Laptops Arena

A modern gaming notebook is the best selling desktop replacement because everyone wants to be capable to play any game without having any problems. If you want a lot of performance and you’re not willing to pay Alienware prices, you can choose the Toshiba Qosmio x305-Q706. This model has the same balance between design and performance like an Alienware laptop but at a lower price.

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The price starts from $1,200 but it can get somewhat expensive, depending on what configuration you choose.The Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q706 gaming notebook has a synthetic material case with a magnesium chassis which offers a great protection against scratches or if you accidentally drop it. The combination between metallic red and carbon fiber texture gives a beautiful and quality aspect.

With 16.2 x 12.0 x 2.5 inches dimensions and a total weight of 10 lbs, this gaming notebook is certainly a desktop replacement. The display is a 17 inch WSXGA LCD one, ideal for games or watching movies, with a native resolution of 1680 x 1050 pixels.

Because the Toshiba Qosmio X305-706 is a gaming notebook, it is very powerful. In standard configuration it comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26 GHz processor and 3 GB of DDR3 RAM memory.  But the most important aspect of this laptop is the graphics card configuration. It comes with two nVidia GeForce 9800 GTS graphics cards that allow you to run the latest games at optimal speed without having any problems. The 320 GB 7200rpm hard drive is enough for you to store your photos, movies, music and games.



Because this gaming notebook has large dimensions, it comes with a 104-key keyboard. The flat surface and the flexible plastic material of the keys can provide you with an extraordinarily gaming experience. Even if you want to write something your hands will be relaxed because the keys are large with a generous space between them. The touchpad, like the other gaming notebooks, is quite small. But for a maximum efficiency we recommend you buy a mouse. The surface of the touchpad is made of a plastic material with a great finish and it’s very responsive to every light touch.

But let’s talk a bit about connectivity. The Toshiba Qosmio X305-706 has anything you need. It comes with 4 USB ports, a Ethernet port, a 56k modem port, a FireWire port, a HDMI port, a Display port, a S-Video port, a VGA-out port, an Express Card slot, a 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader, a 802.11b/g/n Wireless adaptor, a Bluetooth adaptor and the usual headphones, line-in, line-out, and microphone jacks. For burning or watching your favorite discs, this gaming notebook has a SuperMulti DVD-RW optical drive with Blu-Ray feature.



For sound, there are four integrated Harman/Kardon speakers plus a subwoofer, which produce a clear and loud sound. With these speakers you will never want to attach an external set of speakers, only if you want to throw a party. The big disadvantage of this unit is the weight. Even if the 12-cell battery keeps this laptop up for only 2 hours in stressful conditions and 3 hours and 15 minutes on standby mode, this gaming notebook is a desktop replacement.  With a low price and the great performance we recommend this notebook because it is worth all the money.

Every time we try to look for the best laptops for gaming, we find dozens of lists on a dozen different websites so it's really pretty hard to create a top ten. Each of those lists may contain different gaming laptop models, which makes our job even more difficult. So, the fair thing to do is to check out some lists and check to see which are the laptop models they have in common. When you find a laptop model in a top ten on different web pages, it is bound to be one of the best laptops for gaming.
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Ok, let's see which these laptops are, not by making a top ten chart, just by listing the names in a random order and quickly going through the specs. It doesn't matter how many websites you check out; one name which is bound to be in any "best laptops for gaming" list is the Alienware Area 51 m9750. Even the design of the laptop can give you the chills when the alien head logo on the lid lights up in the dark. This machine is big, bad and powerful. The nice thing about this mean killing machine is that most options are configurable on the Alienware website. For $4450 you can get the following specs: a 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7600, 2 GB of RAM (upgradeable to a maximum 4 GB), 320 GB of hard disk space (composed by dual Hitachi SATA hard drives) and 2 nVidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX graphic cards with 512 MB of video memory each (yes, that means you have 1 GB of DD3 only for game play).

