ALIENWARE 13
Inspiron 15 7000, which offers a quadcore I5-7300HQ, 8GB RAM, and an Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050 Ti in its $850 base configuration.
It’s a lot of muscle for the price. This system can handle today’s games on High at 1080p (in Rise of the Tomb Raider, this Inspiron ran at over 50 fps), and it can definitely play popular titles like League of Legends, Dota 2, Rocket League, CSGO,
Team Fortress 2, and Overwatch.
There’s one catch, however. The launch version of the Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming had a terrible TN panel with extremely bad viewing angles and washed-out colors—our review ( go. pcworld.com/d700) is based on this version. Some of these still are available for purchase (through Dell’s outlet site, for instance), but the version we recommend is the current model that features an IPS display.
BEST PORTABLE GAMING LAPTOP
From $1,149 at go.pcworld.com/d136 Nvidia’s Pascal GPUS haven’t just put the traditional beefy gaming laptops on a par with desktop machines. They’ve also made it so the term “portable gaming laptop” is no longer an oxymoron. Put a Geforce GTX
1060 into a laptop and you have a capable machine that can survive away from a wall socket—and won’t break your back while carrying it, either.
Now, at five pounds, the Alienware 13 is a little heavy for its size—but it’s worth toting around those extra ounces. The model we reviewed ( go.pcworld.com/d136) packs a gorgeous OLED 2560x1440 display, a quad-core i7 processor, and a Vr-capable Nvidia GTX 1060 for flawless 1080p gaming. (Yes, you can play at 2560x1440, too, if you crank down some of the settings…or buy an Alienware Amplifier ( go.pcworld.com/almp) and pop in a beefier video card.)