Budget of £1k for a laptop...

[RichieLee]

Right so I'll be looking to get a laptop soonish. I was ideally looking at something for circa £700-800 but my max is £1k.

I understand I'd get more with desktop for my money but I'm going out of the country at the end of the year, simply put it needs to be a laptop.

I was thinking something along the lines of an MSI gs70. Firstly i was looking at the gx70 (amd) on overclockers but i read that the amd apus aren't very good. Not sure what the performance is like in the laptop world though. Any recommendations very appreciated!

[Infinite]

I think listing some user requirements would help: portability, gaming, touch screen, windows, max-min screen size, powerhouse, all day battery, etc,.?

You said the GS70 so I suppose you want a massive desktop gaming replacement? There isn't much to report on that end, the only interesting parties left are MSI, Asus, Alienware and Razer?

The newly announced Surface Pro 3 is where the hype train is stationed at the moment. Even I'm ready to board it

[Flibb]

Some of the Clevo barebones rigs are interesting, I recently considered getting one. There are options that take desktop CPUs and RAM, designed as desktop replacements rather than portable use, so bloody heavy and big.
PCSpecialists cropped up a few times in my searches
http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptop-computers/

[scaryjim]

...i read that the amd apus aren't very good. ...

Very good for what? That's a bit of an open statement!

I have a cheapish HP laptop with the previous gen flagship A10-4600M and I've yet to find anything it can't do. Most taxing game I run is probably XCom: Enemy Unknown with some of the pretty turned down and it's smooth and lag-free. Not sure where you'd've read that they "aren't very good" outside of an Intel fanboy rant tbh - they're not as fast CPU-wise as Intel at the minute, but they're very capable.

If you're looking for a laptop specifically for gaming then you're more likely to be bottlenecked by your choice of GPU than CPU, tbh. Plus if you can pick up an AMD-based laptop with Dual Graphics support you'll get a lot more graphical power for your buck. So really, what's your usage pattern? Desktop replacement for gaming? Small and light for good portability? Or just a laptop for general web browsing and email with a bit of light gaming? Assuming your desktop rig sepcification is up to date, I don't think you'll find it too hard to get a laptop in your price range that you'll be happy with

[RichieLee]

The surface pro was intriguing me but this new model is moving to n-trig and going away from wacom! That's a biggy for me as I'm an illustrator so I will be using it for image creation (PS, Corel painter etc) Also looked at the idea of the wacom companion (think a big iPad with an i7, 8gb ram and ssd running full windows and full wacom pen tech) but they're like £1700-1800

As for use...

It's gotta have reasonable potency. Running image creation software so I don't know if a surface pro would handle it too well.

Also I'd use it as a media station (movie night for the other half and I.)

Portability/weight isnt a prerequisite, but i'd rather it wasn't a hulking behemoth!

As for games Jim... Xcom EU will definitely be on the list as will titles like bioshock infinite, skyrim, fallout 3 and the upcoming star citizen and wasteland 2.
I was looking up reviews for both gx70 and gs70. The consensus on the amd unit seems to be that the apu is the bottleneck even though the gpu is good. Apparently the Intel CPU is noticably quicker and gs70 being much thinner?

I'm by no means an Intel fanboy my current PC is an amd build (phenom II and a 7950 GPU) but for the sake of say £100 if an Intel laptop is going to be better I'd go for it. It's not like i'll upgrade the laptop.

[Dooms]

The P34G v2 is the only laptop that is ticking all the boxes for me at the moment. Gaming laptop but in the 14inch range.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/lapto...gabyte-p34g-v2

Its still not perfect though

[RichieLee]

Interesting... Looks good that. What's the difference in spec between that and say PC specialist's skyfire III? That's a 14" lappy that seems pretty potent on paper according to the hexus review. £699 too!

[Dooms]

I'm not a huge fan of the Clevo laptops, they were always a bit chunky but the price is normally right

Haven't looked at any of the newer gen ones tho.

[Dooms]

Throw the budget out of the window & import from the states: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/20/57...looked-so-good ;P

[RichieLee]

The Razer is a beautiful bit of kit and that screen too! Far too rich for me though I'm afraid. The gigabyte p35k looks pretty decent too at just over £1k.

Won't be leaving until the end of the year. You think there'd be much actual tech development by then? Or simply rebadges of current tech?

[scaryjim]

Won't be leaving until the end of the year. You think there'd be much actual tech development by then? Or simply rebadges of current tech?

We'll definitely have AMD's new Kaveri APUs on laptop - they're meant to be particularly well-tuned for low-power, so they could be quite an advance in mobile devices (certainly the step forward should be bigger on mobile than it was on the desktop). There are also rumours about a new AMD graphics card with power efficiency very much foremost, and I suspect NVidia will release more Maxwell-based GPUs following on from the GTX 750 series. So there should be quite a lot of stuff coming out that will directly impact the laptop side of things

[krakajack]

Have you taken a look at the scan 3XS range. I recently purchased one from them, circa £800, and have yet to find a fault with it. (Not that I have thrown much at it yet, just 720p movies.) Yes they are based on Clevo units, but quite a lot of scope to spec to your own needs, and delivery and build time was quick for me.

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/custom/custompcs/form-factors

[Flibb]

As this is still getting replies,
I have recently acquired a Asus ROG and have to say its great. Its a dedicated gaming laptop so the battery life isn't great but I can live with that, on the plus side it runs very quietly doing general tasks and has 2 HD bays. Build quality is good, screen is great, os is keyboard, heavy but then so am I.

[cptwhite_uk]

How about this for a 1k powerhouse gaming rig? (17")
http://3xs.scan.co.uk/shared/eb7d9b2...8-718e1111dccd

If you're going to be using it for mobile gaming and movies, I really think 17" is what you should be looking at, makes a big difference.

[Dooms]

Wait for these?

http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/06/g...aorus-x3-plus/

[ik9000]

Wait for these?

http://www.engadget.com/2014/06/06/g...aorus-x3-plus/

And that ticks all my boxes in one, as long as it's IPS screen....