Gaming Laptop advice thread

Hi I'm sort of semi knowledgeable about computers, but not enough to know which exactly to pick and when I speak to more knowledgeable friends on what I'm looking at they always confuse me.
I'm set at purchasing from currys, and an alienware laptop, when I've asked irls they've basically said shop elsewhere or recommended other brands so not super helpful for the kind of advice I was looking for. I've linked 3 below. Are these laptops really that bad a deal compared to other places/brands? I get a discount at currys and have a finance account with them so can spread the cost interest free. There's also a few other things I'm getting there already so could get it all at the same time. It makes the purchase a lot more convenient for me than other places I've been pointed to.

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/a...intel-core-i7-rtx-3070-1-tb-ssd-10227082.html

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/a...tel-core-i7-rtx-3060-512-gb-ssd-10231352.html

https://www.currys.co.uk/products/a...tel-core-i7-rtx-3060-512-gb-ssd-10237872.html

for the brand and this kind of price range, I think theses are the only these 3 options realistically available to me atm. To me it looks the M15 r6 1tb is the best one to go for. But what would you say is the most value for money here?

Any advice would be super appreciated!

alienware is overpriced for the quality that you get from them

i'd look at other brands like asus and msi if you want prebuilt for quality worth the price

Tsutarja said:

alienware is overpriced for the quality that you get from them

i'd look at other brands like asus and msi if you want prebuilt for quality worth the price

Click to expand...

this is basically what my friend said, I do like the branding of Alienware tho. And they're made by Dell who I know make high quality and long lasting laptops.

I'll have a look at similar price point asus/msi ones at currys. Annoyingly the one I shared here has since sold out and is now out of stock, so I have a while longer than I had initially planned to think about alternatives!

I know it is likely necro posting, but for those looking at this thread much later, I might as well post this here for others to know about.

While I have a Lenovo Legion brand laptop, the exact one I got has issues with the built-in screen (some say it is a connection issue inside the case when I explained to them).
The NVIDIA GTX card* it comes with is able to work alongside the integrated Intel graphics (or even disable the integrated graphics inside the BIOS entirely).
This exact one has 2 standard USB ports on the sides (one left, one right), and on the back is the usual power, 2 more USB ports, networking port, power, HDMI output, and even a USB-C port (which does come in handy to allow me to use my phone closer to me while charging it).

Notes:
* Did you know that NVIDIA RTX cards (the ones with that fancy ray tracing stuff) also utilize your CPU because it is partially powered by AI? I'm actually glad I did get one with a GTX card when I finally learned about this post-purchase. Anyways, I am not a super big fan of high quality. When it comes down to the cost of having to spend a lot on a cooling solution, especially when there is no A/C in the house I reside in, I am still very much happy with fun, simpler-looking games at a playable speed compared to games that are "ultra realistic".

That's one of the biggest drawbacks to gaming laptops I find. Cooling is not the greatest because you're trying to squeeze high power components into such a small space that you eventually have to have a very bulky device to have enough space for cooling, or else you're dealing with poor heat dissipation issues. Newer parts are getting better and better with heat management, and newer ARM processors are much more efficient in terms of heat management since they don't run nearly as hot, but I don't think we'll see graphics devices running those kinds of cooler processors for a long time yet.