What are the features you look for in a gaming laptop

I am currently using a Dell XPS 15 and even though it has served me well, I'd like to move on now. So, I'd like your views on what to look for when buying a gaming laptop. The one main feature I am looking for is acceptable battery life, as I am a developer and sometimes it is difficult to find a power outlet.

Games I play are Battlefield, CS:GO and Counterstrike. Also suggestions on good deals are welcome!

 

Silent cooling operation. I don't like it when my laptop fans emit this whirring noise at heavy loads. I've read reviews of certain gaming laptops. They monitor how loud the fans are at heavy loads, some reach 50 decibels which is definitely not pleasant at all. 40 decibels is what I look at, 45 is ok but kinda pushing it.

Matte screen. This is more of a personal preference thing. I just like matte better.

At least a 15-inch screen. Anything below is ok too, but 15 is the sweet spot.

Resolution of course. 1080p is a must.

Battery life not so much, it's not suggested to game with battery only. Batteries normally can't give your gaming laptop enough power for it to run at its full capacity, so more often than not, you'll just experience stuttery gameplay.

The specs depend on the budget of course.

 

Hey thanks for that suggestion! It had not really crossed my mind and I can see how it could be a deal breaker for me. It isn't a big deal for me currently, as I can throttle the fan speed manually, but I'll still look out for it!

 

Sure man no problem!

I also forgot about the storage, although it's under the specs suggestion, I'll give it special attention.

I highly recommend getting an SSD (256gb or 512gb is fine), it is the best thing that happened to storage for the last decade. An SSD would definitely give a huge bump to overall system responsiveness and decrease gaming load times significantly, making your gaming laptop feel really really fast.

Just a heads up to those who'll read this in the future!

 

Don't forget about your IO ports, If you are going to do some serious gaming you obviously won't use a trackpad, you need a proper mouse and perhaps even a proper mechanical keyboard, not to mention joysticks and other accessories so you should be looking for a laptop that has plenty of USB ports. Don't go crazy with your screen size if the actual internal graphics are not going to be able to push that many pixels with a decent frame rate.

 

When ti comes to getting a gaming laptop, I mostly focus the majority of my interest on the graphic power and the hard disk space, also the RAM capacity, mostly that, everything else might be lower but if I am looking for a gaming laptop I would deffinitely care about its power, that is my opinion though.

 

You are absolutely correct, the CPU, GPU, storage are the most important specs you have to look for. It's a given, so nobody will argue with that

Yeah, 1080p is the sweet spot, 4k is pushing it. It's also good to note that mobile GPUs are quite weaker than their desktop counterparts, so don't go looking for benchmarks of desktop GPUs of the "same" model, you can be greatly misled.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, you really rock! Follow up question: as laptops with SSDs are much more expensive than ones without, is the performance increase worth the cost?

 

This is very controversial indeed. I guess it depends on how much money you have. If the price of SSD does not turn you back, then go for it. But for other people, buying SSDs is still impractical given the the price drops.