Suggestions for a Student gaming laptop?

[Seb0303]

Hello!

I am looking for a laptop that is great for both studying as well as gaming.



1. What is your budget?
My budget is $1000

2. What is the size of the notebook you're considering?
14" or less.

3. What screen resolution do you want?
No particular preference, but a nice resolution helps. - I'm going to watch a lot of TV and movies on it.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Semi-Portable. Preferably a laptop below 7 lbs.

5. How much battery life do you need?
With power saving options, 3 hours would be nice. I understand that this is a gaming laptop, but switchable graphics or power saving options should help achieve this when simply browsing internet and using Word and the like.

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)?
Minecraft, high
World of Warcraft, medium - high
League of Legends, medium

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)
Photoshop
Videos, youtube / streaming etc.
MAYBE sony vegas
Able to live stream (not necessary).

8. How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need?
Around 250GB at least.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
2-3 years.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
An external optical drive works fine for me. I do not need Blu-ray or a writer.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
I'm pretty open to brands. However I have a MacBook Pro and I'm not very satisfied with it.

13. What country do you live in?
Denmark. If you list the product I will find it in my country - hopefully.

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I enjoy simple designs ala MacBook, and don't want some clustermonstermachine. (Alienware is ugly).

I don't want a machine that heats up too much when not being loaded. When I am playing a game, sure, I expect it to get hot. But it shouldn't get too hot when I am just browsing.

 

[austing]

I highly recomend ASUS RoG laptops for gaming and productivity.

For example, at 1000:

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230580

Although sadly its out of stock, but its giving you a good example.

lenovo is a school friendly brand that comes bundled with office stuff:

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834310662

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834310661

 

[Seb0303]

They're all above 14" though. I have had both 16" and 15" laptops and they're too big for my taste unfotunately.

 

[drapacioli]

I can also recommend ASUS laptops. I own the ASUS N53SV for my schoolwork and even with a GT 540M onboard it runs games at decent settings at native resolution (the screen is only 1366x768, so it's not very taxing). On power saving/office modes I can get as much as 4-5 hours on the battery (lowest brightness settings, only MS Word/web browser open) while I can get about an hour and a half of playing games like Skyrim on it. Most of ASUS's laptops with video cards offer the intel/nvidia switchable graphics, so when you aren't using anything heavy duty it should switch to the much more efficient intel graphics.

Here is a list of ASUS laptops under 15" in size that offer nVidia graphics. They don't mention prices on their own site so I pulled prices from either Tiger Direct or Newegg:

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230262&Tpk=U36sg

^This one is out of stock and is probably being phased out for new versions with windows 8 and updated hardware, but if you can find it this will likely be on clearance. It has a video card but it's only a GT 520M so don't expect much from it. My family has a desktop with a GT 520 in it (more powerful than the mobile) and while it can play modern games, you simply can't turn up the detail on anything recent.

v This one doesn't mention intel graphics but does claim an 8 hour max battery life. Again, it's the low-end graphics card though, the GT 620M this time, so don't expect high detail on games:

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230416&Tpk=u47vc

Finally I know you said 14", but this 15.6" laptop has beefier GT 635M graphics as it is built to handle multimedia and light to medium gaming. It also has a larger hard drive and plenty of RAM, and a full HD screen for watching movies. It is priced at $899 so it comes under budget:

http/www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4978350&csid=_61

When I did my shopping for a laptop back in March, I wasn't able to find a brand other than ASUS that consistently offered good graphics card options without paying a huge price, but their build quality so far seems good. I don't care much for the brushed aluminum look as it easily scratches and dents but it's better than cheap bulky plastic any day.

Only catch is I have no idea if these laptops are available in Denmark at all

EDIT: I have found my way to the laptop section of the Asus page for Denmark and it appears most of the laptops I mentioned are not on the webpage except for the last one (the 15" one). they don't seem to have any 14" laptops with graphics cards at all except for the very expensive zenbook prime. Sorry I could not be more help.

 

[Loudandproud]

Check out the Lenovo y580. On newegg.com their is one that is $999 and a complete power house. As of late I've found Lenovo very impressive.

 

[necrokamios]

'1. What is your budget?
My budget is $1000'

just buy something, check reviews etc, no geek help needed

 

[Pyree]

Clevo W110ER (Smallest gameable laptop you can find)
Lenovo Y480 (better performance than W110ER since it has GDDR5 for the GT 650m, but larger and heavier at 14")

 

[Seb0303]

'1. What is your budget?
My budget is $1000'

just buy something, check reviews etc, no geek help needed

I did and I only got more confused..

 

[Seb0303]

Okay I'll improve my budget by $300, so it's now $1300.