand, if only due to its reputation of selling high end machines that look pretty damned cool. Obviously, the only problem with selling high end machines is the price tag. Yet, the nice thing, especially with the M15x, is with the price you pay, you definitely get quality.The M15x is designed for gamers who enjoy taking their laptop with them on the move. While still a little on the bulky side (this is probably one of the bulkiest 15” gaming laptops around), it most definitely packs a punch. It is fully customisable on the Alienware website, but their base model is on sale for the price of £1,199. Obviously, this price can fluctuate with add-ons etc, but even their cheapest system will be able to play some of the best games out there.
While the base processor on it is only 1.6GHz, it is an i7 processor, meaning it should easily outperform a lot of the 2.5GHz standard core 2 duo ones out there. It also comes with 3gb of DDR3 RAM, which is still a rarity for a lot of gaming laptops. In terms of the graphics card, it comes with a 512MB Geforce GT240M. There is also the option to increase this to 1GB for a measly sum of £120.
ASUS G70S-7S007C
In terms of value for money, the ASUS G70S-7S007C comes in a little more efficiently for a decent gaming laptop. While slightly more expensive than the base Alienware M15x, in terms of the features you get for the price, it’s well worth considering.Not only do you get two 320GB hard drives, you also get two 512mb GeForce 8700M running with SLI. This sort of graphics power, compared to the M15x is only achievable with a small fortune (around an extra £400) to achieve. Alongside this, you also get 4GB of RAM, 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo and a webcam to top it off.
However, unlike the M15x, this laptop has a 17” monitor, meaning it’ll be a little bulkier to carry around, and while very stylish, not quite so much as the M15x.
ROCK Pegasus 520-T9400
Another contender at our just over a grand mark, is the Rock Pegasus. This laptop is very similar in terms of looks to the Alienware for the same price. It’s another 15” screen, so similar size and weight, but the nice thing about this is, while you don’t have some of the more high profile industry stuff you get on the Alienware laptop,in many ways it’s more powerful.Running a Geforce 9650M GT 1GB card, this gaming laptop packs a whopper of a punch when it comes to some of the latest releases. It should be more than capable of playing games such as Crysis at full throttle with minimal frame lag. In terms of other specs it also has a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive.
MSI GX723-015UK
Obviously, if you’re not made of money, which most people aren’t, you may want to look for a gaming laptop that is severely cheaper than the previous two on our top 5 list. This is where the MSI GX723 comes in. While still expensive, it comes in under the grand mark, at £949.97 and still provides a fantastic deal for your money.There are a few features that you can’t get on the previous two, such as the SLI graphics cards, but this is more than made up for with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M, 512M DDR3 graphics card that comes with it.
In fact, in comparison with the ASUS, there’s not that too much dissimilar between the two gaming laptops apart from that SLI graphics set up. The MSI has a slightly slower processor running at 2.4GHz, although it’s still Core duo. It does have an HDMI port which is a fairly nice touch. Effectively this means you can whack in a HDMI cable from your gaming laptop into your HD TV to use as a massive screen. HDMI also transfers sound as well, so no need to set up extra cabling to play videos through your TV using your laptop.
GRADE A1 - Acer Aspire 6530G Laptop
With the sorts of prices we’ve been looking at before, it’s time to unveil the cheap option, and even if we must sacrifice power for cost, the Acer Aspire 6530G Laptop still provides a decent little laptop that we can play most games on for a cut throat cost of only £449.97.The specs for this low end gaming laptop has a slightly less powerful AMD Turion X2 RM72 processor, running at only 2.1GHz, however it still packs a fairly decent 4GM of RAM, and it comes with Windows 7 preinstalled.
The graphics card on this gaming laptop is an ATI Mobility Radeon with 512mb of memory. Obviously, nowhere near as powerful as our previous contenders, but with a price cut of £500, it’s still a half way decent card. An example of usage would be running something like Crysis on low settings for a decent FPS.
