Traveling Gamer: Top 5 Gaming Laptops

The Chinese company Xiaomi has relatively recently entered the laptop market and first probed the ground among ultrabooks, and then fired an interesting Mi Gaming model. Traditionally for the company, its main feature is a strict design in the tradition of Apple and the desire for the perfect combination of price and quality.

From the point of view of design, Mi Gaming Laptop is something in between gaming and office, and it can be described as "not boring gaming". The slim body with a thickness of 21 mm looks quite strict and modern — thanks to the frameless screen and geometric correct lines that resemble modern smartphones. Belonging to the game line is given only by a keyboard with a switchable RGB backlight and a soft neon backlight along the body line. The design will definitely appeal to those who are not thrilled with the futuristic appearance of Alienware laptops.

The laptop case itself is made of high-quality plastic, while the screen cover and cooling grille are aluminium. The case is assembled conscientiously, nothing is backlash and does not bend. The only controversial aspect of the design is the huge radiator grille in the bottom, which can pull dust and lint inside if you use a laptop not on the table, but, for example, on the couch.

Mi Gaming Laptop is equipped with a quad-core Intel Core i7 7700HQ processor with a maximum frequency of 3.8 GHz, 16 GB of RAM and a bundle of 1000 GB HDD with 256 GB SSD. The video accelerator is one of the best NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 mobile cards with 6 GB of GDDR5 video memory. The configuration is very good even by the standards of a gaming PC and allows you to play without thinking about theoretical problems. For example, in the still voracious Witcher 3 on Ultra settings, the laptop produces a stable 55 frames per second and does not even think about slowing down somewhere.

The 15-inch IPS display pleased with the quality. The display coating is matte, as gamers like, and the picture looks great. Viewing angles are traditionally large for IPS, the contrast ratio is 1230:1, the backlight brightness is at 270 cd/m2, which is quite enough in indoor conditions. Especially with a matte finish.

But the built-in sound disappointed: the speakers are located at the bottom, they do not play very loudly and qualitatively. At a price of almost $2000, I would like something brighter and more powerful. The same can be said about the equipment: if many gaming laptops are equipped with branded mice, bags or gamepads, there is nothing in the box with the Mi Gaming Laptop except a charger and instructions. On the other hand, such bonuses are always reflected in the price, and this goes against Xiaomi's policy.

In general, Xiaomi's first pancake in terms of gaming laptops has never come out lumpy: like many Xiaomi products, it pulls to call it one of the best "low-cost" uncompromising laptops. Sorry for the tautology.

Externally, the Dell G5 15 5587 laptop leaves a restrained impression. If you turn off the keyboard backlight, it is easy to confuse it with a simple office laptop. But if you turn it in your hands, you can't call it boring in any way: just look at the rear grille, which subtly resembles the design of Ferrari sports cars.

The laptop case is metal. The lid is made of a pleasant-to-touch magnesium alloy. It's faint, but there are still fingerprints on it. Fortunately, it is not difficult to eliminate them. But aluminium alloy is used for the panel, which practically does not collect prints. In general, the feeling of the case and the build quality is purely positive. At a time when people are used to changing gadgets every year, this model evokes a nostalgic feeling of old, reliable and assembled electronics for years.

The 15-inch display has a Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels) and is made using IPS technology. The screen has good colour reproduction and contrast, there is not enough brightness for the eye, but this problem is solved by an anti-glare coating that allows you to work comfortably on a sunny day.

If you look under the hood of the laptop, then there we will see a 6-core Core i7 processor of the Intel Coffee Lake family (maximum frequency 4.1 GHz, 9 MB of third-level cache memory), 16 GB of DDR4 memory and a bundle of a massive 1000 GB HDD for storing a collection of games and a high-speed 256 SSD for installing the system and those games that you are playing at the moment.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Max-Q discrete video accelerator with 6 GB of GDDR5 video memory is responsible for the video component. The prefix "Max-Q" means that the chip is 10% inferior to the stock GTX 1060, since it is focused on lower power consumption, but at the same time it is 15% more powerful than the GTX 1050 Ti, and the GTX 1050 is 20-25% more powerful. In general, the bundle of hardware demonstrates excellent gaming performance and will not flinch before modern gaming blockbusters with ultra-realistic graphics a la Battlefield 5 Metro: Exodus or Project Cars.

Among the features of this model, it is worth highlighting a keyboard with water protection and support for the Thunderbolt interface, which will be useful to owners of Apple gadgets. But the laptop does not break the records of battery life and at an average load is able to work less than 4 hours.

In general, the G5 15 5587 model gives the impression of a very intelligent, powerful and balanced laptop with no weaknesses. The only controversial point is its appearance, which not all fans of gaming laptops will have.

Acer has created a new Predator Helios 300 gaming line specifically for those customers who lack the performance of the Nitro series and want a more exotic appearance.

Assembled from metal and plastic, the laptop leaves the impression of an expensive, stylish and conscientiously assembled thing. The gaming breed of the model can be traced in every detail, from the standard keyboard backlight and aggressive radiator grille to the oblique sections of the monitor and the aggressive cover with the Predator logo. Perhaps if there was a robot in the Transformers movie series that turns into a laptop, it would look exactly like this.

The Predator Helios 300 PH315-51 hardware matches the appearance and includes a six-core Intel Core i7 8750H processor (frequency 4.1 GHz), a high-performance NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 video chip with 6 GB of video memory, 16 GB of RAM and a bunch of HDD and SSD drives with a total memory capacity of 1256 GB. In general, this is one of the most performant bundles of iron in this price segment, and anything that is at least a little more powerful (for example, Core i7 8750H and GTX 1070) sends the price tag into the stratosphere.

