"Gaming" Laptop recommendations for 10 yr old?

lfitz

Honorable
Jan 19, 2014
1
0
10,510
My 10 year old son is into mild gaming (Minecraft, WOW, Wizard 101, etc).

Didn't want to spend a lot, so purchased off lease Lenovo M58 desktop (Intel Core 2 duo 3.0Ghz w/ 2GB RAM, 160GB HD) for $150 & added old ASUS 6570 1GB graphics card). Worked fine for 10 days and now whines & shuts down when playing WOW. Taking it back.

I still think I should get him a desktop & upgrade the GPU - but he has his heart set on the mobility of a laptop.

Any suggestions? Keep in mind he's only 10 & budget is tight! Will need to factor in roughly $80 add'l for laptop accidental damage. So high end budget is $550 w/ tax out the door. Might be willing to go higher if would last longer.

Thanks for your input! Here are the models I'm considering. Open to suggestions for others.

Lenovo IdeaPad U410
Intel Dual-Core i5-3317U
6 GB RAM (8 GB Max)
NVIDIA GeForce 610 M 1 GB
750 GB HD
$449.99

Lenovo G500 15.6"
Intel Dual-Core i5-3230M
4 GB RAM (8 GB Max)
Intel HD Graphics 4000
500 GB HD
$399.99

Lenovo G505 15.6”
AMD Quad-Core A6-5200
4 GB RAM (?? GB Max)
AMD Radeon HD 8400
500 GB HD
$379.99


 
Solution
Hey

The first one is what would I choose.
It's the newest from all 3, looks like a mac a bit tho, very thin and smexy looking, also with most performance!

G500 is a bit old, they even canceled the selling in my country *best pc shop in my country
G505 is newer, but minecraft is a very RAM hungry game ( with mods and so on ), 6 GB's will work very well with minecraft wich U410 offers. :)

Aaaaand it has the best graphics card.
Go for Lenovo IdeaPad U410

RulesSpew

Honorable
Dec 26, 2013
12
0
10,570
Hey

The first one is what would I choose.
It's the newest from all 3, looks like a mac a bit tho, very thin and smexy looking, also with most performance!

G500 is a bit old, they even canceled the selling in my country *best pc shop in my country
G505 is newer, but minecraft is a very RAM hungry game ( with mods and so on ), 6 GB's will work very well with minecraft wich U410 offers. :)

Aaaaand it has the best graphics card.
Go for Lenovo IdeaPad U410
 
Solution