Best Gaming Laptops: August 2010 Recommendations
Below you will find our recommendations of the best gaming laptops and where you can buy them the cheapest. Our recommendations are organised based on the amount you have to spend with the cheapest laptops appearing first and the better but more expensive ones lower down the guide. We have spent countless hours reviewing laptops and prices to give you the very best price to performance recommendations.
We have provided a link directly to the retailer that has the best price of each laptop we recommend making sure you always get the best deal.
For a gaming laptop we recommend spending between £500 and £1000 keeping in mind that spending more money will greatly enhance your gaming experience. With gaming laptops the most important factor in determining how well they play games is by understanding how powerful their graphics cards are. Unfortunately this is not something most people can determine themselves so we have gone ahead and done it for you buy looking at each laptops gaming benchmarks.
Best Gaming Laptop Under £400
Dell Inspiron 1546
For £399 the Inspiron 1546 has an impressive ATI HD 4330 512MB dedicated graphics card which will let you play all of the latest games (Modern Warefare 2, Crysis, BF Bad Company 2, etc.) albeit some of them on low graphics settings. The ATI HD 4330 greatly outperforms all the integrated graphics cards you find in most £400 even £500 laptops making the Inspiron 1546 an absolute steal at this price.
To get the Inspiron 1546 for £399 simply visit this link to go to the Dell site and select the base model for £349. Then upgrade the processor to the AMD AthlonX2 Dual Core Mobile Processor QL-64 (2.1GHz/1MB L2) and the memory (RAM) to 2GB. This will bring your total to £399 delivered and provide you with a balanced gaming laptop.
Click here to buy or view the Dell Inspiron 1546 now
Best £500 Gaming Laptop
Dell Studio 15 15.6
For £479 the Dell Studio 15 15.6 complete with the latest Intel i3 processors and DDR3 comes with an ATI HD 4570 512MB graphics card. This card is roughly 30% faster for gaming than the HD 4330 in the Inspiron 1546 above, providing a very nice performance boost for your games letting you play the latest games fluently on medium graphics settings.
If you can stretch the extra £80 from the Inspiron 1546 to the studio 15 you should go for the studio 15 as the performance difference you get for your money is certainly worth it.
Click here to buy or view the Dell Studio 15 15.6 now
Best £600 Gaming Laptop
Dell Studio 17 £629
Once again Dell seem to be dominating this price segment for gaming laptops with the impressive Dell Studio 17 featuring the ATI Radeon HD 5650 1GB graphics card. The HD 5650 is more than twice as powerful as the ATI HD 4570 in the Dell Studio 15 and therefore makes a very good graphics card for gaming. You will be able to play all of the latest games with high graphics settings making the Studio 17 the ideal gaming laptop for gamers who do not want to compromise by lowering the graphics settings to make games playable.
The Studio 17 has the additional benefit on having a 17 inch HD screen, the new Intel i3 processor, DDR3 memory and a 7200rpm hard drive giving you a boost by reducing loading times. The Studio 17 is currently our favourite gaming laptop as it provides the best value for money in a gaming laptop.
Click here to buy or view the Dell Studio 17 now
Best £700 - £900 Gaming Laptop
None! Spending a few hundred pounds more will not get you a faster gaming laptop as the graphics cards on laptops at this price range are inferior or only match the HD 5650 in the Dell Studio 17, giving you no gaming advantage and in some cases a disadvantage. It is for this reason that we cannot recommend any laptops in this price range and suggest that if you have this amount of money to spend, go for the Studio 17 and save some money. Alternatively you could go for one of the more expensive Studio 17 models with a faster processor, but do not expect a huge leap in performance by doing so, or better yet, save up a little more and get the Novatech X70 CA below.
Best £1000 Gaming Laptop
Novatech X70 CA £1130
Perhaps surprisingly it is not a Dell but the Novatech X70 CA. Currently with a limited time £200 discount the X70 is a bargain. The X70 CA has a Nvidia Geforce GTX 260M which is a little over 30% faster for gaming than the ATI HD 5650 we love so much in the Dell Studio 17. This performance gain means that you will be able to put your graphics settings to ultra (the maximum setting) on most of your games giving you stunning visuals at a playable frame rate. For £1130 you will also get the latest Intel i7 quad core processor, 4Gbs of DDR3 RAM and a DVD RW+ adding up into a formidable gaming laptop. The basic model also includes a Blue ray drive but costs £95 so we actually recommend removing this option and going for the DVD RW+ instead if you do not plan to watch blue ray movies on the laptop. Doing so reduces the price of the laptop from £1222 to £1130.
