Best work/gaming laptop for $800 or less

[SpicyBoi_Nezu]

For my graduation gift (hooray 2020 grad) my parents agreed to help me buy a laptop for me before I go to college. The main goal is to have a work laptop for my classes in the fall, but I dont have any way for me to play games with my friends. I want a gaming laptop so I can occasionally play games like Overwatch or Terraria with my friends. My parents have agreed to split the cost on the laptop if I want something more than $300-$400.

I just want a laptop that has large enough storage and processing power to both play games (Overwatch is a prime example) and function well enough for my classes (I have no idea what that really entails). And it needs to be at or below $800.

My friend has told me that it is most cost efficient to build my own, but I have struggled to figure out what everything means, and it's really confusing. If you have an ideal list of parts for a laptop to fit this description, that would help.

[Peelee]

Are you pursuing an art major?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Are you pursuing an art major?

Yeah, it might be good to know what kind of studies you're getting into and/or what kind of uses you expect. In an engineering program you might expect to run some CPU heavy calculations in Mathematica or such, while in art you might want to think about having a dedicated drawing tablet as part of your setup, as just two partial examples. And if you want to take it to classes to take notes you really want a solid stats hard drive for the short start up times (at least if you're going with Windows 10 or similar). In most cases the requirements for your studies will be included in an 800 dollar gaming laptop anyway, but it's always good to have thought about it.

[Erloas]

I don't think the degree is going to make much of a difference because there is a very good chance either the software you're going to need is crazy expensive so it's only going to be on the school computers, they'll assign you a laptop (it's been 16 years since I graduated, but it it my understanding that a lot of colleges include laptops in tuition if it is needed for the degree), or the software is going to be light weight enough that it isn't going to make all that much of a difference.
But in any case there isn't going to be much of a difference in what processor you are going to find in any given price range, most $800 laptops are probably all going to have the same 2-4 CPU choices and you'll see very little difference between them. You're also not going to know if the program happens to really prefer Intel or AMD's architecture since you have no idea what programs you're going to be using.


As for what laptop to get, you can't really build your own laptop, so that is out. Of course if you do a desktop you can get a *lot* more power out of the same cost by building it yourself versus what you're going to get out of a laptop.

As a general rule for integrated graphics AMD is way ahead of Intel. Discrete is better but at that price range integrated is a lot more common so you'll find a lot more options, and I would go for AMD over Intel in that case, with discrete it doesn't make much of a real difference.

I would put all of these as generally fitting what you're asking for. Not directly endorsing any, just a "seems reasonable at a quick look." And knowing that at that price range nothing is going to be great in gaming, but they should at least play games.
https://www.newegg.com/black-acer-nitro-5-gaming-entertainment/p/1TS-000X-00WU2
https://www.newegg.com/silver-hp-15/p/1TS-000D-07XU9
https://www.newegg.com/asus-s512fl-n...82E16834235472
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Gaming-P.../dp/B07M9SMWMS
https://www.amazon.com/R5-3550H-Proc...dp/B07VBK4SYS/

[monomer]

I would put all of these as generally fitting what you're asking for. Not directly endorsing any, just a "seems reasonable at a quick look." And knowing that at that price range nothing is going to be great in gaming, but they should at least play games.
https://www.newegg.com/black-acer-nitro-5-gaming-entertainment/p/1TS-000X-00WU2
https://www.newegg.com/silver-hp-15/p/1TS-000D-07XU9
https://www.newegg.com/asus-s512fl-n...82E16834235472
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Gaming-P.../dp/B07M9SMWMS
https://www.amazon.com/R5-3550H-Proc...dp/B07VBK4SYS/

At the price point, there will definitely be some compromises to be able to get decent gaming experience.

The Acer Nitro 5 and the Asus Gaming laptops linked above seem decent, and the AMD RX 560X and GeForce 1650 are about the fastest GPUs you'll see in this price range. The biggest drawback on these would be the size and the weight (and potentially case design depending on your tastes), as hauling around a 5 lb laptop gets pretty annoying after awhile. The other compromise is that you either get a big but slow 1TB HDD with the Acer, or a small but fast 256 GB SSD with the Asus. That said, at $699, the Asus TUF FX505DT with the 1650 at Amazon is a pretty good deal.

