Light-Gaming-Capable Laptop without Discrete GPU?

[jdelphiki99]

I'm a college student looking for a portable laptop with good battery life that is capable of light gaming (hearthstone, League of Legends on low/medium settings). It must NOT have a discrete gpu (reason in spoiler), so most likely I'm looking at an intel processor with iris graphics, or perhaps a high-end amd.

Spoiler

I run Linux exclusively (Hearthstone and League of Legends, through wine). Dealing with optimus technology is a pain, and requires me to install nonfree drivers on my computer, which I dislike.

I am capable of sorting through many options and making a decision. However, I am having trouble *finding* laptops with decent integrated graphics that do not also have a discrete gpu. Therefore, I am looking for any and all suggestions that meet these criteria:

Must-haves:
- NO discrete gpu
- Capable of light gaming (Hearthstone, League of Legends on low-med settings)
- Good build quality
- Good battery life (4+ hours) and cool during light use; I will plug in and use a cooling pad when gaming.
- 14 inch screen, 1600x900 resolution. Willing to consider 13-15" if all other criteria are met.
- Price: sub-2000 usd. Interested at looking at more expensive models for comparisons, though.
- <6 lbs

Nice-to-haves:
- Price: sub-1500 usd
- <5 lbs, the lighter the better.
- HD+ display (for daily use - the crispness is nice - not gaming)

 

[Calculagator]

Sounds to me like a macbook pro retina 13 would fit most of your qualifications quite well. They have the iris graphics, good battery life, are reasonably portable, have good screens, and fit easily into your budget-especially with a student discount.
Like any laptop, they may require some extra work to get linux working well, but you can run linux via bootcamp just fine.

 

[Calculagator]

The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition is also apparently a very nice laptop that fits your requirements. It can be purchases with ubuntu linux pre-installed.
http/www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

 

[jaguarskx]

If you want the most powerful integrated graphic core in a $1500 or less laptop, then I recommend the 13" Macbook Pro which come with the i5-5275U (2.7GHz) which has the Intel HD 6100 graphics core. I do not know of any Windows based laptop that uses that CPU. Most current generation Windows laptops relying only on integrated graphics will only have the Intel HD 5500.

The Intel HD 6100 is considered to be equal to a GeForce GT 820m. They are probably around 20% more powerful than the Intel HD 5500 but that varies depending on the specific game.