Portable gaming laptop suggestions?

June 17, 2009 10:11 AM

Can anyone recommend a lightweight gaming laptop? Everything out there seems rather massive, I am looking for something with a 15-inch screen and a weight under 8 pounds with some actual battery life; I won't have to worry about price.

I'm not a super-hardcore gamer, but much of my academic work involves the game industry, and I like to play myself. Currently, most laptops won't even play Fallout 3 at decent resolution. I am interested in running things like Total War, Fallout, and other games at decent detail and speed - I don't need to max out Cysis or anything like that.

The Alienware m15 looked like it might be a good fit, but I have read reviews saying it has almost no battery life and is unreliable - it is also pretty heavy. So, hive mind, any good experiences with decent portable gaming PCs?

posted by blahblahblah to computers & internet (16 comments total)

Not sure this link will work, but these four look good.

Newegg is a great site to check out, and you can narrow your search by specific categories, too.
posted by Grither at 10:21 AM on June 17

The 15" MacBook Pro.

No really, I mean it.

It's got an 8 hour battery, switchable graphics chipsets (power for games, or efficient for power saving), runs XP or Vista, great performance, bright glossy screen, and when you're done, you can switch to OS X for real work.

Oh, and it's sexy and light.
posted by Mwongozi at 10:32 AM on June 17 [2 favorites has favorites]

The Clevo D900F is hands down the best gaming laptop out there. It's basically a desktop.
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5084

It uses an actual desktop class i7 CPU instead of the mobile version. It's a little big but if you want a top of the line gaming machine with a good battery life you're getting into heavier machines. It's 12lbs and I imagine a good portion of that weight is from the 12 cell battery.

At under 8lbs I'd recommend the Sager NP8662. http://www.sagernotebook.com/product_customed.php?pid=160092
It comes in a bit over 7lbs, has a 15.4" screen and is pretty cheap.

The alienware is the only other machine I could recommend but that is getting back into those big machines. If I were you I'd go with the Sager.
posted by zephyr_words at 10:32 AM on June 17

The MacBook Pro actually looks like a decent option for you, since you're not worried about price.
posted by Grither at 10:37 AM on June 17

Seriously, get a 15" or 17" MacBook Pro with the Nvidia 9600M GT video card. The early reviews on the life of the new internal batteries are killer (>8 hours of WiFi web surfing!) and Windows will scream on that hardware. The 15" is 5.5 lbs and the 17" is 6.6 lbs.
posted by The Michael The at 10:40 AM on June 17

The MacBook Pro uses an integrated GeForce 9400M video card if I'm not mistaken. He'd be paying more without even configuring options and have something that's not nearly as good.

The Sager line has a GeForce GTX 260m which is about 3 times as powerful as the 9400m in benchmarks and real life.

The 9400m is fine for playing last gen games in a decent resolution and at a medium high detail but it cannot play the current gen games at a resolution of 104x768 with the lowest possible details. So after the macbook is bought you're stuck with that video card forever.
posted by zephyr_words at 10:42 AM on June 17

I guess you can get the 9600m though in the new new one - that card is pretty decent? Dunno, I have the older macbook pro.
posted by zephyr_words at 10:45 AM on June 17

Personally, I'm happy with my MacBook Pro running Windows 7 via Boot Camp, but it's not a current model anymore and the new ones at 15" only have integrated graphics on the affordable model, so you'd have to go for a used MacBook Pro to get a regular video card, which would still be fairly expensive. But they are 15 inches, and weigh in slightly under five lbs, with reasonably sized power bricks to match. The high end model fits your requirements, and with the student discount, it comes in around $2000 and comes with a free printer and iPod touch. If you install the Windows 7 RC (more stable than vista in my experience), you will have a legitimate copy of Windows that will run for a year. When I looked at the Alienware laptop you mentioned, it was around the same price. This laptop was just released, so this is when Macs are at the best value.

One thing you really should look into getting is a cooling pad for your laptop, since gaming laptops need to pump out a lot of heat, and they will throttle back when they overheat, making gameplay impossible. I have a Belkin cooling pad that runs off of USB that I bought for about $30, but I am sure you could find better deals online. Also, use a fan speed utility to peg the fans at max speed while playing games/doing something processor intensive. Playing 3D games from the battery or on your lap is pretty impractical AFAIK with most laptops, so hopefully you weren't expecting that.
posted by mccarty.tim at 10:48 AM on June 17 [1 favorite has favorites]

The MacBook Pro uses an integrated GeForce 9400M video card if I'm not mistaken. He'd be paying more without even configuring options and have something that's not nearly as good.

the new ones at 15" only have integrated graphics on the affordable model, so you'd have to go for a used MacBook Pro to get a regular video card, which would still be fairly expensive.

The new MBPs, on all but the most inexpensive 15" model, have an integrated 9400M and a discrete 9600M GT with a switchover to save power or speed up graphics depending on situation. Since the OP stated that he won't have to worry about the price, I don't think that's really a concern.

The Alienware has a better graphics card (9800) but really loses on battery life and size (the MBP is 27% thinner and nearly an inch less deep than the Alienware). The battery life on the new MBPs is really something special and the next wave in laptop power technology, I think.
posted by The Michael The at 11:31 AM on June 17

A quick note about switching between the two graphics cards on Apple MacBook Pros. You must log out of the machine and log back in again to do the switch. This blows, because it means you need to quit all of your apps. So don't plan on switching between the graphics cards frequently.
posted by zpousman at 12:26 PM on June 17

When I asked this question three years ago my answer was a Thinkpad with a gaming graphics card in it. I was frequently warned away from Alienware and similar nerd-magnet gaming brands, apparently their quality is poor and they compromise too many things for game performance. The Thinkpad is a good solid laptop and the graphics processor I got at the time was good enough to play games.
posted by Nelson at 1:24 PM on June 17

Gaming systems:

Check out alienware!
posted by loquat at 2:35 PM on June 17

I love my alienware (it's newer than three years ago and I don't have any overheating problems after hours of Bioshock, or WoW, or wordprocessing) and have no problems with its reliability. I have the bigger one than the one you looked at, but it really is heavy. I carry it sometimes, in a backpack, on public transportation, but I wouldn't do it regularly. Battery life is not bad, however, for everything but gaming.
posted by crush-onastick at 3:23 PM on June 17

I would not consider the Macbook Pro a gaming notebook, low to mid range possibly. Fallout 3 would have to be run at medium or low settings.

The Alienware m15x is a good choice at 7 lbs as well as the Sager NP8662 or Asus G50VT-A2 (6.17 lbs)
posted by wongcorgi at 4:13 PM on June 17

Nthing the macbook pro, just make sure you get 15" as it has a lower resolution. Also, your battery life will be much shorter when running the discrete graphics card.

I dual boot to Windows for most games, and can comfortably max out several EVE-Online clients at once, but would probably crap out on the newest FPS-like games.

The upside here is battery life and being able to switch between power-hungry and conservative modes. And that it was designed by usability techs, not electrical engineers.

Oh, and be sure to get a cooling pad/similar. You WILL burn a hole in your lap otherwise.
posted by mezamashii at 8:47 PM on June 17

I bought myself an Asus G50Vt-X1 in January, from Best Buy of all places.

Can't find the same model on sale now, but they do have the slightly more powerful G50Vt-X5 - more powerful, but also more flashy (can't say I'm a huge fan of the design, but the X1 is a little gaudy, too).

The main advantage is the GeForce 9800M graphics card, it really does come down to graphics hardware that separates the "gaming laptop" from the "power user laptop".
posted by Nice Guy Mike at 8:50 PM on June 17