The HP-15 is thinner and lighter, but the Vega10, while fast for an integrated GPU, won't match a dedicated card and is generally limited to gaming at 1280x720 or 1366x768. I think the bigger issue, though, is the that the screen is 1366x768, which sucks for any productivity tasks. Something similar but with a 1920x1080 screen would be a decent choice if 1080p gaming isn't required, like the Asus Zenbook 14 which weighs less than 3 lbs, or a cheaper but heavier Asus VivoBook 14 or Asus VivoBook 15. If you have a Costco membership, their version of the Vivobook 15 is slightly cheaper and comes with 16GB of Ram.

The Asus Vivobook S15 that Erloas posted with the MX250 GPU hits a pretty good balance on compromises at this price point. The GeForce MX line is NVidia's entry level, but the MX250 is pretty decent and can even run some relatively recent games (including Overwatch) at 1920x1080.

[Peelee]

I don't think the degree is going to make much of a difference because there is a very good chance either the software you're going to need is crazy expensive so it's only going to be on the school computers, they'll assign you a laptop (it's been 16 years since I graduated, but it it my understanding that a lot of colleges include laptops in tuition if it is needed for the degree), or the software is going to be light weight enough that it isn't going to make all that much of a difference.

The university will almost certainly offer the Office suite, MATLAB, LaTeX, etc. If, however, one is pursuing an art degree, the university will likely provide InDesign and/or other premium digital design programs (i believe Photoshop and Lightroom offer free student versions). Universities will most likely not provide laptops*; they still have computer labs and libraries that offer free use of computers, but for art students a laptop would be significantly easier to use, and one optimized for art use does make a difference. Which is why I didn't even ask what major in general, and kept it to specifically, "are you an art major". Different degree programs will have different requirements, but probably none worth differentiating for laptop shopping. Not so for art.

*to the best of my knowledge; at the very least, I feel comfortable asserting that universities that do give out laptops are in the minority. I might be wrong on this... but I'd be very surprised to find that out.
ETA:

My friend has told me that it is most cost efficient to build my own, but I have struggled to figure out what everything means, and it's really confusing. If you have an ideal list of parts for a laptop to fit this description, that would help.

I've never heard of building your own laptop. It's certainly possible, but I'd be hard-pressed to say that it's cheaper, or even a terribly good idea. Are you sure your friend wasn't talking about building a desktop? That would absolutely be cheaper, and significantly easier all around.

[Anymage]

I've never heard of building your own laptop. It's certainly possible, but I'd be hard-pressed to say that it's cheaper, or even a terribly good idea. Are you sure your friend wasn't talking about building a desktop? That would absolutely be cheaper, and significantly easier all around.

Countered by the fact that it's a lot harder to lug a desktop into class with you, or to bring it along to a friend's. Desktops are pretty much just there for gamers who prioritize horsepower over portability, office settings, or older people who are just so used to the idea that "a computer" is something you keep at your desk.

[Peelee]

Countered by the fact that it's a lot harder to lug a desktop into class with you, or to bring it along to a friend's. Desktops are pretty much just there for gamers who prioritize horsepower over portability, office settings, or older people who are just so used to the idea that "a computer" is something you keep at your desk.

Oh yeah. There's a reason I said building a laptop was a bad idea but refrained from saying building a desktop was a good idea.

That said, desktops are also there for anyone who wants a cheaper computer. The only benefit laptops have over desktops is portability, so if that's not an issue, desktops are superior in every way. It just absolutely happens to be an issue here.

Well I say that. For most classes, theres little a laptop could do that a $5 notebook and pencil combo couldn't do as well, with a nice, cheaper-and-more-powerful desktop in the dorm room. Except surf the net in class, I suppose.

[Erloas]

Part of the point of not caring what the degree is, is the fact that at that price you're going to have a choice of like 4 processors which are going to be effectively the same, and any changes that are going to improve gaming is also going to improve whatever school programs you're running.
No matter what the needs are, $800 isn't enough of a budget for there to be vastly different options. Secondary, personal preferences, like size, weight, resolution, touchscreen, and similar, aren't really tied to the degree.
Something like video editing, where huge drives are wanted, will probably also, as a matter of practicality, be external drives.