As for the ports and connections, there's a lot to talk about. This laptop comes with 4 USB ports, one RJ 11 port, one DVI and one VGA out, an S-Video in port, a Kensington lock slot, an Ethernet port, a mini FireWire, a TV in jack, one S/PDIF out, an Express Card slot, 3 audio out ports, a media card slot and the headphones out and microphone in jacks. If I had to say that out loud, I'd be tired by now. As expected, the battery will only last about 1 hour with the display brightness set to a low level and while surfing the internet with the wireless card turned on. In conclusion, this is a gaming laptop. And a very good one. Not only can it achieve fast gaming performance but it also looks an UFO that just landed in the living room. The keyboard is great and so is the cooling system. Too bad the dimension and the weight are going to prevent you from carrying it around and showing it off. The 17 inch glossy display is a beauty as colors and sharp and the contrast in great. If only it were a bit cheaper.



Even if we have reviewed it in the past, the Dell XPS 1730 is still one of the best choices for a good gaming laptop. Too bad you have to pay $4500 for a good unit. The 17 inch gaming laptop from Dell can show some outstanding performance when it comes to speed. It has a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 mobile processor. If the processor did not amaze you, maybe the 2 nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX graphic cards with 256 MB of video memory each will. The processor works together with 2 GB of RAM in order to provide accurate speed for game play. As for the hard disk, you have 400 MB of free storage space so you can stuff all your games and files in there. It also has 4 USB ports, one DVI, a FireWire port, a Kensington lock slot, an Express Card slot, the Ethernet port, an S-Video out, a 5-in-1 media card reader and 2 headphones out and one microphone in jacks.



The battery of this laptop is even weaker than the one on the Alienware. With the screen's brightness set at maximum level and while surfing the internet via wireless, you will get about 56 minutes of battery life. You could add an extra 20 if you lower the brightness level of the display and turn off the wireless card but these kind of laptops were not made for portability therefore battery life is not important. Who would even want to carry around these monsters all day? If it's a gaming laptop, then make it a gaming laptop! The lid of the unit is powered by blue lights that glow beautifully in the dark. Probably the design is worth a couple hundred bucks but it's worth it. The LED lights are customizable and there are even LEDs backing up the keyboard so you can find the keys when you're playing in the dark. For such a big laptop, this Dell XPS runs pretty quiet and the fans are doing a good job as the laptop does not have overheating problems. It's nice not having to worry about heat when you have such powerful components inside. The starting price is $2700 but like I said, when you want a good gaming unit, there are sacrifices to be made. And I'm talking about double the price here. It does come with a lot of software preinstalled which some users could find pretty useless.



I'd really wish they would put all those trial programs on CDs and ship them together with the unit instead of filling up memory uselessly. When it comes to game play, Alienware still provides better performance. Could it be because of the extra 512 MB of video memory? Guess it is.



These are the 2 laptop models you will wind on most websites that give out the names of the best gaming units. And they are on the top ten lists of many heavy gamers out there. It's a pity that such laptops are so expensive or else they would be selling like pancakes. Oh well, time to save some money if you want to be able to play F.E.A.R. and really enjoy the gaming details.

Buying a gaming laptop is quite an investment in our days. Even if there are laptops which refurbished can be bought for as low as $300, a good gaming laptop can cost more than $2000. In my opinion, the best place to buy a gaming laptop is directly from a store. This is because when you pay a big amount of money, it would be better if you could check out the merchandise for yourself. Looking though the gaming laptop models available in one store could make you change your mind faster. Maybe you like how it feels to type on another keyboard then the one on the laptop you first had in mind. The second best place to buy a gaming laptop is the online store. This way you can take all the time you need to check though all the available gaming laptop models until you make up your mind. If you choose to buy a gaming laptop online, you have the benefit of checking various websites simultaneously. This means you can compare prices from different online stores and even compare different laptop specs for various models.
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If you check out www.tigerdirect.com, you are bound to get lost between so many laptop models to choose from. Look at the left column which allows you to filter your searches and narrow your options down to what really interests you. For instance, one very good laptop offer is the Visionman Widow WGMI 3SG210 gaming unit. $4000 is not an accessible price for everyone but you should know by now that good gaming laptops are worth thousands of dollars. Their brand promise states that the company can take gaming experience at a whole new level with this unit. It has a beautiful HD widescreen display and a quad core processor, thing that should be found in every gaming laptop on this planet. When you lift the lid of this laptop you will find a beautiful combination of glossy black keys and design and LED controls which add a nice touch of blue to this whole unit. You have 8 programmable gaming keys which provide real satisfaction for gamers and they make game play a lot easier. The touch sensitive control panel is another nice feature that fits perfectly to the whole design of the unit. It has two graphics cards which should mean double the visual performance.

