Gaming Laptop UNDER £700??

[Jessen_Mat]

I needed some advice on any recommended gaming laptops for playing casual games (GTA 5, Call of Duty, CS:GO, etc.) as well as for work as I am going to uni and therefore need to be able to do work on the laptop.

Its a HP Pavilion Power 15-ec0000na 15.6 Inch Full HD Gaming Laptop, AMD Ryzen 5-3550H, Black, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (3 GB Dedicated) Graphics, Windows 10 Home.

This is the best I could find for the budget I'm in. Any advice on any other laptops as well as advice on if this is worth the purchase?
Thank you and much appreciated

Jessen_Mat

 

[SpyderTracks]

I removed the link, these forums are for PCSpecialist customers for advice on PCS builds, we can't advise on competitor builds or self builds, you may wish to check out Toms' Hardware which is an open forum

 

[Jessen_Mat]

I removed the link, these forums are for PCSpecialist customers for advice on PCS builds, we can't advise on competitor builds or self builds, you may wish to check out Toms' Hardware which is an open forum

I do apologies, are there any set PC builds that u could give me a price under £700? I tried to build one on the website but I am not really a hardcore gamer as such and don't really understand all parts and ended up over my budget.

 

[Scott]

I wouldn't recommend budgeting under £700 for a gaming system to be honest. You're more looking at around £1000 for something meaningful unfortunately. With a desktop you would be around £800-£850 with the remaining money used for a monitor/mouse/keyboard, etc.

There's good reason for this. The last thing you want to do is spend £700 on a laptop only for it to be redundant after 6 months. You cannot upgrade the main parts of hardware so you are stuck with the spec you buy. This would mean that when you needed to up the level of performance you would need a whole new laptop. If you spend more money now, it lasts much longer going forward and thus is money well spent.

The 1050 is the very bottom level GPU to have for gaming at 1080p. You would be far better with a console.

 

[Coffee Gordon]

Excellant reply Scott,

I've been looking for a laptop for my daughter that she can play Minecraft on. I'm going to use your example of a minimum level GPU 1050 as a basis for the machine.

Many thanks
- Gordon

 

[Scott]

Excellant reply Scott,

I've been looking for a laptop for my daughter that she can play Minecraft on. I'm going to use your example of a minimum level GPU 1050 as a basis for the machine.

Many thanks
- Gordon

Hi Gordon,

I would recommend an XBox for Minecraft, unless you have other uses for the laptop? If it's for general use, browsing, clerical/office type work then a laptop with a 1050 would fair very well for your uses. Purely for gaming and playing Minecraft it isn't a good option though.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Excellant reply Scott,

I've been looking for a laptop for my daughter that she can play Minecraft on. I'm going to use your example of a minimum level GPU 1050 as a basis for the machine.

Many thanks
- Gordon

I think you're missing what's being said, the 1050 is an old bottom tier card, and will be redundant within a year of use, it's completely pointless buying it as you can't upgrade it and you'll need to upgrade the whole laptop very shortly. The 1050 is NOT RECOMMENDED on any laptop.

 

[Coffee Gordon]

Thanks both of you for replying.

Actually, my daughter - 11 years old - only strictly needs a laptop for school work. Her last one (shared with her brother) has just died. Especially in this time of social distancing, she is still doing school work online. Before I order another laptop - (it has to be a PC Specialist as I have had two machines from them and both have not let me down) I thought I would at least look into the minimum/recomended spec for minecraft.

So as for future proofing, it's no big deal. If it runs MC then it will handle any office/school apps no bother.

Spydertracks, the 1050 may be a nearly obsolete card, but for - lets us say - the games played by an 11 year old it will be adequate and inexpensive.

No doubt when she's older I will end up forking out for a greater more expensive machine *groans*

- G

 

[Scott]

It'll certainly be able to handle all of that with aplomb

 

[Rairun]

I play Minecraft on a PCspecialist laptop I bought in 2014 without any issues whatsoever (with a gtx 860m). A gtx 1050 will run it beautifully.

 

[Coffee Gordon]

Thanks Rainrun