Computer shopper gaming laptop

Serious gamers might want to opt for a machine with a Killer Networks setup. It will allow for more granular control over giving wired or wireless gaming traffic priority on your internet connection. Business users and gamers may also want a dedicated Ethernet jack. Most gaming machines will have one, and some gamers insist wired Ethernet is still the only way to go for competitive online gaming.

Some laptops implement Ethernet as a full-size or fold-out jack; others may come with an adapter in the box that routes Ethernet through a USB port. And still others come with neither, leaving wired Ethernet up to you to add via a dongle if you want it. Budget laptops may only have Type-A ports, which is a disadvantage in an increasingly Type-C world.

Photographers will benefit from a built-in SD or microSD card reader for more convenient image uploading. And if you plan to use your laptop in a public, unsecured location, a security notch for fastening a physical locking cable is very useful. These fall into two types, the Kensington-cable style and the Noble-lock style. Make sure the notch type matches the kind of cable you intend to use to tether the machine to an immovable object.

There are exceptions; a laptop with a 4K display and a powerful CPU probably will not last for more than 8 hours or so before its battery dies, and most gaming laptops die far sooner. We evaluate battery life by playing a locally stored video file nonstop with no wireless connections active and 50 percent screen brightness. An excellent result on our test suggests that the laptop is good at adapting its power use to the task at hand, and you can use the results to compare the potential of machines you are considering.

Every manufacturer and reseller has different standards for refurbishing previously used laptops. Some of these resellers or their third parties will rate their refurbished stock with a grade.

It pays to ask who has done the refurbishing—the manufacturer itself, or the reseller. There is no universal grading system for refurbished PCs, however. You could end up pleasantly surprised, but usually, a refurbished-laptop deal that looks too good to be true What is almost universally true is that with a bit of tech know-how, you can use your own pre-owned laptops to your advantage.

Most laptop makers offer one-year warranties on parts and labor. These standard plans are limited, so they won't cover accidents that stem from spilling a drink on the keyboard or dropping the system on the sidewalk.

Fortunately, your credit-card issuer likely covers such mishaps for a short period of time after you buy a new product, and it also may extend the manufacturer's warranty. Many Mastercard accounts include a doubling of the standard warranty period up to one year, for example. Check your account benefits guide for details. Apple, Dell, HP, and Lenovo all offer wide ranges of extended warranties and coverage for accidental damage.

Our rule of thumb is that if a warranty costs more than 15 percent of the laptop's purchase price, you're better off spending the money on backup drives or services that minimize downtime.

Of course, you can't put a price tag on peace of mind. There are instances when the logic board or the display—the most expensive parts of a laptop—fail, and while rare, such a catastrophe can cost you half of what the laptop is worth in repair costs. Shopping for a laptop is an exercise in patience. Now that you know which specifications to look for, we hope that parsing the good from the bad will be much easier. We update our top picks frequently, and you can find our current favorite laptops below.

By Tom Brant 22 Dec , p. Top Picks. Best For Working and Playing in Style. A trim-to-the-max chassis, a beautiful screen, and a cutting-edge Intel "Tiger Lake" processor help the latest Dell XPS 13 affirm its status as today's top high-end ultraportable. Best For Best Performance for the Price. A touch screen with a squarish aspect ratio makes Acer's Chromebook Spin stand out as a well-equipped, affordable "Project Athena" 2-in Best For Creative Pros on the Go. Microsoft's Surface Pro 8 doesn't revolutionize the iconic 2-in-1, but it delivers the most noteworthy update in years, with a larger display, an attractive chassis redesign, and improved performance.

Best For On-the-Go Gamers. Acer's Predator Triton SE will make major waves among gaming laptops, with its trim design and punchy RTX gaming performance at an aggressive price. Given its feature set and premium price, the Alienware m17 R4 is an aspirational laptop for serious gamers.

Its blazing frame rates, quality build, and unique mechanical keyboard set it apart from the pack. The workstation sibling of the celebrated Dell XPS 15, the Precision is a slim, splendid-screened laptop that can handle all but the toughest professional apps.

Best For Essential and Outdoor Workers. In or out of its keyboard dock, Panasonic's refresh of its Toughbook 33 tablet is built to take all the hardships a first responder or field worker can dish out.