The frame rates are bound to be breathtaking so you can play some of the newest games, which means top of the line material. The 18.4 inch display is the first sign that this laptop is a desktop replacement. The HD widescreen is one hint that games are going to look awesome on this screen. The native resolution is 1920 x 1080 pixels which support superb colors and great horizontal viewing angles. This means that not only can you enjoy a good game on this laptop but you can gather around some friends and watch a nice movie together. It’s safe to say that this laptop brings the cinema experience closer to your home.



4 GB of DDR3 mean better transfer speed and the new Windows 7 operation system which I’m sure a lot of people have been dying to check out but just didn’t have the right specs on their laptop or computer to do so. If you still don’t find 4 GB to be enough RAM for your laptop, you will be happy to know that you can upgrade to a maximum 8 GB. The hard disk has a capacity of 500 GB which should be enough to cover your storage needs. Since it’s well knows that new games can occupy even 12 GB of space, you will need all the free disk space you can get. The processor is the 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad which is one of the best CPU’s that money can buy at this moment. Combined with the 4 GB of RAM, you should have enough power to run multiple applications at a satisfying speed. And now for the most interesting part of all, the GPU. The graphics card is 2 x nVidia GeForce GTX 280M with 1 GB of video memory. There are good gaming laptop on the market which have 512 MB of video memory and they can run games at very nice frame rates so you can only imagine what 1 GB of video memory can do.



When it comes to ports and connections, this laptop handles the job very well. It has 3 USB ports, a 7-in-1 media card reader (for Memory Stick, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick PRO, Multi Media Card, Mini-Secure Digital, Reduced-Size Multi Media Card and Secure Digital), one LAN port, one FireWire port, one HDMI port, one eSATA port, one DVI port and the headphones out and microphone in jacks. Other nice features about this laptop are the integrated Bluetooth, the numerical pad (which comes in handy for those that work a lot with numbers), a 3.0 mega pixel webcam (1.3 mega pixel webcams can do a nice job so 3.0 should be awesome), a Kensigton lock slot and even a fingerprint reader for the increased security of your laptop.



The price is about the biggest inconvenient of this laptop (and so are the 12.5 lbs of weight for those that were palling on carrying this laptop around with them) but once you get passed the money issue, this laptop is the dream of every heavy games out there. The eight customizable gaming keys which are located on the left side of the keyboard are a very nice touch for a gaming laptop and if only there were more models that had this feature. You have extended service plans and other offers available for this laptop (if you pay the extra price, that is). If you really want this laptop but cannot afford to pay the whole price at a time, you can go with the monthly payments option which means you will be taxed $120 every month for this gaming laptop.

How can you turn your laptop into a gaming laptop? It’s one of the easiest questions even but it does have a very long answer. It’s easy because it’s basically a matter of upgrading certain components. But you have to know exactly which part to upgrade and why it needs upgrading. We are going to go through the basics of gaming notebook components and in this article we will try to explain how to turn your laptop into a gaming laptop.
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Before you start doing any upgrading there are 2 things that you need to pay attention to. First, you have to make sure that the parts you want to change are not soldered to the motherboard. In some cases, components like processors are attached to the motherboard and replacing them basically means you have to replace two components instead of just one. Second, before you open up the unit, you have to make sure that you do not void the warranty if your laptop is still in the warranty period. There is usually a sticker that covers one of the screws that you normally need to remove in order to upgrade and once you remove that sticker, the warranty is no longer available. Also keep in mind that buying new laptop components means there is some investment to be done. Laptop components are more expensive that desktop computer parts.

Now that we have cleared that, let’s start with what you need to buy to turn your laptop into a gaming laptop. A good gaming laptop should have at least 2 GB of RAM. In our days, manufacturers put some 3 or 4 GB into a mainstream laptop. Pay attention because some laptops have a limit of RAM that they can accept. You may have noticed that lots of laptop reviews write “2 GB upgradeable to a maximum 4 GB”. The basic idea is that the more RAM you have, the more applications you can run simultaneously.  The next important thing is the processor. Today, laptops usually come with dual core processors. Dual core means twice the speed so the better you processor is, the faster your games and other applications will run. Top of the line gaming laptop have quad processor and they also use the new Intel i7 CPUs which are currently the best on the market. These processor are very expensive, so an Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 let’s say should to the trick for some serious game play.



