Gaming laptops suc
Tell me I’m wrong
GAMING LAPTOPS have always sucked in certain ways, such as limited upgradeability, lower performance than a desktop, and painful pricing. OK, a laptop is currently one of the few ways to get hold of a halfdecent GPU at a sensible price. Forking out for a high-end laptop rather ruins crypto returns, so gaming laptop sales generally go to gamers who want to play games.
But when GPU pricing and availability eventually return to normality, gaming laptops will again be poor value in terms of pure performance. But it’s not really those obvious issues that bug me. Over the years, I’ve run something like 10 powerful gaming laptops. It all started when I bought a Dell Inspiron 5000 with a Radeon 7500 Mobility chip circa 2002 or 2003. That 15-inch lump had a 1,600 by 1,200 panel. Playing CounterStrike at native res was actually doable and looked epic. At least, it did back then.
As it happens, that was probably the high point of my laptop adventures. Since then, I’ve bankrolled another three myself. But one benefit of being in the tech media is long-term loans, taking the total to about 10. Without exception, all have been borked.
I won’t name and shame on the basis that every gaming laptop has disappointed. Many impress with their ability to squeeze incredible rendering power into a portable package. That was true back when the Nvidia GeForce 6800 was a thing and the gap between desktop and laptop graphics performance shrank to almost nothing.
Granted, desktop performance tends to degrade a little over time. But every gaming laptop I’ve run long-term has felt seriously strained over time. Sometimes, it was a case of noisier fans. But often, visual artifacting would creep in or, worse, total system hangs.
I’ve taken some apart to no avail, implying the problem wasn’t dirt but perhaps circuit or board strain. Of course, a portable rig takes more knocks. But my spidey sense tells me it’s more the limitations of tight packaging and narrow thermal margins. It’s a recipe for flakiness in the long run.
And in the short term, too. My outgoing portable rig with an RTX 2080 chip doesn’t like outputting to an external display. Change the res and the refresh turns chunky until a full reboot. Not the end of the world, but the kind of niggle I find all too often in laptops. But maybe it’s just me and you have a different take. If so, let rip and tell me I’m wrong.