As I said, it's been 16 years since I went to college, but even then, trying to take notes on a laptop seemed like a lot more work and most people that had them were more often distracted by them than helped by it. Taking any sort of technical notes, with diagrams or equations, is exceedingly difficult.
Having a more powerful system that isn't portable seemed like a better bet and all of the times when having a portable computer back then would now easily be handled by the smartphone you've already got and use constantly.
If a class expects you to have a computer in front of you, it will be in a computer lab.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Having a more powerful system that isn't portable seemed like a better bet and all of the times when having a portable computer back then would now easily be handled by the smartphone you've already got and use constantly.

I found a laptop is very expected in things like group projects and internships. In my programs at least a phone would not have been good enough by a long shot.

(Except maybe if your phone has an external keyboard, mouse and screen. I'm still waiting for that to become a thing, docking stations for phones. But that's neither here nor there.)

[snowblizz]

I'm still waiting for that to become a thing, docking stations for phones. But that's neither here nor there.)

Oh that was a thing. I have one for a Microsoft Lumia 850. No current manufacturer makes "business phones" anymore though. And it uses a special USB 3.1 cable only MS made so cannot be hooked up to anything else reliably it seems. It would be a quite handy thing if MS didn't botch the implementation of it. As they did the Kinect cameras.



A loptop is definitely going to be handy for college, my second year at uni I managed to get a stipend to buy one (yes it's a long time ago, definitely wouldn't now). Not so much for in-class because I've only met 2 types of lecturers. One shows you powerpointslides and says exactly what is in them and basically nothing else (and those you ask him to send to the class). The other talks so much he brings in his own old overheadprojektor and slides he used the last 40 years and only a stenographer can keep up with it anyway.

Most lecturers will want to look at and engage students which doens't happen when everyone hides behind screens.

You'll want the laptop to be able to do work, from home, from libraries, from the bus, in the campus park, 6 hour boatride to parents, etc.

I would not rely on one to be my main computer however. Since I did gaming I also needed a real gaming computer.

[Silfir]

The main issue I have with a gaming laptop is that you both pay a fairly inflated price for the hardware power you get, and that they're typically quite heavy, bulky and often run hot fairly quickly. Even if they come with integrated graphics and only turn on the GPU when it's needed, you're still carrying the weight.

If you relocate frequently - from home to the dorm and back - and want to game wherever you happen to be at the moment a gaming laptop makes some sense. Otherwise I'd give some thought to having both a gaming desktop and a laptop optimized for college work - small, efficient, lightweight.

Obviously the paradigms change if your college work does require a dedicated GPU.

[snowblizz]

The main issue I have with a gaming laptop is that you both pay a fairly inflated price for the hardware power you get, and that they're typically quite heavy, bulky and often run hot fairly quickly. Even if they come with integrated graphics and only turn on the GPU when it's needed, you're still carrying the weight.

If you relocate frequently - from home to the dorm and back - and want to game wherever you happen to be at the moment a gaming laptop makes some sense. Otherwise I'd give some thought to having both a gaming desktop and a laptop optimized for college work - small, efficient, lightweight.

Obviously the paradigms change if your college work does require a dedicated GPU.

I happen to agree. I've always maintained that "gaming laptop" is an oxymoron. On some extremes you can pack most of what my dedicated rig provides into the laptop format, but I currently rock a 32" 2K display to it as well (I mention this largely because someone always drags up som outlier laptop, it's not just about getting the latest cpu and gfx into the laptop shell). There just isn't any competition, and the cost of trying effectively pays for 2 machines dedicated for different jobs. Even with a so called gaming laptop it's not like you'll be enjoying doing it on the train or the bus.

For anyone actually interested in "gaming" a much better option is a good gaming rig and a decent laptop for portable work. It's why I effectively only play "mobile" games on this Surface 3 Pro. And sometimes (old) 2nd or 3rd rate games.

[Anymage]

OP mentions Overwatch (which can enjoy the extra graphics power if you have it, but in no way needs it), and Terraria (a 2d game). I think the talk about a proper gaming laptop is a distraction, when he just needs something with a little bit of heft and can otherwise rely on integrated graphics. "A computer that can handle some casual gaming" is a lot more reasonable than a proper gaming laptop.

