BAPC Sales Canada @lemmy.ca YurkshireLad @lemmy.ca 1 yr. ago

Help finding budget gaming laptop

I’d appreciate some assistance in finding a budget gaming laptop from a reliable source. I can pop into BestBuy (who enjoys that anyway!) or Canada Computers but are there alternatives? I’m look for something to play older games, like strategy games as wargames, but I’m not bothered about the latest games. I also want to do some development, likely using Eclipse+Java and also use docker-compose in VirtualBox. Maybe I’ll also mess around with Unity3 or the Unreal engine.

A reasonable spec is: 16 or 32Gb 512Gb+ SSD Decent discrete GFX card but not the latest Current or previous gen AMD or Intel 2+ USB 3 ports FHD monitor Nothing too heavy though I won’t be travelling Budget is probably $1100+tax

Is that reasonable? Thoughts and suggestions greatly appreciated.

13 comments

I clicked an Asus marketing email today, they have some decent looking stuff on sale this week. ($850 for a 2021 model that seems to meet your criteria).

Also Costco has an HP gaming laptop on sale for $1400-->$1200.

My old laptop is getting slower and slower and it doesn't have a discreet GPU, so I'm getting more and more tempted all the time.
- Ah I forgot to look at Costco to see what they have. Thanks for that reminder.
- If that HP is the Victusl then it's a tempting deal, but I saw it in BestBuy and its screen is way too wobbly. It wobbles when you type, which would drive me nuts. If it had a better hinge, I might have bought it.
For a couple hundred more than your budget you can get some really nice Lenovo legion 5s https://www.lenovo.com/ca/en/c/laptops/legion-laptops/
- Good point. Unthought the regular Legion cost much more than the Legion Slim. I was looking at the base Legion 5 Slim, as I might be able to stretch to that. Is there a huge performance difference from the Legion Slim 5 to the Legion 5? Or is it more about material and build quality and cooling?
  
  Over the past 10 years or so I've noticed Asus quality go down quite a bit but legions seem the take the bearing of gaming alot better than the ROG do.
I can’t seem to edit my post so I’ll post here that I’ve looked at a Dell G15 and the Lenovo Loq looks interesting.

I forgot to mention that I’d like a 14”, 15” or maybe a 16” screen. Ideally a 15”. I don’t care about fancy looks or multi colour keyboard lighting. I’m too boring for that!
- I've heard pretty bad things about the G15, but haven't looked into it much, so grain of salt and all that.
  
  I have a tuf gaming laptop, it was pretty affordable, and works pretty good, it's an older model, and I had to do a fresh install to get rid of the digital STDs, but I'm quite happy with it.
  
  Ugh, that reminds me of how much crap companies pre-install.
Damn I just realized I need to check to see if the Slim 5 or Loq can support an extra internal SSD and another 16Gb of memory. I may want to install Linux onto a separate SSD, and then dual boot between the two.
I’m leaning towards a Lenovo Loq or Legion Slim 5 with an AMD chipset. I guess the Loq is the budget laptop and the Legion Slim 5 is the next step up. Is there a big difference in build quality between the two?

I think the Loq has the AMD 7840HS + RTX4050 and the Slim 5 has the AMD 7640HS + RTX4050, both have 16Gb of memory and 512Gb SSD (TLC). Realistically I don’t know if there’s a huge performance difference between the two.

So, tiny performance boost on the Loq vs the better build quality of the Slim.

Either pushes the budget by about C$200, so don’t tell the wife!! 😁

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