BackTech Review: Gaming laptops
Three new gaming laptops: one with a great screen, one with powerful graphics and one with sleek looks
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Gaming laptops are a unique breed of computing devices—bright colours and lots of LED lights, packing in a serious amount of power. Dell’s Alienware laptops are still the benchmark, but HP and Acer have mounted a serious challenge with their latest offerings.
HP Omen 15-5116TX
₹ 1,59,990
The Omen 15 isn’t as thick as gaming laptops tend to be. It weighs just 2.12kg. And the wedge design makes it look thinner than it is.
There are some standout design elements. HP has given the two-display hinge a unique colour treatment, which makes it look similar to how a piece of metal looks when it’s heated. The keyboard and the speaker chambers on either side of it have LED illumination—preloaded software allows you to customize the colours and intensity of each zone. The lid has a sophisticated groove design, but can collect dust very easily.
The keyboard has been spaced out luxuriously—each key is slightly farther from the natural range of the fingers as you type. This will take getting used to, but the good part is that the individual keys are built well. The touch pad is wide, providing a bit more space for horizontal swipe gestures.
The Omen’s IPS screen is one of the best we have seen on laptops this year. It provides wide viewing angles and reproduces colours well. Good brightness and contrast levels mean it is efficient in darker shooting games. Additionally, IPS screens are great to edit photos and videos on.
There is one problem, though. It is not a 4K screen, which is ideal for a gaming laptop.
The Omen 15 runs Intel’s Core i7-4720HQ processor, with 8 GB RAM. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M graphics adapter is powerful enough too. While it works brilliantly for most games, you’ll have to turn down special visual effects in some titles or suffer occasional juddering. After a while, the palm-rest areas feel a bit warm, even though fans are blasting out heat from the vents.
The 256 GB solid-state drive (SSD) is blazing fast—during our tests, it loaded the Windows 8.1 login screen in 6 seconds.
The biggest problem is that in this range you get short-changed on screen resolution and, subsequently, the graphics.
Alienware 15
₹ 1,27,990
The Alienware 15 runs Intel’s Core i7-4710HQ processor, with 8 GB RAM. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M graphics are just one step below the top-of-the-line chips for laptops, enough to drive the latest games with most visual elements turned on. Though this processor has slightly lower clock speed than the HP Omen, it makes up for that with more powerful graphics.
The 15.6-inch full HD IPS screen is the brightest among the three laptops, but the Omen 15 reproduces better colours.
There is no heating around the palm-rest area even after you spend hours trying to win the Singapore Grand Prix in F1 2015—the carbon fibre layer takes care of that. There is a trade-off: The fans can get a bit loud.
The keyboard has really improved with this generation. It offers good key press feedback and is better laid out. It would not be an outlandish idea to use this laptop for office work too.
Alienware laptops have always had a unique personality. This one too will certainly turn heads.
Acer Aspire V Nitro Black Edition
₹ 1,10,000
This is the real surprise package, and not just because of the price.
The 15.6-inch IPS 4K 3,840x2,160-pixel resolution screen is the real highlight. Original 4K content looks extremely rich and detailed, and even full HD media is scaled well to fit this screen without any deterioration in quality. The screen isn’t very reflective, and this reduces eye strain. The brightness levels are good, but the Alienware is still a touch ahead in this aspect. The V Nitro does not have a touch screen, but we would not hold that against the laptop.
The keyboard is well laid out and offers excellent response, aiding quick typing. Thin laptops tend to sacrifice key travel, but Acer has managed to do fairly well on this count. The red backlight is perhaps the only hint that this is actually a gaming laptop.
We missed the detailed control for colour and intensity that HP and Dell offer.
The V Nitro runs an Intel Core i7-4720HQ processor, with 12 GB RAM. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M’s only potential problem is that this mid-range card will not have enough grunt to run some recent racing games. You’ll have to turn down some visual elements to make up for it, or simply set the game’s resolution at a lower 1,920x1,080 pixels for best results. However, this is a minor trade-off for the better screen resolution, something you’ll love even when not gaming.
The Aspire V Nitro costs much less than its rivals. Gaming is perfect at full HD, but limited at 4K resolution. But the thin and light design, universally acceptable looks and powerful specifications make it versatile enough for different usage scenarios.
THE ESSENTIALS
The specs to look out for:
Processor: Games require a lot of processing power to load quickly and run smoothly. Ideally, opt for a fifth generation Intel Core i7 processor.
Graphics: The smoothness of visuals, and the detailing that you see, all depend on the graphics card. Without going into complicated stuff such as frame rates and anti-aliasing, we would suggest the laptop have at least an Nvidia GeForce 940M chip. With 4K screens, the Nvidia GeForce GTX series is ideal.
Screen: Gaming on smaller than 15-inch screens isn’t engaging. A full HD (1,920x1,080 pixels) screen is the minimum requirement, though higher-end machines now offer 4K screens too.
Storage: Games take up a lot of space on the hard drive, and it is prudent to have at least 1 TB space. With a faster solid-state drive (SSD), game load times will improve, but the space you get will be much less.
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