Gadgets

Gaming laptops sound great — until you realize these 4 things

Published

3 days ago

January 18, 2025

Empowerment

Gaming laptops sound great -- until you realize these 4 things

Summary

Gaming laptops are inherently more expensive than desktops relative to their performance.

They can’t be upgraded much, and battery life tends to be weak.

They also produce a lot of heat and noise when running at full speed.

Before anyone berates me in the comments, let me say that gaming laptops can be fantastic — I’m writing this on one as we speak. They’re more powerful than consoles and handhelds, while offering the portability missing from a desktop PC. If I hadn’t bought one, moving from the US back to Canada would’ve been a horrendous experience, costing me workdays without any guarantee my desktop system would survive the trip.

It’s just a fact that laptops aren’t for everyone, and there are several reasons why. If you want to get into PC gaming, it may be better to turn to desktops or handhelds instead. Let me elaborate.

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1 Prices can rocket up to sky high

How important is portability to you?

Razer

Gaming laptops use miniaturized components with state-of-the-art technology, plus specialized cooling systems and enormous batteries. That makes them inherently more expensive than their desktop counterparts, so much so that the price tags can be eye-watering. A Razer Blade 14, for example, starts at about $2,200 before any upgrades or accessories. Meanwhile, a fully-equipped Blade 18 is well over $4,000. It’s possible to find affordable laptops closer to the $1,000 mark, but you won’t be playing in 4K or maxing out game settings.

A desktop PC will deliver more frames per dollar.

If portability doesn’t matter to you, a desktop PC will deliver more frames per dollar. If portability is essential, you may actually prefer a handheld like the Steam Deck, Legion Go S, or ASUS ROG Ally X. Those machines can’t deliver ray-traced graphics at 120fps, but they can still play triple-A titles like Elden Ring or Cyberpunk 2077 at an acceptable quality.

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It’s mostly a question of budget and how diehard you want to be.

2 Upgrades are limited or impossible

Pushing the cost of ownership even higher

Asus / Pocket-lint

To keep size and weight under control, modern laptops are engineered to the nth degree. Many components are glued or soldered together, making them difficult or outright impossible to swap out. Usually, the most you’re able to upgrade on a laptop is RAM or internal storage.

That makes them even more expensive than desktops in the long run. A tower PC will let you boost performance with the occasional GPU, CPU, and/or motherboard swap — your only choices with a laptop are an external GPU enclosure or a complete replacement.

Few people like the idea of spending thousands of dollars every two or three years.