Gaming Laptop Buying Guide: Find the Right Rig

With their powerful components, colorful designs and premium prices, gaming laptops are a different beast than typical mainstream notebooks. And they need to be if you want to play demanding games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Grand Theft Auto V, explore virtual worlds with either the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift and enjoy smooth gameplay on high frame rates. They're also a different beast when it comes to design, offering chassis with more aggressive lines and multicolor keyboards.

Depending on your budget, your lifestyle and the games you want to play, you could end up spending anywhere from $800 to $5,000 on a system that's likely to weigh between 4 and 20 pounds. To find the right gaming laptop, follow the tips and advice below.

Quick Tips

1. Don't buy a gaming laptop for low-end titles like World of Warcraft or Candy Crush. These games can easily be supported by an integrated graphics card.
2. Avoid touch screens. They're more expensive and drain the battery.
3. 17- or 18-inch laptops are typically more powerful, but the least portable while 13-, 14- and 15-inchers are easier to carry but often lack higher-end components.
4. Make sure the keyboard is comfortable. If you can, take a trip to the store and try out the keyboard before you buy.
5. Ditch the M. Thanks to Nvidia's 10-series GPUs, mobile chips are a thing of the past. These new GPUs are faster, more powerful and are VR-ready.
6. avoid laptop with a low-res display (less than 1920 x 1080).
7. Get solid-state storage. Invest in an SSD for faster game installs and load times.
8. Get a laptop with at least an Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU and an HDMI 1.3 port if you want to be able to enjoy virtual reality games with an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.

How Portable Do You Need It?

When it comes to gaming systems, there are different levels of portability, ranging from "lift with your knees" to "regular laptop

." Generally, the more powerful the laptop, the less portable it is.

• Minimal Portability (17 - 18 inches): If you plan to keep your laptop in your home and leave it on your desk or just move it between rooms, a system with a 17 or 18-inch display like the Alienware 17 should be fine. Laptops in this size range are usually the most powerful, because they have plenty of room for heat-generating components. However, they're heavy to carry, a tough fit for most bags and too power-hungry to use unplugged for very long.
• Medium Portability (15 inches): If you want to use the gaming notebook on your lap and carry it around more often, consider a 15-inch notebook, These systems weigh between 4.6 and 7.2 pounds while lasting an average of 5 hours and 50 minutes on a charge.
• Best Portability (13 - 14 inches): If you're constantly on the move, you'll want to consider 13 or 14-inch laptops like the razor blade Notebooks in this size range typically weigh under 5 pounds and tend to have longer battery lives with an average endurance of 7 hours and 38 minutes. However, 13 and 14-inch gaming laptops usually don't come with the most powerful CPU or GPU, because they just don't have enough space to dissipate all that heat.