Size matters, but not like that
What’s the point of high-performance gaming laptops?
I’M NOT A huge fan of traditional gaming laptops. I want them to be good to the extent that I’ve run about 10 of them long-term, but they’ve all disappointed.
However, the last few months have given me a new perspective. It turns out I was using the wrong kind. I covered the excellent Asus ROG Flow X13 a couple of issues back. Now, I’ve had a brief spin with the HP Omen Transcend 14, and I find myself lusting after gaming laptops again.
Both systems share a thin-and-light philosophy. They don’t aim to achieve desktop-like performance. Instead, they look for gaming chops. Those aren’t genuine laptops in my view; they’re portable PCs.
Instead, both the Asus ROG Flow X13 and HP Omen Transcend 14 are lovely devices just as laptops. They’d both be on my radar for a non-gaming device. But then, they throw gaming into the mix, and I’m smitten.
Much of the credit for this has to go to Nvidia. Its latest Ada Lovelace GPU architecture is a huge step up in terms of power efficiency, making decent gaming in an ultra-light form factor possible.
Both laptops are available with up to RTX 4070 Mobile graphics. Okay, that’s not a beast of a GPU, but the hardware specs in terms of shader counts, if not clockspeeds, are beyond an RTX 4060 Ti desktop card.
Speaking of clock speeds, that’s where you see the limitations of the form factor. The Asus has a 60W GPU spec, the HP 65W. That puts a cap on GPU frequencies, so neither of these laptops would be a good choice for maximizing bang for your buck.
But that would miss the point. What matters is getting a nice 1080p gaming experience. They’re more powerful than the latest generation of handheld gaming PCs, but barely any less portable.
They’re also not all that expensive. The Asus can be had with an RTX 4060 for under $1,500, for instance, and it’s only slightly slower than the top-spec version with the 4070. If you ask me, these sub-1.5kg are what mobile gaming is all about.