Click here to buy or view the Novatech X70 CA now
Best £1500+ Gaming Laptop
Alienware M17X £1900
Take the Alienware M17X, upgrade the processor to an i7 quad core, upgrade the graphics form a single ATI HD 4870 to dual HD 4870s and what do you get? An absolute gaming monster. Dual ATI HD 4870s are up to 50% faster than the GTX 260M in the Novatech X70 CA making sure you can max out the graphics on all of the latest games and future games to come for some time. In terms of raw gaming power you cannot do much better than this. To add to the fun this is an Alienware, only the most respected and powerful brand of gaming PCs on the planet giving you some serious bragging rights but perhaps more importantly great reliability and customer service.
Plays any game on their maximum graphics settings, What more is there to say?
Click here to buy or view the Alienware M17X now
That concludes our recommendations of the best gaming laptops for your money. If you have come across a laptop yourself and are wondering why it is not featured in our recommendations it is highly likely that after our review it was found to be inferior to one or more of our recommended laptops. If you would like to make sure that we have not missed a laptop before you buy, send us an email at: support@bestlaptopreview.co.uk and we will be happy to verify that this is indeed the case.
Dell Studio 15 Laptop Review
The Dell Studio 15 is shockingly good value for money for the quality and performance. Up to now our favourite medium range gaming laptop has been the HP Pavilion DV6 with its great balance of hardware components and power graphics card at its price range.
The Dell Studio 15 has a fast Intel 2.0Ghz dual core processor which will be able to handle any program with ease and will provide you with some good future proofing as new programs grow more demanding over time.
4GB of ram running at a very fast 800Mhz will not only be more than enough to run multiple programs smoothly but their 800Mhz clock speed will give you a nice boost when gaming.
Our favourite hardware component in the entire laptop is the ATI 4570 graphics card. This card is roughly 20% faster for gaming than the HP Pavilions ATI 4530 that we loved so much and will be able to handle even all of the new games on medium and possibly even high settings. The additional benefit of the ATI 4500 series graphics cards is they use very little power giving you a longer battery life when you dont have access to a plug.
With the massive 320GB hard drive you will struggle to use all the storage space giving you plenty of space for backing up all your files and having all the programs you own installed at once.
Yet another place where the Studio 15 shines is with its 15.6 inch high definition LCD monitor giving you a fantastic quality screen with the ability to watch movies in HD. This monitor is far superior to all other laptops in this price range.
As you would expect the laptop is fully compatible with wireless internet and a DVD re-writer to burn your own CDs and DVDs. Finally, Dell are providing a free upgrade to the new Microsoft operating system Windows 7 as soon as it is launched so dont worry about buying the studio with Vista and missing out on the new Windows.
At under £500 at the time of writing this is hands down our favourite gaming laptop at this price range.
Click here to check this laptop out for yourself.
Alienware M17X Review: Best Gaming Laptop on the Planet
The new Alienware flagship laptop the M17X redefines laptop gaming with its quad core processor and 2 of the fastest laptop graphics cards ever made the GTX 280m SLI. For those of you that do not know, the graphics card is the single most important hardware component for gaming. As the X17M has the fastest graphics cards on the market its no surprise that its the fastest gaming laptop available.
The design of the X17M is fantastic with illuminated keys, full aluminium case and the sleek stealth Alienware trademark design. Long gone are the days or plastic laptop cases, aluminium has taken over. The LCD monitor is by far the best we have ever seen in a laptop, with better than high definition picture quality and super bright thanks to its double backlight design meaning you will never have to worry about struggling to see the screen on a sunny day. Even the touchpad is the best we have ever come across in terms of responsiveness and design, Alienware have truly scrutinised every centimetre of the design to bring you perfection.
Even the standard 2.0Ghz quad core (4 processing cores) processor is more than enough to handle any game but just in case you want more processing power, Alienware allow you to upgrade all the way up to a 2.5Ghz quad core processor with overclocking capabilities. The memory starts at 4GBs of 1333Mhz DDR3 and is upgradeable all the way up to 8GBs which is the fastest laptop memory money can buy.
If you are not beginning to sense a pattern emerging yet let me put it this way:
- Graphics cards: best on the market
- Processor: best on the market
- RAM: best on the market
- Screen: best on the market
- Design: best on the market
- Quality: best on the market
- Need we say more?
Even the most basic of the M17X will play all games incredibly well as well as bringing you the Alienware lifestyle that no other computer manufacturer can seem to match. What more can we say, its and Alienware, and its the best Alienware laptop ever made.
Click here to check out the Alienware M17X.
