More and more often user preferences when buying a PC are shifting towards laptops – portable devices that allow you to perform familiar tasks without being tied to the workplace.
This is especially true for teenagers who play powerful 3D games every day, as well as students who study in college, prepare for exams and need homework help. They especially want powerful laptops.
In this article we will talk about the features of the technical parameters of these machines, what to look at when buying in the first place, as well as examine the list of the highest quality laptop models from the most popular manufacturers to show their shortcomings and advantages.
We recommend for games, programming, design, professional photo- and video processing choose new chips of the last generation, in the creation of which the developers took into account the mistakes of previous versions.
We pay attention to the following representatives:
Intel Core
the most productive blue stones, where Core i3 – the weakest in this lineup and minimal Watt consumption, Core i5 – medium, Core i7 – very powerful, and Core i9 – so far the most super-powerful.
If you do not plan to buy a laptop with a discrete card, it is recommended to choose a chip from AMD, as this company has a more powerful built-in graphics core. For example, AMD Radeon Vega 3 produces excellent results, easily pulls a part of modern games and compensates for the absence of a discrete card and will be an adequate substitute. And it is much more powerful than integrated Intel HD Graphics and Intel Iris Plus Graphics.
The most popular cards are Radeon and Nvidia (especially Geforce GTX and GeForce RTX series).
It is worth pointing out a feature of those Nvidia GeForce graphics cards, which have a class Ti or Max-Q – these are very powerful versions, always recommended by experts for gaming. By the way, Geforce experts have found the most popular among people who build high-performance gaming PCs on their own.
The amount of RAM
When studying this indicator, you should keep in mind the following:
RAM is needed to store files that are used by the chip right now to exchange data with the OS, and therefore – the more you have a load on the system, the more RAM is required;
A good amount of RAM is needed to some extent to increase the longevity of the device – programs “eat” more and more memory after updates.
Therefore, laptops with 2 GB now on sale are rare, because they are not enough for full use. And it makes sense to buy 4 GB only if the additional GB can then be added by at least doubling it.
In our opinion, for the rest, the most comfortable figures even for a home device are 8 or 12 GB. Well, you should not forget about the type of RAM used, giving
preference to the fast and promising DDR4.
Experts recommend choosing a laptop with the diagonal that best suits your main purpose. So it is considered that the screens at 13″ and 14″ are correct to
choose, if the laptop is often used outside the home.
At the same time, 14″ and 15″ is ideal for working with texts, the Internet, and 15.6 and 17 inches – a great option for gaming, graphics, watching movies, but still suitable for renting a desktop computer. Also with large screens it is
convenient to read and play online.
SSD or HDD
What’s the difference between these two ways of storing internal data? Hard drives came along way earlier and are too inferior to solid-state drives (SSDs).
And they also don’t handle shake or shock well, especially when powered on. That’s why many users now prefer SSDs or a combination of SSD and hard drive.
In the latter case, rarely used files are stored on the HDD, and those that are used regularly – on SSD drives, so you can access them instantly.
Operating System
Immediately notice that the choice of OS is not a mandatory block when choosing a laptop, and experts prefer not to give open recommendations. Someone will do with the popular Windows, largely adapted for leisure and computer peripherals, someone Linux. Can’t decide on your preferences?
Buy a device without an OS and choose what is more convenient and practical for you.