Holiday Buyer's Guide: Notebooks
by Dustin Sklavos on November 15, 2010 9:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Guides
- Holiday 2010
Best Gaming Notebook: ASUS G73Jh/G73Jw ($1635/$1700)
The ASUS G73 comes in two flavors: the G73Jw and the G73Jh. Either one of these is awesome. Let us explain.
Prior to the G73, ASUS' gaming notebooks were potent but noisy, hot, and gaudy as hell. With the stealth-inspired G73 design, drastically improved airflow, and near ban on glossy plastic, ASUS was able to address the overwhelming majority of complaints about their previous units while firing a bullet straight into the heart of the gaming notebook market with an irresistable pricetag: buy a G73Jh from Best Buy, and you can walk home with one of the fastest mobile GPUs on the market for just $1,199: the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870. That model comes with only one HDD, 6GB RAM, and a 900p LCD, so if you can spare the extra $400 the various upgrades sweeten the deal, but either way you're getting a potent gaming laptop for an amazing price.
The design of the G73 fires on all cylinders and produces one of the best deals on the market, so it makes sense that when ASUS went to refresh it, all they really did was pull the Radeon HD 5870 for the generally comparable NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M and bump the Intel Core i7-720QM to a 740QM. All things considered we'd probably still go for the 5870-equipped G73Jh, but we have a hard time believing any gaming enthusiast would be disappointed with either model. You can find the no-frills G73Jw starting at $1400 online.
Gaming Runner Up: Clevo X7200 (Starting at $3113 with 480M SLI)
If you're not on a budget on the other hand or just have a general distaste for money that isn't on fire, we present to you the Clevo X7200, the most insane, ridiculous notebook you can conceivably buy. Oh we can review machines like the X7200, but realistically they're critic-proof. Why?
Well, what other notebook can pack a hex-core desktop Core i7, three hard drive bays, and a pair of GeForce GTX 480Ms in SLI? Oh, and you can RAID the drives in the system, too. The X7200 weighs more than my cat, boasts a 1080p screen, and somehow still manages to sport that same godawful Clevo keyboard. Even the power brick is appropriately enormous.
As a result, if money is no object and you simply must have as much notebook as humanly possible, there's really no choice: the Clevo X7200 represents the top of the mountain. We would be remiss in not mentioning AVADirect having offered us the review unit, so if you're going to take the plunge and buy a notebook that doubles as a murder weapon and space heater, you couldn't choose a better vendor to get it from.
Gaming Notebook Alternatives
There really aren't that many gaming notebooks out there when you combine all the model renaming. Clevo makes barebones notebooks that are then used by a large number of boutique shops and the like (AVADirect, Eurocom, Sager, and others all use the same basic Clevo designs, though some are more forthcoming about this fact than others), but a rose by any other name would smell as sweet... and weigh as much.
The Clevo W880CU drops to a single GTX 480M GPU with a mobile CPU but checks in with a starting price of nearly $2000 at AVADirect. Perhaps more interesting is the updated W860CU, now with GTX 460M or GTX 470M and quad-core CPUs starting at $1500. The Clevo W870CU has the same chassis as the W880CU but with a smaller power brick and again the 460M or 470M GPU starting at around $1530. We listed AVADirect on all of those links for the simple fact that they're the cheapest place we've found for configuring a Clevo-based notebook, but feel free to shop around at other vendors like Sager and XoticPC.
What about non-Clevo designs? Alienware still has their M-series notebooks, including the M11x R2 that is arguably the smallest laptop to boast reasonable gaming performance, but all three models (M11x, M15x, and M17x) are due for an update. If you want 5870 CrossFire, the M17x is probably the best place to get it, but GeForce parts are all last-generation DX10 for now, and the 400M updates can't be far away. ASUS also has their smaller G53Jw, with similar specs to the G73 but only a single HDD and priced at $1450. Finally, there's MSI notebooks. We really took issue with the GX640's keyboard, but it looks like the GX660 might have fixed this. $1200 for i5-450M and HD 5870 is still a good deal, or there's the larger GX740 starting at $1100 with the same components (and a 1680x1050 display as well!)
For less expensive "gaming" options, we refer back to the alternatives listed at the end of the Mainstream section on the previous page.
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Cuhulainn - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link
Though I agree with your subject, I'd disagree with the rest. If what you say were true, you'd see high quality LCD options on every laptop, and no glossy plastic enclosures. Manufacturers will continue to make what they believe meets the needs of the market, regardless of what review sites say. Sure, they have some influence, but it's not as though their hands are tied because of these review sites.I like to have the option, especially with Optimus and the like negating power concerns. If volume and weight are concerns, there are still plenty of options without discrete GPUs.
