Gaming laptop good choice, or something else?

I've been using my 5 year old core i5 desktop with 8 gigs DDR3 for work until now. I am thinking of purchasing a new laptop so I can do more mobile work. The cheapest core i7 laptops are about $600-$700 but don't come with a bunch of memory or an SSD drive. At Costco they sell an ASUS Republic of Gamers laptop for ~$1,100 on sale, sometimes $999. It has the 8th gen i7-8750H, 16 gigs DDR4 2666, GTX1050ti with 4 gig memory, and then a 1tb drive plus a 256gb SSD. There are other things like a good battery, monitor with fast refresh rate, etc but the main hardware seems to all be there. I also believe it comes with Windows 10 pro vs the home editions like most of the cheaper ones.

Any reason not to buy the ASUS gaming machine? Look at something else? I'm looking to have this for about the next 5 years, possibly longer.

mikeinctown wrote in post #18672878
I've been using my 5 year old core i5 desktop with 8 gigs DDR3 for work until now. I am thinking of purchasing a new laptop so I can do more mobile work. The cheapest core i7 laptops are about $600-$700 but don't come with a bunch of memory or an SSD drive. At Costco they sell an ASUS Republic of Gamers laptop for ~$1,100 on sale, sometimes $999. It has the 8th gen i7-8750H, 16 gigs DDR4 2666, GTX1050ti with 4 gig memory, and then a 1tb drive plus a 256gb SSD. There are other things like a good battery, monitor with fast refresh rate, etc but the main hardware seems to all be there. I also believe it comes with Windows 10 pro vs the home editions like most of the cheaper ones.

Any reason not to buy the ASUS gaming machine? Look at something else? I'm looking to have this for about the next 5 years, possibly longer.

I assume you're purpose is photo editing? I've had an MSI for several years that has the I7-6700 and GTX960 video card. I couple it with an external HD monitor so can slide the sliders, etc on the laptop while viewing the image on the HD monitor. It's been a good combo. I don't think whether the laptop is called "gaming" really matters - just so it has the stuff inside it you want. You may be pressing it asking 5 years out of a laptop; they don't usually last as long as desktops. Lee

One thing you might want to do is keep an eye on the deals that PC Magazine publishes on a daily basis. Go to https://www.pcmag.com/​best-deals-today and again, they change daily, although sometimes not by much but it is worth watching. Usually Costco is tough to beat, but occasionally it can be done!

John from PA wrote in post #18673317
One thing you might want to do is keep an eye on the deals that PC Magazine publishes on a daily basis. Go to https://www.pcmag.com/​best-deals-today and again, they change daily, although sometimes not by much but it is worth watching. Usually Costco is tough to beat, but occasionally it can be done!

Thanks for the tip. I live near a Micro Center so I get their emails and check the stuff out pretty regularly. There are a couple that if discounted some would be good choices as well. Costco's prices even beat my discount through Dell so I pretty much just watch out for their one week sales locally.

mikeinctown wrote in post #18672878
I've been using my 5 year old core i5 desktop with 8 gigs DDR3 for work until now. I am thinking of purchasing a new laptop so I can do more mobile work. The cheapest core i7 laptops are about $600-$700 but don't come with a bunch of memory or an SSD drive. At Costco they sell an ASUS Republic of Gamers laptop for ~$1,100 on sale, sometimes $999. It has the 8th gen i7-8750H, 16 gigs DDR4 2666, GTX1050ti with 4 gig memory, and then a 1tb drive plus a 256gb SSD. There are other things like a good battery, monitor with fast refresh rate, etc but the main hardware seems to all be there. I also believe it comes with Windows 10 pro vs the home editions like most of the cheaper ones.

Any reason not to buy the ASUS gaming machine? Look at something else? I'm looking to have this for about the next 5 years, possibly longer.

I've seen that ASUS computer at my Costco, and I'd say it's a pretty good deal in the $1000 ball park if you are looking for something that you can do photo stuff while also gaming.

Now, will it last 5 years? I think that's pushing it, but it's possible (if you take care of it). I tell folks to buy a quality laptop and budget for 3-4 years tops; if you get more, great...but don't always count on it. There's a reason most standard warranties are of the 1-3 year variety.

mikeinctown wrote in post #18673629
Thanks for the tip. I live near a Micro Center so I get their emails and check the stuff out pretty regularly. There are a couple that if discounted some would be good choices as well. Costco's prices even beat my discount through Dell so I pretty much just watch out for their one week sales locally.

I've been using an old Pentium with 4 Gigs of RAM for years now running LR 6.8. I had been keeping a check on the prices of a new system with a popular PC shop in ATL but the cost to get a significant upgrade were in the $2K range. Well the wife got a new job and said we needed to upgrade so I got off my duff and started doing some serious comparison shopping.

There's a Micro Center on my way home from work that has a "gaming " system of their store brand on sale. It's the Powerspec G315: Intel Core i5 8600K Processor 3.7GHz; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5; 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM; 250GB SSD+1TB HDD. I added a USB 3.1 card reader, a 3 yr service plan and security suite. It cost 64% of the price of the shop that I had been watching. I paid a visit to the store and got great service and could talk the the service tech's. So we pulled the trigger on the purchase and I pick it up today. I'll let you know if I have problems.

FYI unless your joining a domain, Windows 10 home vs Pro will offer no difference for you. Well bitlocker i think as well.

remember external (not iGPU) video cards = less battery for anything that might use the GPU.

