Not long ago, gaming laptops were almost the exclusive preserve of geeks and compulsive gamers. That’s changed, and how. The twain seem to have finally met. Gaming laptops don’t just show up in cafés any more but also make it to more-than-the-occasional boardroom. Blame it on hybrid work scenarios and the need for downtime after a frenetic workday. The lines have blurred. As gaming laptops also double up as capable workhorses, laptops are pushing performance benchmarks and screen resolution as well as gamer-friendly features. We’ve rounded up some mean machines that can flit from work to play mode with minimal effort:
ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17
We first sighted this laptop at the annual tech trade fair CES 2022, in the US, at the beginning of the year. If you don’t mind the extra attention at your favourite hipster café, all you have to do is turn it on and let the psychedelic lights take it over. The 17.3-inch display (16:9 QHD / 2,560 x 1,440 pixels) with a 240 Hz refresh rate is one of the highlights. Add the Dolby Atmos-tuned quad speakers and you have the perfect entertainment machine. This laptop is powered by an Intel Core i9-12900H CPU, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU with MUX Switch and all new blazing fast DDR5 RAM.
Price: Rs 2,34,990 onwards
Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch with M2
At under 1.4 kg, the newest MacBook Pro is one of the lightest powerhouses you can buy. The big highlight here is the new M2 chip, which features an 8-core CPU with four performance cores and four efficiency cores, a 10-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine. It represents a big jump over its predecessor powered by the M1 chip with a 35 percent performance boost when it comes to the GPU. It may not be positioned as a gaming laptop but the all-new Pro with its raw firepower and 13-inch Retina display with a 2560 x 1600 (pixels) resolution is a gamer’s delight.
Price: Rs 1,29,900 onwards
Acer Nitro 5
One of the best gaming laptops under Rs 65,000. Our favourite design element is the funky 4-zone RGB keyboard that offers great visibility and excellent key response with a 1.6mm travel distance. At its heart is the 11th generation Intel Core i5-11400H processor. The Nitro 5 is powered by Ampere — NVIDIA’s 2nd gen RTX architecture with new Ray Tracing Cores, Tensor Cores and streaming multiprocessors for a significant jump in performance. Acer has reduced the bezels with an 80 percent screen-body ratio. The 15.6-inch display peaks at 300 nits and offers smooth blur-free game play with a 144hz refresh rate and a 3ms response time. Acer claims a battery life of 10 hours with its 57.5 Wh battery. That is another win.
Price: Rs 64,999
Lenovo Legion Slim 7i
This model caught our attention at Lenovo’s first big consumer-laptop event in July 2022. Almost all laptops that we checked out at the event are equipped with 12th generation Intel Core processors, with faster graphics and improved battery performance. According to Lenovo, India is home to one out of every six gamers in the world — 500 million out of a total of three billion worldwide. The Legion Slim 7i is positioned as the world's most mobile 16-inch gaming laptop. We dig the anodised, thin and light aluminium chassis that is just 17mm thin and weighs around 2 kg. This laptop benefits from Intel Turbo Boost Technology that boosts frame rate in peak loads, so nothing slows you down.
Price: Rs 1,50,990
Dell Alienware m15 R7 Gaming laptop
It features an updated Alienware Cryo-tech cooling technology with newly engineered fans that are 37.5 per cent thinner than the previous generation and ensure exceptional gameplay. This formidable gaming laptop is propelled by the 12th Gen Intel Core i7-1200H chipset (24 MB cache, 14 cores, 20 threads, up to 4.70 GHz Turbo). Dell is playing up the 2nd generation RT cores for maximum ray-tracing performance, enabling serious gamers to experience better textures, complex lighting, and more realistic gaming environments
Price: Rs 1,69,989
HP Victus Gaming Laptop 15 (fa0165TX)
It offers an immersive FHD 15.6-inch display (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) with a 144Hz refresh rate and a 9ms response time. The Victus is powered by a 12th Generation Intel Core i5 processor and comes bundled with Windows 11 Home. The other highlights include NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Laptop GPU (4 GB GDDR6 dedicated) and 8 GB DDR4-3200 MHz RAM. The speakers are tuned by B&O and include ocean-bound plastic in the speaker enclosure while the keyboard keycaps and scissors contain post-consumer recycled plastic.
Price: Rs 74,030
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