What do you look for in a laptop?

mutazoid

Member
Im thinking about upgrading my system.
I know want as much ram as I can but then I was wondering would a 4k screen on a laptop be useful when using GM2 or will it be unnecessary?
(I have a 4k screen at home but its larger so it becomes useful when larger, Im just not sure if its really worth the cost on the go)

Any other advice?
Thanks
 

Bearman_18

Fruit Stand Deadbeat
Just for gamemaker? Odds are the games you make won't take as much processing as the engine itself, which takes very little. You would only need great ram and resolution if you were going to game on it.
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
With GMS2 you really should try and get a laptop with a screen that's 17" and at least 1600x900, as the current iteration of the IDE requires a fair bit of screenspace. I just upgraded my laptop from a 15" with a lower resolution and the difference is VERY noticeable! As for actual specs, I would say the old adage of "buy the most powerful setup that you can afford" still holds true! The laptop I got is an i5 with 8GB ram and an integrated GPU, but an i3 would suffice too (although I would say that anything under 8GB of ram would not be a good idea). The actual laptop I got was this one, btw: https://www.acer.com/ac/en/GB/content/model/NX.GSUEK.013, although I upgraded the HD to an SSD - something else that's well worth doing! The boot and access speed increase is well worth the extra cash.
 

Roa

Member
laptops are really hard to buy anymore sadly. Mobile phone and throw away culture has leaked into the design principles and its hard to get something of value for performance and features.

@Nocturne yeah, thats a great little machine. I bought one for my mom for Christmas, the touch screen version though.

I guess to actually answer the question, for me it has to have good speed in the CPU, not these stupid battery sippers that pump out less work than their 10yo counter parts, and a solid screen. IPS and 1080p min.
 
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Forester

Guest
I would advise that you NEVER buy a laptop new. Buying a secondhand laptop from last year, or even 2017 is almost always a 1000% better idea. You can get something with triple the power for half the price if you look around a bit and get something refurbished or secondhand.
I gotta agree with Noc on getting a 17". They are great and often have a larger keyboard bed, so it includes numpad keys and media keys, which might be useful.
On top of that, 17" laptops have better airflow due to the big chasis and therefore better performance and temperature management.
Admittedly bigger laptops are more of a hassle to carry around, and if traveling and lightweight laptops are important to you, I still wouldn't go lower than a 15", for the sake of screen space.
 

Coded Games

Member
I don't really ever buy powerful laptops. I usually suggest getting a cheaper laptop and invest that saved money into a more powerful desktop since I tend to use my desktop 100x more than my laptop. I then prefer to get laptops that are light, portable, and have good battery life. If you need more power from your laptop, remote into your desktop with VNC or something and use it.
 

Jabbers

Member
laptops are really hard to buy anymore sadly [..............] its hard to get something of value for performance and features.
I agree. The mid range laptop is dead. The obsession with thin and light has gone beyond practicality and we're left with laptops that cost an eye watering premium and underperform due to thermal limitations. Even the once trusty MacBook lineup has become a joke with its infamously poor keyboard designed in the name of thinness.
 
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GM029

Guest
My latest laptop buy was 100% on portability (Mostly because I travel fairly frequently and was tired of lugging around my old gaming laptop) so I went with a Surface Pro 6 (i5 version) with the keyboard cover. It actually has no problem running GMS, Photoshop, Audacity, LMMS, a couple of browsers, etc all at the same time. Also, pretty much all the GMS games I've run on it have had no issues so far as far as speed. Since it's a tablet I can draw all of the 'artwork' for my game on it too. It's great for game dev.
 

JackTurbo

Member
Get the best spec you can afford and ideally view it before committing. There are lots of things that might end up being a deal breaker to you that a spec sheet might not tell you.

Also I'd ask if you'd be comfortable swapping out the drive yourself? - a lot of laptops come stock with pretty bad hdds but a medium sized SSD is a relative cheap and simple upgrade that can make a very mediocre machine excel.
 
At this point longevity. I literally never take my laptop anywhere, but wow my $1,600 laptop has had all sorts of breaking parts within the first year. Fan stopped working. Monitor has intense flickering depending on the position. Can't hold a charge at all. Literally unplug it and it will die. Wi-Fi broke easy too, but I have a USB wi-fi adapter.

Seems like the more expensive the laptop, the easier it is to break. All my $400 laptops last far longer.
 
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Roa

Member
I just bought a refurbed Acer Nitro, 2nd highest end model. 1080p IPS, 8th gen I5 with true 4 core, 8gigs of ram, 256gig M.2, and a 4 gig 1050ti for 600 bucks. I couldn't be more impressed honestly. Screen brightness is ass, and the battery doesnt go super far, but its way better than I thought it would be. The Intel CPU actually ends up being the bottleneck of the system. The GPU, I didn't even expect it to perform half as good as it does.

I was actually blown away how small the gap has gotten between mobile and desktop variant GPU models has gotten. This thing can power the Oculus right out of box. That impresses me. Used to be you would have to take a desktop GPU and knock it down roughly 2 models and that is your equivalent output for mobile. Nvidia has done strides recently.
 
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The life of a $1,600 laptop isn't as long as the life of a $400 laptop.:eek:
Correct. My $2,100 laptop made it 2 years before the monitor / flip part literally fell apart. The $400 laptops seem to always have a fan go bad, but that's after a few years.
 
L

LittlePipuple

Guest
It should be inexpensive and portable. Well, there is no such thing XD
 
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