Going to work away from home soon and I don't want to be bored out of my skull after work. My budget is between £300 and £500 and will be used pretty much just for gaming.

Any suggestions?

At that price point absolute make sure it has an AMD processor.

You have to go £600 plus to get intel with dedicated graphics.

On budget laptops intel chips have, historically, been bloody awful. I mean real bad.

The latest intel chips are suppose to be better, but I've not experienced it first hand.

Bang for Buck, go AMD.


Or

Buy an intel + dedicated GFX based laptop second hand from somewhere like CEX.

500 GBP = 578.921 EUR.

I don't know the prices and situation in GB (brexit and shit), but here in good old Finnnnnland I would probably go for something like this:

https://www.kannettavatietokone.fi/Kannettavat/Dell/WGPH9.html

DELL VOSTRO 14 5468 14" 7100U/HD-GFX/4/128SSD/W10P

So yeah, for such a low price, I think you'll have to deal with Intel HD graphics unless you catch some good deal somewhere for a lower end Geforce GTX GPU. This one has Intel HD Graphics 620 GPU. Some info on that GPU: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-620.172256.0.html

The only thing that makes me think a bit is that it has only 4GB of RAM (8GB would be preferable even for a laptop), but I guess you can expand it later when you save up a bit more money. Not sure if you could actually get the extra 4GB RAM and still stay in your budget.

Don't expect to play The Witcher 3 (or even Witcher 2) with such laptop, but e.g. older GOG games and many indie games should run great. Just make sure you run newest Intel HD Graphics drivers, to me that made a big difference for game backwards compatibility (ie. that older GOG games ran fine, even ones that I have problems with on e.g. NVidia Geforce).

EDIT: Also, that laptop has only a 128GB SSD so it is not that spacious in case you intend to install your whole game library there, but it should be ok for a few games I guess, especially as you will be restricted to older games or indie games anyway due to the performance restrictions, which will be smaller in size.

Surprisingly that small laptop apparently has a second free bay for another HDD/SSD, so you can also use that in case you run out of SSD space. I guess there is room for another hard drive as apparently the laptop is missing an optical drive altogether. If you need one for any reasom, buy an external USB DWD-RW drive or something. I guess this is the wave of the future, more and more PCs, especially laptops, don't even have an optical drive integrated. Similarly like they don't have floppy drives anymore.

Scratch that, here's a better deal (discount):

https://www.gigantti.fi/product/tietokoneet/kannettavat-tietokoneet/LE80TV01CKMX/lenovo-ideapad-310-15-6-kannettava-musta

Only 449€ right now, and as far as I can tell it has better specs:

- The same CPU (i3-7100U) and GPU (Intel HD Graphics 620)
- 8GB RAM (Dell had 4GB)
- 256GB SSD (Dell had 128GB)
- a bigger screen and resolution

So yeah, I guess I would pick that one up. Hurry hurry hurry!

So generally speaking, I guess you'll be looking at some laptop with Intel HD Graphics 620. That's probably the best GPU you can get to stay in your budget, unless you buy some second hand laptop with a dedicated GPU.

That's pretty good, better then the one I was about to suggest which was an AMD (A10/R6) with 8 GB RAM and a 1TB HD (17 incher) from HP for close to the same cost.

PS: It's pretty hard to find a gaming laptop for something between 300-500. I'd say for most of the recent games one is looking more at the price range of something like 800+ in £ or more like 900 to 1000 in USD ($).

Yes definitely. My suggestions weren't really "gaming laptops" either, they are cheap generic laptops as the budget is quite tight. I am unsure how well exactly those laptops perform (my Intel HD Graphics experience is with much older Intel HD 4000), but I guess gaming would be restricted to either several years old games, or indie games (not 3D indie games using some brand new Unreal engine or something...).

Just a guess that e.g. The Witcher 1 might run pretty ok, while The Witcher 2 and 3 most probably not. Anyway, since we are on GOG, there are plenty of games (both older and indie games) that would run great on such a laptop, I think.

EDIT: I admit I have less experience with recent AMD-powered laptops. For some reason the AMD laptops I see here are generally the very very VERY lowest end laptops with some weak AMD APU, which I presume would be even weaker. Above that are the generic laptops with some kind of Intel HD graphics (like the ones I listed), and then the ones with Geforce GTX M GPUs.

Been eyeing up this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/DELL-Inspiron-17R-5720-i7-3612-Win7/dp/B008HKH4VS/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1490693736&sr=1-3

and also this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aorus-X3-V3-CF1-13-9-Inch-Windows/dp/B00RZDH3W8/ref=pd_sbs_147_6?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=JT6109E1GZ9Y85AMTWYR

Opinions?

If you are fine with a 17.3" screen (ie. you don't feel it is too big for a laptop, like carrying with around), that sounds quite good for the price. It doesn't have SSD, but I personally find the 1TB HDD even preferable. Slower, but much more space.

It has Geforce GT 630M GPU. I have used a cheapo HP laptop with a similar GPU and I could get even The Witcher 2 run passably on it (at the 1280x720 resolution and lowering the detail settings somewhat).

Here is some info on that GPU: http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-630M.63761.0.html

It mentiones that e.g. Skyrim is playable, and many few years old AAA titles seem to be playable on medium detail settings.

Oh and I presume it is fine to you it runs Windows 7, and not Windows 10?

Windows 7 would be ideal. I'm leaning more towarda the second laptop I edited in to my previous post now.

I got my laptop for about £300. It's reasonably decent and plays anything up to Divinity Original Sin (on low settings) so far.

I got it from Ebuyer, don't have the exact details to hand but it's an Intel i3-5500u with Intel 5500 HD graphics (or something like that), 1TB and 8GB of RAM.

For £500 I'm sure you could get something half decent. Though I would also recommend you get a cooling mat as well, like this one: http://www.targus.com/uk/lap-chill-mat-awe55eu
It really helps with cooling and will prolong your laptops life.

That is a good find! Yes, that does seem like the best option right now. I'm amazed it is that cheap, is it second hand? By the specs it blows the other options away:

16GB RAM (!!!)
Geforce GTX 970M (that is faster than the GPU on my current gaming laptop, so you might even play The Witcher 3 pretty ok on it)
etc.

It has quite small screen (13.9"), not sure if that is an advantage or a drawback to you?

Wow, why are you asking us? You seem to find much better deals already. :) I just don't know that laptop maker at all, "Aorus"???

EDIT: Yeah it seems that GPU should run The Witcher 3 very nicely, at the 1920x1080 resolution with high graphics settings, at around 43 fps. http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-970M.126694.0.html Damn, now I feel I'd like to buy that laptop too...

That was my main concern, i'm not familiar with Aorus. A larger screen would be more ideal too but the specs look good for the price. I think I might risk it and grab that.

I would. Hey, it is only £430 so you won't lose much. :) (and I presume it has some warranty). The two customer reviews were quite favorable too. Funny thing also that apparently someone is selling that also second-hand in Amazon, but for a £90 higher price.

Really, I can't understand how it can be that cheap, with 16GB RAM, relatively high-end mobile GPU, 2x 256GB SSD etc... The only thing is that it has Windows 8.1, is there still a free option to upgrade it to Windows 10? (I'd prefer Windows 10 over Windows 8.1; if some old game refuses to run on Windows 10, it probably won't run on Windows 8.1 either).

I could always install a different windows I guess.

Edit: Apparantly Gigabyte owns Aorus, which puts me slightly more at ease.