Relax.
beginner99 - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
this.And most casual gamers play on console anyway and not pc.
I would easly pic a i3 IGP + mate 16:10 screen over a discrete one with useless a glossy 16:9 screen.
But for that you need to pay the 500$ "business fee", meaning less power for a 150% price tag.
BrooksT - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link
Could you guys *be* less professional?How about "if you're willing to pay a premium for design and build quality, and accept somewhat lower performance", etc.
Calling it an "Apple tax" is as silly as talking about the "Intel tax" if you opt for a super-premium CPU. Governments impose taxes; companies offer competing value propositions.
And then you get the whole implication that you don't get anything for a tax, which takes us into the political realm.
Please, guys, grow up a bit and take Anandtech in the direction of actual journalism. It's a premium, a tradeoff, a sign of different priorities, a trap for the unwary even, but it is most certainly not a "tax" by any remotely sane definition of the word.
max347 - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
This comment is ridiculous.Obviously someone is getting too old for technology. "actual journalism" is found in newspapers....which my 50 year old dad doesn't even read anymore.
"Apple tax" is a common, well-known piece of jargon. Perfectly acceptable considering the audience and medium.
If you want PC language with oldtyme verbiage and stiffly written articles, read a newspaper. I think the way these articles are presented is just fine.
Aslo though, you could start up your own tech review site, and see how that turns out. I am betting if you take the "actual journalism" route you outline, you will have every stickler and wise guy tearing apart every little mistake in an article. Presented the way they are here, readers can more comfortably approach the writers, and have more of a discussion-style look at the product in question. This is why companies send them things to review- they get feedback. With a stringent fact-article approach, I don't think you would see this level of interaction.
JonBird - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I totally agree. It was an uncharacteristically low brow comment from a site that I think of as being in the top tier of tech journalism. Aanand must not have edited this article because he would never discredit his site by using this type of non-descriptive fanboy meme.JarredWalton - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
I'll just say this: I specifically asked Anand to look over the MacBook page and make any comments/edits he saw necessary. What you didn't offend him, and he uses a MacBook Pro 15 all the time. Even he will admit that you pay a significant price premium for what amounts to build quality and aesthetics, and that is the "Apple tax" so often referred to. It's such a well-known term that you can even Google definitions, and get stuff like this:http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=Ap...
Osamede - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Whatever you want to cal it - "Apple tax" is really a polite way of putting it. If someone wanted to be more provocative they could even call it an "Apple cult fee". And Even the marketing term for this: "brand premium" is itself a euphemism for commanding a price over and beyond the intrinsic value of the product when separated from the brand loyalty.A good example of this is the new Macbook Air products. Basically you have in the 11" version what is little more than an Acer 1810 encased in a shiny aluminum package with a few ounces shaven off and the price doubled. The main real value in there is the better screen and that alone cannont explain Apple's blatant price gouging on 2-3 year old CULV products.
So I would say, let them call it what they will. Apple is definitely charging more than what the products are intrinsically worth.
Spazweasel - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
"Intrinsic worth" is subjective.If you add up the cost of components, you don't get to call that "intrinsic worth", because assembly isn't free. Neither is design and engineering. Many people assign no value to this, and that's just plain wrong. Apple spends more on engineering and design than most other companies, and you pay your share of it. Apple's not the "R&D and manufacturing welfare company", nor is Dell or HP or Lenovo or Asus or any other laptop maker.
You also get OS/X with your MacBook, and that's not free either (and please, no BS about "it's FreeBSD/Mach", that's a tiny part of the operating system as a whole). If you choose to throw away the OS and run something else on it, fine, but you're going to pay your amortized part of OS/X's development anyway.
Look, if you don't value where the "extra" money is going, fine, DON'T BUY IT. You're saying "if I, and only I, don't value it, it has no value to anyone and should therefore be free".
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - link
Respectfully, Apple's reported profit margins border on the offensive.You would LIKE to justify the increased cost based on all the things you listed, but judging by Apple's current liquidity I'm gonna go ahead and say these things have already been paid for. The rest is just gouging the consumer.
misaki - Monday, November 15, 2010 - link
I believe you guys have the model number wrong for the 2nd asus netbook, 1015pn-mu17 doesn't exist. Your link goes to 1015ped-mu17 which has the n455.1015pem is the n550 counterpart with integrated intel gpu that has 2 versions. MU17 is cheaper by leaving out bluetooth 3.0 and has a smaller battery than PU17.
(I happened to be looking at netbooks recently)