Help me pick a portable gaming laptop. ($1000-$1500)

[Pablo Diaz]

I recently got a new job that unfortunately (fortunately?) requires travelling quite frequently. I'd like to game while on the road or on airplanes. But the thing is, I want to do that while NOT looking like a teenager; that is, I don't want the laptop to look like a supercar.

I'd prefer an i7 and a 970. (or stronger) GPU. I'd love it if it had a reasonable battery life while gaming (2 hour flight maybe?) I'll be buying it in the US. My screen preference is about 15" since I want portability. I would like for it to play mainstream games (Witcher 3, MGSV, Fallout 4,etc) at 50-60 fps on high/ultra. 1080p is fine. An important thing to consider is that I dont want it to look like an alien. I'd prefer if it has a sleek, black design.

I was thinking about the SAGER NP8657-S but maybe you guys know more models and can recommend me a better product. Thanks!

 

[Walter Garcia]

Hi Pablo,

I think you should go for Alienware 17 R3 Laptop, which comes with Intel's new 6th-gen Core i7 CPU and Nvidia's 980M graphics to its leading 17-inch gaming laptop. You still get Alienware's signature spaceship-inspired case, tons of customizable lights and a comfy keyboard. 17.3-inch screen. At 16.93 x 11.49 x 1.35 inches and 8.3 pounds, the Alienware 17 is actually thinner than many other premium gaming notebooks. Alienware 17 featuring an Intel Core i7-6820HK CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD and 1TB HDD. When it came to storage speed Alienware 17's 512GB SSD posted a transfer rate of 508.96 MBps. Alienware makes good use of the 17's ample chassis by featuring three USB 3.0 ports, HDMI 2.0, SD card reader, Ethernet, discrete headphone and mic jacks, and new for 2016, a USB-C port with Thunderbolt 3. That means you can send video to multiple 4K displays using a single port, or transfer data to and from an external storage device at up to 40 Gbps. R3 offers strong battery life, it lasted 6 hours and 7 minutes on our battery test, which consists of continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi at 100 nits of brightness.

Configurations:
The Alienware 17 R3 starts at pretty reasonable $1,500 for an Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU, 8GB of RAM, 1TB HDD and an Nvidia GeForce 970M GPU with 3GB of vRAM. But if you want to push it to the max like our $2,750 review unit, you can load up a 17 with an Intel Core i7-6820HK CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, 1TB HDD and an Nvidia 980M GPU with 8GB of vRAM. Then there's the optional graphics amp, which costs $300 for just the box, as well as the $200 to $1,200 you'll need to spend on a desktop-level GPU.

Regards,
Walter Garcia

 

[CasualGoofy]

As you did mention you don't want it be alien, sager of course would be absolutely cool.

An alternative would be customizing your laptop http://www.ibuypower.com/

The casing look fairly simple instead of the more stylized alienware.

 

[aztrix]

I just bought a Sager NP8657-S through XOTIC PC on Amazon after considerable research and highly recommend this machine, brushed black metal case looks great and definitely doesn't look like it came out of a lucky packet. The main reason I settled for the NP8657-S after considering MSI, Alienware, Dell, etc. was the flexible upgrade options available which is rarely the case for laptops. They are currently offering a free upgrade to 32 GB RAM for free which is a great bonus too, see link below:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BLPL8LC?psc=1

Good luck with your purchase.

Cheers
Aztrix

 

[IBMPC8088]

Even though I'm not normally a "Dell" fan or use systems for gaming, I did briefly own an Alienware 17 R3 4175SLV and it had some impressive hardware on it for 2016. Dual hard drives with 1 being a 256GB SSD and the other a 1TB SATA drive at 7200rpm, and DDR4 ram at 2133MHZ instead of DDR3. It's definitely a great laptop and a contender with the ASUS ROG series which also has excellent hardware specs, and can go up to 32GB of ram on it (not sure if that's for DDR3 or new DDR4 spec, though). The Asus is easier to carry; the Dell Alienware is definitely a desktop replacement and a lot heavier than a standard laptop, so you're usually going to run into having to carry a heavier laptop around if you want all the power and then some of a desktop for a gaming system right now.