the contenders

Asus ROG GX800VH

The Asus ROG GX800VH has extreme power needs, which requires a pretty extreme airflow system. Dock it with its liquidcooling base and you’ll unlock the full potential of this behemoth, with automatic overclocking of its innards. It’ll serve all your highend 4K gaming needs wherever you go – but bring the charger.

Acer Predator 17X

Acer’s Predator 17X gaming laptop might not be the easiest thing to throw in a bag, but this machine is totally decked out, with a quad-core i7 processor, a whopping GeForce GTX 1080 GPU and 32GB of RAM. You also get a luxuriously large wrist rest and a fully customisable keyboard, with multi-coloured backlighting.

Omen by HP 17T Gaming

The HP Omen 17 may look unassuming, but it’s packed with plentiful performance. It comes with a dream spec list, including a 17-inch 4K display, super-fast i7 6700HQ processor, and a VR-ready Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card. It smashes through games at 4K resolution too. It’s a hell of an all-rounder.

MSi GT83VR 7RF TITAN SLI

£5,000. This is how much you’ll need to lay your hands on MSi’s 18.4-inch flagship gaming laptop. So naturally, it’s nigh-on the most powerful portable machine in the world, thanks to twin Nvidia 1080 cards working together in SLI, packing a combined 16GB of VRAM. It’s a ridiculous machine – our favourite kind.

Alienware 15

Dell’s Alienware 15 narrowly misses out on the top spot, but make no mistake – this is a serious PC. Aside from the LED lights that seem to emanate from every gap, there are no superfluous design details here; it’s simply been built to exacting standards, and with more power than you’ll ever need.