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Laptops are uniformly awful.
You can’t upgrade or replace the GPU or CPU, the hinge assembly is mechanically vulnerable, a cup of coffee over the keyboard is game over, the screen dies you’ve got a ridiculous cost to fix, the cooling sucks, the ergonomics suck, and you pay about double the price for half the specs.
You need a proper screen and keyboard at your desk anyway, so unless you’re hotdesking with the thing, it’s just going to act like a shitty desktop most of the time.
Desktop, of course, simply for upgradability and better thermal management.
I have an AM5 system, so I’ll be able to upgrade not only my graphics card, but my CPU as well, and have a modern machine that’ll last me well into the 2030s. These days you can’t even upgrade your RAM on most laptops.
There’s also the fact that I don’t really feel the need to game on the go, and modern smartphones have fulfilled my need to have a portable computer for everything else. When I did own a gaming laptop, I paid way too much money for it, and the battery didn’t even last an hour playing something as basic as The Sims, so it had to be plugged in all the time like a desktop anyway. Within 4 years the GPU was too old to run anything at a reasonable framerate. Never buying a gaming laptop again.
Hm, Lenovo? Cus you just described my experience with them.
Dell, actually. Back in 2004 when they stated making gaming laptops with “upgradable” graphics cards. Except you could only upgrade within the same generation. So go fuck yourself if you actually wanted the latest GPU.
Also the motherboard failed twice on me. Thankfully within warranty but never again.
No hate, but I’ve never understood gaming laptops. They are noisy, hot, almost always with severely nerfed performance compared to their equivalent non-mobile components.
They are heavy and bulky with poor battery life. They are often garish, which makes them less suitable for a professional environment if you’re in a workplace where that matters.
It just seems like the vast majority of gaming laptops give you the worst of all worlds. Worse performance than a desktop rig, and none of the good things about a laptop, like portability, long battery life, etc.
To me, there are a few exceptions though:
- Gaming notebooks. You sacrifice a bunch of performance, but you at least gain back some of the benefits of a normal laptop like slimness, portability, battery life, etc. As long as you don’t play super hardcore games, the thermal issue isn’t a huge problem.
- Your work has a ton of travel and you are allowed to do it on your personal laptop. You can work and game on the same device. If you are traveling like every month flying everywhere for work, that makes sense to have a single device to do it all on.
Again, no hate, just my $0.02
For students a gaming laptop makes a bunch of sense, since taking a PC with you back an forth every time you go back home can be a major hassle.
Eh, depends I guess. Now days I would just use my Steam Deck and be happy with that.
But back when I went to college, high powered gaming handhelds weren’t a thing.
Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
Well I personally need my laptop for collage as well. And it comes in handy if it has a powerful GPU if I need to do anything more intensive on it (e.g. machine learning or game dev). Steam Deck wouldn’t really be adequate there. And even if it wasn’t for my usecase (which isn’t representative of every student), most students will probably still need a laptop to bring with themselves sometimes to collage, and if they also want to game, makes sense to buy a gaming laptop instead of a gaming PC + a regular laptop.
One advantage is you get a lot of performance in a laptop form factor for much cheaper than an equivalent ultrabook
That’s why I said one of the exceptions was gaming notebooks, something like the smaller Razer Blade laptops.
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Gaming laptops are clunky, ugly, not practical (yeah, technically portable, but not very convenient), loud, hot, drink a lot of juice and always need to be connected to a giant power brick. The worst kind of computer
True, but most newer laptops aren’t repairable unless they are the gaming ones.
PCs. I’ve been living overseas for a couple of years and using a gaming laptop. I can’t wait to start using a PC again.
Laptops can be good but in my experience for demanding games they can have thermal issues pretty easily. I’m not an expert though and maybe it depends more on the individual laptop.
Also the repairability and upgradability are huge things as well. I think desktop PC plus steam deck is my dream combo for all my gaming needs personally.
Desktop. Powerful laptops don’t have enough space for proper heat management. I had a laptop with a Xeon processor and I could get it up to 100C and it would shut off.
Laptops, cuz I like to travel a lot and…4 years later now, I can still play the new games or go back to the old ones whenever I want to.
It’s very convenient.
If I was in one place, I’d probably get a PC just cuz it’s usually cheaper for the same hardware.
But I love traveling and I don’t love extra possessions! And I love playing games now and then.
I’m also in the desktop camp. But I just purchased a Framework 16. The upgradable dGPU (assuming they release new ones) might make laptops more viable for gaming.
PCs. Who wants to be at the mercy of battery to game, deal with high heat, and take a major performance hit to be a laptop that you will have to plug in to the wall anyways if you want to game for a decent amount of time
Pc with steam deck for me. Although, my gaming has been 80-90% steam deck lately…
Desktop for sure. Though I’ve started to love using Steam Link in my home to stream to my laptop (or TV) to get the best of both worlds.
Same reasons as everyone else, it’s more powerful, better heat management, upgradeable, and still allows me to stream to a laptop when needed. (I’ll even use RDP to my desktop from my laptop most of the time to still get the power for work things too).
PCs. Gaming laptop underperform for price, are larger than non gaming laptops, and generally are less serviceable & durable. Just the entire market segment lags behind.
Desktop. Gaming laptops end up being the worst of both worlds when it comes to power and portability. Weaker than a desktop, heavier and bulkier than a laptop. Makes it hard to game, and hard to carry.
From a logical standpoint, desktops are better. However, I prefer laptops in case I ever have to be somewhere far, fast. Either way both will probably end up as e-waste in the future. But at least with a desktop you can keep the case and PSU.
Gaming PCs by far.
Since some computer games require the mouse, I’d rather use a PC mouse than the touchpad or a mouse plugged to the laptop.
No particular reason, it’s just more pleasing to the eye.
