Looking for powerful but physically small-ish laptop

Poll

Estimable
May 29, 2014
2
0
4,510
Ill fill out these questions first:

1. What is your budget?
£950 soft cap, £1100 is absolute maximum.=

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
14-15.6"
3. What screen resolution do you want?
1080p
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Needs to be portable, so something< 2.6kg (ideally), and dimensions for 15.6 inch need to be on the smaller end of the spectrum

5. How much battery life do you need?
4 hours+

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
I play games casually, a powerful GPU would be greatly appreciated (Gtx 960m+)

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Music creation, light photo editing, the usual rest.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Have my own so it does not matter.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
As long as possible.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
Do not need one.

12. I do not have preferred brands, build quality is high priority for this to last long, however.

13. What country do you live in?
England.

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I've already looked at the likes of the Clevo p650SE but am worried about its physical size, its large for a 15.6 inch laptop so much so that I'm not sure I'd consider it particularly portable (unless you have had personal experience otherwise, which I will gladly listen to). I wouldn't be bothered if it was overweight if its physical size makes up for it, and by that I mean the amount of desk space the machine would take up. (ie I don't mind if its rather thick, but too long/wide is problematic).

Essentially, I need some help finding the smaller (not thinner) 15.6" laptops on the market that have some beef behind them, or powerful 14 inch laptops.
 
I will say the same thing I have told many people, thin and light is not good with powerful machines as the cooling is not sufficient to cool down it when running games. You could go with the msi apache or ghost range but they are very hot and noisy. You could go with the asus gl range but they tend to make a lot of noise.

Also when you game or do anything that is intense on the gpu, the battery takes the hit which then asks the question of whether it is portable. But if you must have a laptop that is thin and powerful then the laptops I mentioned are very good.