Asus makes good laptops, MSI as well but their higher end struggles with heat and loud fans. Clevo makes , or did, alot of OEM's computer chasis , Sager (xoticpc.com)

I wound up getting an HP Omen gaming laptop from MicroCenter. However, I returned it last night as the battery life was absolutely horrendous. Even at lowest power settings (battery saver) I could only get 2 hours watching YouTube videos before the battery was at 0% and I had to plug in. When I first got it I left the battery setting at the performance mode and it seemed like the battery drained in an hour. No point even owning a laptop that can only be used for 1-2 hours.

I also looked at a Dell 17" Inspiron 5000 at Costco. The processor is only 4 core vs 6 core and it has a lower end graphics card but the claim is that battery life is 10 hours based on their given benchmark tests. (the HP did not ever give a battery life number) Even if I get 4-5 hours under actual use, that is still more than double what the HP was giving me. Still undecided though.

BeritOlam wrote in post #18675383
Now, will it last 5 years? I think that's pushing it, but it's possible (if you take care of it). I tell folks to buy a quality laptop and budget for 3-4 years tops; if you get more, great...but don't always count on it. There's a reason most standard warranties are of the 1-3 year variety.

I have an ASUS gaming notebook from 6 years ago (R500V I think) and haven't had a single issue. 1440x900 resolution is getting a bit long in the tooth, but otherwise completely reliable and usable. I like ASUS.

mikeinctown wrote in post #18694792
I wound up getting an HP Omen gaming laptop from MicroCenter. However, I returned it last night as the battery life was absolutely horrendous. Even at lowest power settings (battery saver) I could only get 2 hours watching YouTube videos before the battery was at 0% and I had to plug in. When I first got it I left the battery setting at the performance mode and it seemed like the battery drained in an hour. No point even owning a laptop that can only be used for 1-2 hours.

I also looked at a Dell 17" Inspiron 5000 at Costco. The processor is only 4 core vs 6 core and it has a lower end graphics card but the claim is that battery life is 10 hours based on their given benchmark tests. (the HP did not ever give a battery life number) Even if I get 4-5 hours under actual use, that is still more than double what the HP was giving me. Still undecided though.

Youtube will use a GPU if it has one, Any laptop with an added GPU your only going to get 1-3 hours battery on a good day if your using that GPU. When you say 4 cores vs 6 are those real cores or with HT, only intels new 8th gen have more physical cores.

What are the exact specs?

mikeinctown wrote in post #18694792
I wound up getting an HP Omen gaming laptop from MicroCenter. However, I returned it last night as the battery life was absolutely horrendous. Even at lowest power settings (battery saver) I could only get 2 hours watching YouTube videos before the battery was at 0% and I had to plug in. When I first got it I left the battery setting at the performance mode and it seemed like the battery drained in an hour. No point even owning a laptop that can only be used for 1-2 hours.

I also looked at a Dell 17" Inspiron 5000 at Costco. The processor is only 4 core vs 6 core and it has a lower end graphics card but the claim is that battery life is 10 hours based on their given benchmark tests. (the HP did not ever give a battery life number) Even if I get 4-5 hours under actual use, that is still more than double what the HP was giving me. Still undecided though.

Perhaps you should be checking reviews before making a purchase. Quoting from https://www.pcworld.co​m …5-2017-review.html?page=2

I happen to have just acquired a Dell 15 7000 and the battery life is a nice solid 8 hours. But I can get to almost 10 hours by turning off the backlit keyboard and reducing the screen brightness.

Check the deals over at https://www.pcmag.com/​best-deals-today but read a few reviews before parting with the $$.

John from PA wrote in post #18697043
Perhaps you should be checking reviews before making a purchase. Quoting from https://www.pcworld.co​m …5-2017-review.html?page=2

I happen to have just acquired a Dell 15 7000 and the battery life is a nice solid 8 hours. But I can get to almost 10 hours by turning off the backlit keyboard and reducing the screen brightness.

Check the deals over at https://www.pcmag.com/​best-deals-today but read a few reviews before parting with the $$.

I read several reviews and the ones I saw didn't make it out to be as bad as I experienced.

This is the one I bought. Just not worth the hassle. I'm going to keep looking at the Dell laptops. http://www.microcenter​.com …g-laptop-computer---black

'Gaming laptops' usually have a dedicated GPU compared to more mundane 'office laptops'. However, I am not convinced that this is the best investment for speeding up LR and PS - much I read online seems to show only a marginal improvement by the GPU (and what also corresponded with my personal experience). It seems that raw computational (CPU) speed, fast and plenty of RAM and SSD seems to have the largest impact on LR performance (this is from memory - somebody else might chime in here). These might be the main criteria you want to focus on (except if you indeed want to play games....).

We've owned 2 Dell laptops, 1 Lenovo Yoga, and 1 Macbook Air. The first Dell was pretty low end and it developed a large streak down the entire LCD about 15 months after we bought it, after the warranty had expired. The second Dell was mid range and about 2 months after purchase stopped working. We had to send it in and it was gone for more than a month, meanwhile my son had to rent one for his schoolwork. The Yoga hasn't had any major problems after 1 year. The Apple is almost 5 years old and continues to work flawlessly.

I've been a Windows guy for 30 years but at least for laptops this has changed my mind.

Any thoughts on Alienware 17" or Blade?