OP hasn't showed up again to chime in, but I wonder how much emphasis he places on eye candy vs. just being able to play the game. If the latter, the words "gaming laptop" are probably a red herring here.

[Erloas]

I found a laptop is very expected in things like group projects and internships. In my programs at least a phone would not have been good enough by a long shot.

(Except maybe if your phone has an external keyboard, mouse and screen. I'm still waiting for that to become a thing, docking stations for phones. But that's neither here nor there.)

A dock isn't going to be a thing because Bluetooth mice and keyboards are already common and can be used on a phone right now. And a USB C port, which most phones have went to by now, can output to HDMI with a $10 cable.

As for having a laptop to work in odd places, that's as much personal preference as anything else. I've had laptops for 15 years now and I don't think I've ever opened it up in a library, coffee shop, plane, or similar and I don't see that changing any time soon. I couldn't think of a worse place to try to do school work than in those places. Though I know for different personalities that might be different.

Even in 2020, having a phone, desktop, and laptop, there are still places where writing by hand is the best bet, taking notes is one of those cases. I even bought notebooks to write notes in for online college classes I was taking 2 years ago, and I was by necessity sitting at a computer.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I've had laptops for 15 years now and I don't think I've ever opened it up in a library, coffee shop, plane, or similar and I don't see that changing any time soon. I couldn't think of a worse place to try to do school work than in those places.

How about a small project room or a study area where the whole project group is gathering to work on a project? Or the student workspaces of a research group where the interns are expected to work on their own laptops? For the nine months they're there?

In my studies, a laptop was necessary and mandatory. You plain needed it. OP is not telling us anything about their demands though. They've probably forgotten all about this thread by now. But for anyone stumbling upon this thread in search of advice later: for many programs these days a laptop is a necessity. Know what you need for your program. Don't screw up your studies because you want to be a serious gamer who doesn't work on a laptop.

[Peelee]

How about a small project room or a study area where the whole project group is gathering to work on a project? Or the student workspaces of a research group where the interns are expected to work on their own laptops? For the nine months they're there?

In my studies, a laptop was necessary and mandatory.

I realize this is all anecdotal, but as you point out, it could help. What sort of processing power was necessary? Could a netbook have sufficed?

[factotum]

I realize this is all anecdotal, but as you point out, it could help. What sort of processing power was necessary? Could a netbook have sufficed?

If I was using a laptop for lectures and the like I'd definitely want something with decent battery life, not something I could necessarily play games on.

[Peelee]

If I was using a laptop for lectures and the like I'd definitely want something with decent battery life, not something I could necessarily play games on.

I meant for group projects and internships (specifically Lvl 2 Expert's, though I wouldn't discount anyone else jumping in with relevant knowledge).

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I realize this is all anecdotal, but as you point out, it could help. What sort of processing power was necessary? Could a netbook have sufficed?

Absolutely. If a person was set on having a proper gaming PC and needed a laptop for classes they could get away with quite a cheap laptop. Maybe even a tablet, I think those can run most serious work environment programs nowadays. We did have to do some serious calculations, but that's a relatively minor problem, you could run those on your home rig or on another student's device is there is a licensing problem with that first solution.

Personally I like having a slightly better laptop. I have good experiences with how long they last, I got about 7 years out of the last one. That one cost me around 650 euro's I think. And that one had problems running the games I wanted to run for the last few years of that stretch, so my current one was closer to a thousand euro's. Yeah, if I had gotten a cheap enough laptop that would probably have left me with enough money to buy a desktop with the same power as what I have now on the side, but then you're dealing with stuff like not having software licenses for both machines, so every time you want to use Word you need to start up your laptop. Plus I'd be swearing at the little laptop every time I tried to do something complicated with a hundred brower tabs and too many image files open, which I would totally do. This way I always have the power. I could also have gotten a cheap laptop and a gaming console and still have money left, but that would leave me handicapped in my choice of games. What can I say? PC master race.

So while I'm not much of an expert (on computers, just that! I haven't retrained either of my levels!) I feel like the one laptop setup makes sense if you're not really looking for the biggest gaming rig in town, as OP's 800 dollar budget seems to indicate. Now if you go bigger, say you have 1500 to spend (either dollars or euros), and maybe you already have a nice big modern screen that you got for your last rig or some other accessoires, then yeah, it probably makes more sense to go for a two computer setup and game your heart out. For that money getting just a laptop is possibly a little silly. But at OP's price point I feel like that's not an option, and for the study programs I followed not having a laptop would have been an impractical option.

[Erloas]

If a laptop is mandatory then I would expect it to be part of the tuition, or at very least a specific set of requirements. Especially since, depending on the degree, Unix, Linux, Windows, or MacOS could be needed, maybe even all of them, and you're not going to expect a student to have many different laptops. It's a 100% different question if they had said "My university said I needed X things in a laptop."

I can't say for internships, having never done one, but I've yet to see a company that wants or allows personal computers on business networks. We're not even allowed to bring in our on USB drives at several of companies I've worked at. It's a much bigger risk and bigger cost to have someone, especially a college student working as an intern, bring a potentially compromised system into a corporate network than to just provide all employees with a laptop. If that is common practice anywhere you work then the IT department, or potentially the upper management above them, needs to be sacked and replaced with a group with at least a moderate knowledge of network security.

I don't even think the college had WiFi to connect a laptop to, though I wouldn't be surprised if that has changed in the years since. (we didn't have on-site dorms)

As for multiple copies of software, I'm pretty sure just about every program allows multiple installs, even for consumer type programs, many just check to make sure only one install is running at a time.


Although the main point with the college requirements was that if you're getting an $800 laptop there are only minor differences between them and you're not going to find one that will run a program and another that won't at that price point (short of needing a different OS). If your program takes another minute to run some complex program versus another laptop that's hardly going to make any real difference and that is not something we can help with and likely unknowable until you get into the specific class and they tell you exactly what program your running. Whether that happens to prefer the Intel architecture over AMD, or 0.4GHz of processor speed increase is worth it over 8GB of RAM compared to 6. Even if we know, for example, that the degree is software engineering you're not going to know which languages they're programming in (and likely several), which development environment they're using, etc. etc.

If they're just taking notes, making presentations, looking up information online, writing reports, and the like, as is going to be the vast majority of work in any college degrees, then pretty much any laptop is going to handle that.

[Knaight]

In my studies, a laptop was necessary and mandatory. You plain needed it. OP is not telling us anything about their demands though. They've probably forgotten all about this thread by now. But for anyone stumbling upon this thread in search of advice later: for many programs these days a laptop is a necessity. Know what you need for your program. Don't screw up your studies because you want to be a serious gamer who doesn't work on a laptop.

It's also most likely the studies that you wouldn't necessarily think of as needing a computer where you'd benefit from it more. The sort of thing that involves a lot of specialized software, requires serious processing/graphical power, etc. is more likely to have a dedicated computer lab, whether this is something artistic and computer heavy (e.g. animation) or just good old engineering and its specialized CAD software.

[Algeh]

(Except maybe if your phone has an external keyboard, mouse and screen. I'm still waiting for that to become a thing, docking stations for phones. But that's neither here nor there.)

Oh that was a thing. I have one for a Microsoft Lumia 850. No current manufacturer makes "business phones" anymore though. And it uses a special USB 3.1 cable only MS made so cannot be hooked up to anything else reliably it seems. It would be a quite handy thing if MS didn't botch the implementation of it. As they did the Kinect cameras.

While it might be unreasonable on a phone due to the tiny screen, this sort of thing works just fine with a tablet, which would have a big enough screen in many cases to mean you'd just need the mouse and keyboard. I haven't run the numbers to see if it'd be cheaper to build a desktop and also buy a tablet versus buy a laptop in this particular budget range, but the nice thing about a tablet is that you can also hold it in your hand when there's no desk to put it on and still use it for reading/consuming media even if it's more awkward for writing/creating without the mouse and keyboard. If you have a lot of ebook-based textbooks or pdf articles to read, a tablet gives you a lot of flexibility to do things like read in bed or on a couch where there isn't a good place to set down a laptop. (A 2-in-1 laptop would also give you this, but they tend to be a bit larger and heavier than "regular" tablets and I find my work machine in that form factor is kind of heavy to use as a tablet for reading in bed or other situations where you'd want to hold it unsupported for long periods of time.)