The Predator Helios 300 has a 15.6-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. As with all gaming models with a price tag in the region of $ 2000, its quality is at a very high level. However, the colour rendering goes a little towards green and red shades, which visually "warms" the picture.

The laptop has a full-format keyboard with a digital block, all keys have a soft red backlight, and the main gaming WASD are highlighted more strongly. This helps them stand out and complements the overall design. The stroke of the keys is soft and short. But the location of the keys is not very convenient, they pile up into one solid mess, and if you don't look at the keyboard, then in the heat of battle, instead of the right arrow, you can accidentally poke the NUM block, and instead of Backspace, press Home.

Battery life is not the strongest side of gaming laptops. Helios 300 is no exception and holds more than three hours only with minimal screen brightness and undemanding tasks like reading text.

A slight inconvenience can be caused by the fact that the laptop comes out of the box without an operating system. Rather, it has Linux installed on it, but this platform is convenient for work, but not for games — you can't find large projects like Call Of Duty, Assassin's Creed or Batllefield here. Therefore, you will have to install Windows yourself, which is a definite minus for a laptop with such a price.

Asus ROG Strix GL503VM is one of the brightest (note: not in terms of illumination) and powerful laptops of the gaming division of Asus Republic of Gamers (or simply ROG). The first thing that catches your eye when you get acquainted with this model is its thin body (22.8 mm). The weight of 2.5 kg also corresponds to and disposes to use it as a mobile gaming station.

The laptop case is made of plastic and metal and looks unusually calm as for a gaming laptop. On the matte lid there is only a small ornate ROG logo, and on the base a pattern with a cutout for speakers attracts attention. If you are already somewhat tired of aggressive red and black gaming laptops and want something simpler and more elegant, this model will appeal to you.

Traditionally for ROG laptops, this model has an unusual backlight that can work in several different modes. For example, it can be a static backlight with a certain colour, a pulsating backlight (“Christmas tree” mode) or an option in which the keyboard can be divided into different zones using different colours for clearer visualization during the game.

Another interesting feature of the keyboard is the unusually light stroke of the keys, like a space bar. Unaccustomed to it, it seems to be a disadvantage, but after a couple of hours it comes to the realization that it's damn convenient and helps a lot during the game. I also want to praise the Asus engineers for the fact that they managed to fit an additional block of purely gaming buttons on the case, like turning off the microphone, and the power button, on the contrary, was removed from the main unit, so that it would not be possible to accidentally poke it in the midst of a shootout and ice rinks in the pillbox.

The display of a gaming laptop is an extremely important component. And with this, the ROG Strix GL503VM is in full order. The model has a 15.6-inch IPS display with a high refresh rate of 120 Hz and a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. The screen is bright and clear, with excellent colour reproduction (100% sRGB) and colour calibration. By the standards of gaming displays, it gets a solid five.

The iron filling of the laptop does not lag behind. It has a quad-core Intel Core i7–7700HQ processor of the Kaby Lake family (clock speed 2.8 – 3.8 GHz), a high-performance NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 video chip, 32 GB of DDR4 RAM and a bundle of 256 GB SSD and a high-speed HDD with a volume of 1 TB. The only thing you can dig into is the balance of the filling. 32 GB of RAM seems like an outright excess (at least for games), while a six-core 8750H processor could provide a small increase in FPS in games.

Autonomously, the laptop is able to work for about 5 hours at an average load.

Under reviews of gaming laptops, you can almost always read something in the spirit of "desktop is still more powerful". Yes, this is a reasonable claim, the desktop is almost always more powerful. But not in the case of the MSI GE63 Raider, which is one of the most powerful laptops on the market. Then only frank boasting of technical equipment at the price of a Japanese car.

The filling of the MSI GE63 Raider looks like this: a six-core Core i7 8750H with a maximum frequency of 4.1 GHz, 32 GB of DDR4 RAM (this stock is enough even for descendants who will fly away to conquer other planets), a bundle of high-speed HDD and SSD with a total volume of 1512 GB and one of the most powerful NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 mobile video cards with 8 GB of video memory. If these characteristics were read out at a rap battle, then after each of them the microphone was thrown on the floor with the word "round"! Moreover, such power can be advised not only to gamers: the installed 6-core is able to perform many tasks efficiently and very quickly, including graphics and video processing.

The laptop screen to match the filling is one of the best IPS matrices available on the market with a diagonal of 15" with perfect colour reproduction (100% sRGB), high contrast, a serious margin of brightness and a short response time. Questions are raised only by the Ultra HD resolution (3840×2160 pixels), which is frankly difficult to see on a screen with such a diagonal. But that's until you connect your laptop to a large external monitor.

Additional important buns for games are also pleasing with a variety: a set of proprietary utilities for overclocking, keyboard backlight settings and macro settings, an extremely convenient Steelseries keyboard, a backlight synchronization system with what is happening on the screen, excellent built-in acoustics from Dynaudio, Killer Shield ping smoothing system and a built-in sound card with a high-quality DAC. In general, the maximum of everything and do not care about the price.

At this point, the question should be asked from the audience: is the MSI GE63 Raider at least in some way bad? Not quite. Its only drawback can be seen in the price, which is high even by the standards of powerful gaming machines. But there is nothing to be done here, according to the Pareto rule, you will have to pay twice or even three times for striving for the maximum of megahertz and gigabytes.

Well, the battery should be slightly scolded. It's not bad, but it doesn't show miracles either: 3-4 hours of surfing the web (depending on the brightness), 2.5 hours of watching videos, 1.5 hours of games (depending on the game and graphics settings). After all that I have seen, I would like a little miracles from battery life.