Steam Help me get into Laptop Gaming

[Scrawnton]

Hello all! I have been a console gamer my entire life; however, I have flirted with PC gaming several times throughout the decades. Weather it be Doom, Duke Nukem, Everquest, or my very strong addiction to World of Warcraft, I have had some good times playing games on PC. I never had a "gaming pc" until around 2017 when I bought a dinky little prebuilt with a 1060. It served me well to jump back into World of Warcraft (I don't play anymore...) and the occasional free Epic Store game; however, I mostly kept PC gaming at arms length. Okay, enough rambling. Let me get to the point of the thread.

Recently I got a new work laptop that the tech guys were nice enough to put Steam on it for me. It is nothing special. All it has is an integrated GPU (Intel Iris EX), but it is enough to play games like Persona 4 Golden, Ys VIII and IX at 60fps, as well as some older games I love to play (like Tales of Symphonia and Little King's Story). It has made me realize how future proof PC gaming is with some of these JRPGs I love to play as well as indie games. I have been having a great time playing these types of games on it. My wife and I are expecting a second child, in which will result in me losing my "man cave" bedroom where my desktop PC is currently set up. We both use the PC, so we agreed to buy a laptop sooner rather than later to fit both of our needs. Her needs in a laptop will be met by my needs as a gaming platform.

I was wondering if anyone here on FamiBoads has experience with laptop gaming as a long term method of gaming and what you think of it's viability. Is it something I should just give up on and stick with playing games on Switch handheld or is the hardware worth the money overall to justify spending nearly $1500 USD on a laptop that can play games very well?

Any anecdotes about laptop gaming would be helpful.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

For a brief while, I had gaming laptops as my primary gaming PC. I won't be doing that again.

Under normal circumstances (i.e. not nowadays with the shortages) you're paying way more for the same or worse performance as a desktop PC, but my biggest issue was upgrading. Other than the CPU and RAM, you can't really upgrade the average laptop. That means if you want to keep up, you'll likely have to buy a whole new laptop each time, whereas if you own a desktop, you can easily replace the parts one by one as time goes on. Usually a simple GPU upgrade is all you need for a whole new lease of life but that's (mostly) out of the question with a laptop.

My current PC is a self-built small form factor desktop PC. I feel good now knowing that I can just upgrade parts when I feel it's necessary instead of having to buy a whole new computer.

Finally, I also had major issues with heat with my last laptop. That thing used to get so hot, you could probably fry an egg on it. No joke. It made it very uncomfortable to play at times.

 

[Pandora]

Hi! Last year I got a Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 and have been really impressed by it and as far as I can tell for my personal use case should be fine for me for most of this gen. I feel getting into laptop gaming really depends on circumstances. I think it's absolutely worth it if you are in the market for a laptop anyways. For me personally I was in the need of a new laptop for various reasons and a lot of gaming laptops are in the range of some of the more high end use laptops that one may need for certain work or if you want something high quality anyways. It obviously has its setbacks, primarily it can get real hot, but for my use case I primarily use it with a controller and have other wireless accessories as well. For me also I just can't care to have a Desktop PC, I don't care about performance and they just take up too much space for me. I feel if you want a laptop just to play a few things not available on switch and are satisfied with 1080p-1440p gaming, a gaming laptop is a worthy investment especially if you're buying a new laptop anyways.

 

[AndroidOS]

I think it depends on what type of games you want to play. If you just want to continue playing games similar to those you've mentioned, you're probably fine getting a gaming laptop - the Asus Nitro 5 used to be what I would recommend, but there might be better options that someone could suggest.

If you want to start playing more demanding games, however, I'd personally recommend against getting a laptop; as Jaded Alyx said, upgrading starts to become a problem. Depending on how much you spend, the GPU in the laptop may quickly become underpowered for modern games and once that happens, you're pretty much stuck - it almost certainly wouldn't be possible to upgrade the GPU like it would be in a desktop. You could possibly get around this by using an external GPU, but by that point you probably need a desk too (otherwise there'd be nowhere to put the eGPU!), which it sounds like you're trying to avoid.

 

[Scrawnton]

My good friend told me my money would be best spent getting a new desktop and playing it hooked up on my TV and just stick with my work laptop to play smaller games on the side when using the desktop isn't feasible.

 

[Imitatio]

I'd only get a gaming laptop if you need the mobility. I take my laptop with me to work and don't want two devices for the same use case, so instead of putting my money towards a better desktop and a laptop for work, I bought a gaming laptop instead, combining the two aspects. It works really, really well for me, but I'm also not hugely into pushing graphics. 1080p for more demanding titles with low to high settings, depending on the game's age, makes me happy already.

If you don't need the mobility at all, then yeah, you're definitely better off buying a desktop and upgrading. Using it on a TV shouldn't be much of an issue either, given Steam Big Picture works really well for that as well. It still can't 100% replicate a home console experience, though. I've tried doing so myself a few times already, and can't say I found it quite as convenient, even if it's close at this point.

 

[Ahmed]

I'm planning to get a gaming laptop as well. But mostly because I'll need it for work. I have a 17" laptop now, but it's already pretty old (nearing 7 years now) and really heavy. I need the portability and power to run software for work, and thought to throw in some extra money to let me play games on it was well.

Since I don't really care about the majority of AAA (western) games that focus on graphics, I can get away with a laptop that's not as good as the latest desktop gpu's. And since gpu prices are still very high, I don't want to build a pc.

I don't have the experience with gaming laptops, but to answer your question: if you're getting a gaming laptop purely to play games on it, then I would check out a pc instead. If you can get the same performance for a similar price point, I would go with a pc since you can upgrade it along the way. If you need a laptop anyway, or really want to be able to take it with you then I would get a gaming laptop.