5 Of The Best Laptops For Gaming

Some people may be satisfied with a little Apple Air notebook. It lets them shop for tea online, and play solitaire. But if you want to something a bit more intensive than that, you’ll need a machine that’s much more advanced. Here are some that are almost visibly bursting with the power contained within.

1 Maingear Pulse 11

“You want portability? You GOT portability!” says the Maingear Pulse 11. The average gaming laptop is still quite bulky, but the Pulse has been classed “ultraportable”. It’s far lighter than most, and its screen is a compact 11 inches.

That’s not to say it’s less powerful: with an Intel Core i7 at 2.1GHz, and 8GB RAM, it can take on most meaty games without an issue.

One problem: there’s only 120GB of memory, which isn’t a whole lot today – especially given the lack of an internal DVD or Blu-Ray disc reader. You’ll have to stick to digital downloads for your games, which could chew up that 120GB rather fast.

The Maingear Pulse 11 also has a very reasonable price tag attached, for the power it contains: you can pick one up for about $1350US.

2 Dell XPS15

Visually, the Dell XP15 is often compared to an Apple Macbook. But reviewers usually note that it feels better to use, and, running Windows, is better suited to gaming.

It runs on a third-generation Intel quad-core processor, at 2.1GHz, with 8GB of RAM, allowing it to maintain a steady framerate for power-hungry games. It outperforms many higher-end machines in that regard, some of which may cost up to twice as much.

Throw in a hefty 750GB of storage space, and a Blu-Ray drive, and you’ve got a deal.

3 Samsung Series 7 Gamer

It may be a little bulky to some, but the Samsung Series 7 Gamer has some notable talents under that lid.  The screen is beautiful to behold, at 17 inches of full HD (1080p), bright backlighting and a glossy coat.

On the inside, it’s even more beautiful, if you really like hardware. It uses a 2.3GHz Intel quad-core i7 processor, a generous 16GB DDR3 RAM and with a whopping 1.5 Terabytes for storage, this beast could eat several of the competition and still have room for dessert.

Back outside, there are a couple of useful input additions to sweeten the package, including touch-sensitive LEDs above the keyboard to control the settings for WiFi, backlighting and volume. There’s also the Samsung proprietary Mode Dial, which allows users to easily switch between four different setups, including Library Mode which turns down the system fans to run quietly, or Gaming Mode for all-out power.

Oh yeah, and for all this, it’s cheap enough to make you wonder if there isn’t some dastardly deal with the Devil involved.

4 Alienware M18x

Alienware are synonymous for style and grunt. They provide the sporty muscle cars of gaming rigs, and the M18x is one of their best efforts yet. Running a beastly 2.7GHz Intel i7 quad-core, with 16GB of RAM, there are almost no games this monster can’t devour, before spitting out the remains onto the huge 18.4 inch full HD screen.

There’s one terabyte of space to store all the future and current game-victims of the machine, and a Blu-Ray drive to transport new victims to the slaughterhouse.

That diet of high-fat games has taken its toll on the M18x’s stamina though: the battery reportedly lasts less than two hours at a time, and for a laptop it’s very cumbersome and heavy…not to mention that the price of such a potent game-cruncher can be upwards of $3300US.

5 Eurocom Scorpius

This one is for the hardest of the hardcore. The Eurocom Scorpius will draw attention at LAN parties before you even set it up: people will be asking you what’s in that massive suitcase as soon as they see it. Yes, the Scorpius stretches the definition of “portable” to its absolute edge, but as you’d expect, that’s not all it pushes to the limits.

It’s powered by the Intel Core i7-3920XM Extreme Edition quad-core processor, at 2.9GHz and TWO Nvidia GeForce GTX 680M graphics cards. As such, its performance is through the roof. If the Alienware M18x is a muscle car, the Eurocom Scorpius is a tank. A stylish tank.

You really can’t do better in a gaming laptop, but it’s not a cheap investment: the Scorpius costs a painful five grand.

About the author: Linda Campbell is a freelance writer, using a basic PC that is suffering from performance anxiety after writing all this. Don’t tell her poor PC, but she’s considering using laptop rental to properly try one of these impressive gaming rigs.