Gaming Laptops Buyers Guide
Whether you’re a high school student who loves to spend all your free time playing the latest PC games or an adult who just can’t get enough of that realistic first-person shooter game, if you want to be able to enjoy modern video games with the latest 3D graphics there simply isn’t an alternative to buying a gaming notebook. Gaming notebooks are focused on providing a high-performance laptop platform for rendering high-resolution graphics at frame rates that generally exceed 30 frames per second for a real-to-life gaming experience.
Most gaming notebooks come equipped with the fastest processors and the most advanced dedicated graphics cards available for laptops. Sure, you can play solitaire on a budget-priced general purpose notebook, but if you want to play the latest zombie-killing shooter then you need a good processor and even better graphics. Until recently all gaming notebooks were either 17-inch or 15-inch desktop replacement notebooks since high-performance CPUs and the latest graphics cards required massive cooling fans and heatsinks to keep those power-hungry components from overheating. More recently we are starting to see ultraportable gaming notebooks with 11-inch screens that allow you to play cutting-edge games on the road and still have several hours of battery life. Ultraportable gaming notebooks don’t offer the same level of performance as larger gaming notebooks, but these laptops still deliver a more enjoyable gaming experience than a general purpose laptop.
Gaming notebooks usually come equipped with lots of system memory, massive hard drives for storing lots of video games, and sometimes even high-speed Solid State Drives (SSDs) for extremely fast system start up, and even faster loading speeds for games. Prices for gaming notebooks run the range from just under $1,000 to more than $4,000 for some of the custom-built gaming rigs with the latest generation of multi-core processors and graphics cards.
Recent Gaming Laptops Reviews
Review
Alienware 17 Review (2014 Edition)
This iteration of the Alienware 17 features AMD's flagship Radeon R9 M290X graphics card and a quad-core processor at a manageable price point. We see how AMD stacks up to[...] Read full article
Review
Aorus X7v2 Review: Portability Meets Power
Gigabyte updated its popular Aorus X7 with the latest Nvidia GeForce graphics to bring us the all new Aorus X7v2. Take a look at what a new GPU means for[...] Read full article
Review
MSI GT70 Dominator 2PC Review: Bigger is Better
The MSI GT70 Dominator makes the case that bigger is better. This gaming desktop replacement delivers powerful graphics with equally impressive Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and two storage[...] Read full article
Review
Eurocom Shark 3 (Clevo W355SS) Review
This value-oriented 15.6-inch gaming notebook offers powerful Nvidia GTX 860M graphics, an Intel quad-core processor and a beautiful high gamut 1080p screen. Here's our take. Read full article
Review
AVADirect Clevo P157SM-A Review
Carrying the title of the world's fastest 15.6" notebook means packing serious power, like an Nvidia GTX 880M 8GB graphics card. Here’s our teardown. Read full article
Review
Alienware 18 Review (Early 2014 model)
The flagship of Alienware's fleet, the Alienware 18 sports an 18.4" IPS display, factory overclocked Intel Core i7 processor and dual Nvidia graphics cards. Here's our in-depth review of this[...] Read full article
Laptop
Alienware 14
The Alienware 14 is a high-end gaming notebook starting at $1,099. Highlights of this notebook include a customizable LED lighting system and available 1080p display featuring IPS unlimited viewing angle[...] Read full article
Laptop
Lenovo IdeaPad Y510P
Priced well below $2,000 the Y510P offers a competitive performance with its 2.2 GHz Intel fourth generation i7-4702MQ processor, Dual NVidia GT750M GPUs and 16GB of DDR3. With its powerful[...] Read full article
Laptop
Razer Blade Pro
Razer, a company known for its gaming peripherals, has entered the PC market with its Blade gaming notebook computers. The second-gen Blade Pro features a 17.3-inch display and the latest[...] Read full article
Laptop
MSI Computer GT60
The MSI GT60 is a gaming behemoth. This large hulking beast doesn’t offer much in the way of design, but it’s more than happy to make up for that with[...] Read full article
Alienware 17 Review (2014 Edition)
This iteration of the Alienware 17 features AMD's flagship Radeon R9 M290X graphics card and a quad-core processor at a manageable price point. We see how AMD stacks up to[...] Read full article
Aorus X7v2 Review: Portability Meets Power
Gigabyte updated its popular Aorus X7 with the latest Nvidia GeForce graphics to bring us the all new Aorus X7v2. Take a look at what a new GPU means for[...] Read full article
MSI GT70 Dominator 2PC Review: Bigger is Better
The MSI GT70 Dominator makes the case that bigger is better. This gaming desktop replacement delivers powerful graphics with equally impressive Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and two storage[...] Read full article
Eurocom Shark 3 (Clevo W355SS) Review
This value-oriented 15.6-inch gaming notebook offers powerful Nvidia GTX 860M graphics, an Intel quad-core processor and a beautiful high gamut 1080p screen. Here's our take. Read full article
AVADirect Clevo P157SM-A Review
Carrying the title of the world's fastest 15.6" notebook means packing serious power, like an Nvidia GTX 880M 8GB graphics card. Here’s our teardown. Read full article
Alienware 18 Review (Early 2014 model)
The flagship of Alienware's fleet, the Alienware 18 sports an 18.4" IPS display, factory overclocked Intel Core i7 processor and dual Nvidia graphics cards. Here's our in-depth review of this[...] Read full article
Alienware 14
The Alienware 14 is a high-end gaming notebook starting at $1,099. Highlights of this notebook include a customizable LED lighting system and available 1080p display featuring IPS unlimited viewing angle[...] Read full article
Lenovo IdeaPad Y510P
Priced well below $2,000 the Y510P offers a competitive performance with its 2.2 GHz Intel fourth generation i7-4702MQ processor, Dual NVidia GT750M GPUs and 16GB of DDR3. With its powerful[...] Read full article
Razer Blade Pro
Razer, a company known for its gaming peripherals, has entered the PC market with its Blade gaming notebook computers. The second-gen Blade Pro features a 17.3-inch display and the latest[...] Read full article
MSI Computer GT60
The MSI GT60 is a gaming behemoth. This large hulking beast doesn’t offer much in the way of design, but it’s more than happy to make up for that with[...] Read full article