If you're looking for a discount on a solid mainstream system this Black Friday, Target's Aspire 5 laptop deal checks many of the boxes. A full HD This gaming notebook embraces the trend of the inch laptop , providing more screen real estate than the typical But more than the The Victus above may have the bigger screen, but this Shopping for a new iPhone?

Here are the best deals in January The 10 best VPN deals available for Best cheap vacuum cleaner Affordable and reliable too. Best online international business degrees Top picks.

Best online nonprofit management degrees Top picks. The Razer style is classic, and it feels great to hold, too. And with the outstanding AMD Ryzen 9 HX finally finding its way into a Blade notebook, you're getting genuine processing power you can sling into a messenger bag. And soon you will be able to get your hands on the Blade 14 with the brand new Ryzen 9 HX chip at its heart which will actually be able to save on battery on the go by using its RDNA 2 based onboard graphics. Add in some extra Nvidia RTX series graphics power—now all the way up to an RTX Ti, but wear ear plugs—and you've got a great mix of form and function that makes it the most desirable laptop I've maybe ever tested.

My only issue is that the RTX Ti would be too limited by the diminutive inch chassis and run a little loud. But you're not buying the Blade 14 specifically for outright performance and anything else; this is about having all the power you need in a form factor that works for practical mobility. Read the full Razer Blade 14 review. It's not the most powerful GPU, but it's affordable, available, and will still deliver decent p frame rates for the cost.

You have to make compromises in areas like performance, design, and even battery life. The most significant improvement from its previous model is its slimmer, sleeker design. With thinner bezels around a Hz display, the sleeker design gives it a more high-end vibe. The display itself seems the only downside, not having as rich a color range as the other gaming laptops on this list. The Max-Q 3. But it's not Nvidia Ampere's power without compromise, however. MSI has had to be a little parsimonious about its power demands to pack something as performant as an RTX into an 18mm thin chassis.

But it is still an astonishingly powerful slice of mobile graphics silicon. It can get a little loud, but thankfully, you have the benefits of all the Nvidia Max-Q 3. This includes Whisper Mode 2. The GS66 also comes with an outstanding Hz p panel, which perfectly matches the powerful GPU when it comes to games.

Sure, you'll have to make some compromises compared to an RTX you might find in a hulking workstation, but the MSI GS66 Stealth is a genuinely slimline gaming laptop. Yes, it's expensive, but this is the pinnacle of high-end gaming. There's absolutely no question you can buy a much more sensible gaming laptop than this, but there is something about the excesses of the ROG Strix Scar 17 that make it incredibly appealing.

It feels like everything about it has been turned up to 11, from the overclocked CPU—which is as beastly as it gets—to the gorgeously speedy Hz screen. Asus has pushed that little bit harder than most to top our gaming laptop benchmarks. And top the benchmarks of the best gaming laptops it does, thanks in the main to the GeForce RTX that can be found beating away at its heart.

This is the W version of Nvidia's top Ampere GPU, which means it's capable of hitting the kind of figures thinner machines can only dream of. The inch chassis means the components have a bit more room to breathe compared to the competition too, and coupled with the excellent cooling system, you're looking at a cool and quiet slice of gaming perfection. This extra space has allowed Asus to squeeze an optomechanical keyboard onto the Scar 17, which is a delight for gaming and more serious pursuits.

Best gaming PC : the top pre-built machines from the pros Best gaming laptop : perfect notebooks for mobile gaming. It may not be the best gaming laptop, but it's one of the best value machines around. The new and improved Helios has a Hz IPS screen and smaller bezels, putting it more in line with sleek thin-and-lights than its more bulky brethren of the previous generation.

The only real drawback is the diminutive SSD, although the laptop has slots for two SSDs and an HDD, which makes upgrading your storage as easy as getting a screwdriver. Read our full Acer Predator Helios review. When it comes to gaming, the obvious answer is the graphics card, but that's where things have gotten a little more complicated recently.

With GPU performance now so dependent on cooling, you have to pay attention to what wattage a graphics card is limited to and what chassis it's squeezed into. As we said at the top, an RTX confined in an 18mm chassis will perform markedly slower than one in a far chunkier case with room for higher performance cooling.

That really depends on what you want to do with your laptop.