Kotaku Gift Guide: Gaming Laptops

Gaming laptops — are they always a good idea? Some might argue that cost/hardware ratio means that a fully beefed up desktop is always the better option, financially speaking, but there’s something about the seamless design of a slick laptop — along with the obvious benefits of portability — that makes a laptop an attractive purchase. We take a look at some of your options.

Money To Burn


Alienware laptops are notoriously pricey, but that’s the target market — folks with cash that don’t want to scrimp in any area. The MX18 almost cranks the $4000 mark — you could buy a car for this price, but it would be terrible car. This laptop is not terrible, therefore you should buy a ridiculously expensive laptop instead of a crap car — that’s just science.
Alienware MX18: $3,999

A Man Of Moderate Tastes


This was by far the trickiest price range to deal with. Gaming laptops are either ludicrously expensive or… ludicrously expensive. You can go down to budget laptop range for most PCs, but mid-range laptops are usually mid-range because of the features, not necessarily what’s under the hood. Eventually we settled for the HP Pavilion dv7-6b00, mainly because of its beefy processor.
HP Pavilion dv7-6b00: $1,799

Cheap, But Still Good!


Gaming laptops tend to be expensive by definition, so if you want to buy a laptop for gaming that isn’t expensive, you have to find laptops that provide specification bang for your buck. We believe that the Dell XPS 17 is a decent example of this. You can buy it direct from Dell’s website for just over $1000. Pretty decent deal.
Dell XPS 17: $1,199

What do you think? Are gaming laptops worth buying? Any suggestions? Let us know in the comments below.


The Cheapest NBN 1000 Plans

Looking to bump up your internet connection and save a few bucks? Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Kotaku, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


63 responses to “Kotaku Gift Guide: Gaming Laptops”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *