Are you thinking of buying a new laptop?

It’s important to pay attention to some very important details and to define what you want/expect from a laptop. This article will help point out some tips for the many confused buyers out there...

First off, it’s important that you know laptops are not meant for gaming – don’t get me wrong – there are many gaming, extremely powerful laptops out there but they come at an extremely high price and their performance is not equivalent to a desktop of the same price and yet cost more. If you want mobility and comfort, plus a good time, then by all means, keep reading.

When buying a laptop, there are some main things you need to consider. This article will be published over the time by parts to explain them. Part number one explains about consumer profiles, budgets and game categories.

a) Defining your profile. We are all different people and have different tastes. Some settle for medium details for most games, while others can only play a game at its highest settings. However, we all have one thing in common: a budget.

Anyway, here are 4 common consumer profiles:

Non-Gamer: If you just want a laptop by its portability/mobility and will only use it for work related options, such as document editing or browsing, then you fall under this category. This profile requires a very low budget.

Casual Gamer: Consumers who occasionally play non-demanding games or might give a try to recent modern games but settle for any visual setting, as long as the game runs fluently, fall into this category. This also includes the previous tasks in the Non-Gamer profile. This profile requires a moderate budget.

Aggressive Gamer: Consumers who want to play modern demanding and extremely demanding games and at, at least on medium settings fluently, fall into this category. Only consumers with a high budget will be satisfied.

Enthusiast Gamer:If you are usually testing every game out there, at the highest settings, to see how well it runs on your current rig, if you expect to run every game out there and at the highest settings then this is you. This profile requires a golden budget.

Chose your profile and keep reading!

b) Setting a budget. With a profile set, the next step is to define a budget. This article will consider the average budget and laptop’s price in Europe and Europe only. Recommended budgets:

Non-Gamer: Less than 500€

Casual Gamer: Between 500€ and 700€.

Aggressive Gamer: Between 700€ and 1600€.

Enthusiast Gamer: Above 1600€

If you don’t have enough money, it’s best to save up and buy later rather than to spend money on something that won’t satisfy your needs.

c) The Games. Games also have different categories. They can be:

Non-Demanding: On this category are usually modern Indie games that have dated visuals or old games. Good Examples for this category are Super Crossfire and Age of Empires III.

Demanding: Games that fall in this category are probably recent (modern) and require at least a moderate GPU to be played optimally and with decent visuals. Good examples are Dead Island and Skyrim V.

Very Demanding: Metro 2033, The Witcher II and Alan Wake are 3 of the most demanding games ever released that require the most advanced techniques, such as Tesselation, to deliver outstanding visual effects. Only high-end GPUs got what it takes to play them at anything higher than medium.  

Next Part will include useful information about GPUs - probably the most important component on a laptop when it comes to gaming performance. Stay tuned for Part 2 soon!