The available disk space is also an important part of gaming computers. Since new games can occupy even 10 GB of space, you should have at least 160 GB of available storage. Laptops usually come with 250 GB or 320 GB (of course, there are laptops with 500 GB of HDD) of free space and this is better because you don’t have to make back up copes of your files on DVDs all the time to free some space on your laptop.

And here comes the most important part of all: the video card. Changing the graphics card on your laptop is a very difficult process that takes a lot of time and you may have to dissemble most of your laptop. If you are not careful enough, you may damage certain laptop parts when taking them out or putting them back together. On new laptop models, you can get access to the graphics card by simply removing one of the bottom panels that reveals most upgradeable laptop components. Older laptops require more steps in order to complete the upgrading process. The first thing you have to do is remove the hinge covers by prying them up and pulling them away from the chassis. Remember to check if your laptop supports the graphics card that you want to install. This information is found in the laptop’s manual, usually available for download from the manufacturer’s website.



The next step would be detaching the keyboard by removing some screws. Be careful where you put the screws because in the end, when you have to put everything back together, you are supposed to know exactly where each screw came from. Then you have to remove the entire display by gently removing the screws which are located on the bottom and on the back of the laptop. Then you have to unplug the video plus the wireless antenna cables which will be revealed. After that, remove the optical drive (there is a latch located at the bottom of the notebook which lets you slide the drive out).

Then you must remove the shell by getting rid of the screws. You will find that there are usually about a couple of screws that keep the video card attached to the unit so just remove those, put in the new card and then reverse the entire process that we described in this article and you should be able to get a new and improved graphics system. The ATI Radeon HD 5970 is the fastest and therefore the best graphics card in the world. It’s big and bad, not to mention powerful but probably most of you can’t afford it since it costs about $950 which is the price of a good mainstream laptop. I think you really have to be a gaming maniac in order to spend that much money on a graphics card.



It would be nice if your video card had at least 256 MB of video memory (512 MB would be even nicer). It is recommended that the memory is dedicated because integrated video memory means that those cards are part of the motherboard and they take out from the total RAM. You will notice that the best gaming laptop have 512 MB of memory and Alienware even has 1 GB. This improves the quality and the frame rate of the game play and it provides you with high quality gaming experience. Remember to make sure that whatever part you wish to replace is indeed upgradeable before you go around and disassembly your laptop. Be careful where you put the screw and detached parts because you are going to have to put this laptop back together once you’re done.

In some of our past articles, we spoke a lot about which is the best choice for a gaming laptop. In terms of brands, Alienware is by far the best choice for a gaming laptop. It is also the most expensive one. We said that the Alienware m17x is one of the best gaming laptops around. But it is not the only one. The Alienware m15x is like the m17x’s younger brother so it can be tagged as one of the world’s best gaming laptops.
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The beautiful silver coating is what attracted me most in terms of laptop design. In bright light, it looks like a shiny diamond that inspires both power and elegance.  If some may consider it boring and not gaming laptop looking like, other will be very attracted to the simplicity of this beautiful laptop. The omnipresent alien head is available on this laptop model as well. The beauty of the design does not compensate durability. There are some creaks that all if you will notice if you ever get the chance to use this laptop. Just when you start opening the lid, the sound is pretty annoying. The keys are backed up by a blue LED and they offer positive feedback each time you type. One thing that surprised us with this durable laptop is the flexing of the keyboard. This is only noticeable in certain areas and it’s nothing to be worried about.

The 15.4 display offers a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. The 6.12 pounds of this laptop will add up with whatever you decide to put in the Smart Bay. It can either be a secondary hard drive, an extra battery or a Blu-ray optical drive.  The number of ports and connections is sufficient to make every type of user happy. It has a total of 3 USB ports, an Ethernet port, the swappable Smart bay, a 7-in-1 media card reader, an Express Card slot, a HDMI port, a FireWire port and the regular headphones out and microphone in jack.  In the palm rest area, the heat can become quite pronounced and disturbing but it’s something you expect to find in a laptop that has powerful components. The fan does not make any disturbing noise.



The price is pretty spicy but when you get to use the nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX graphics card with 512 MB of video memory you will see that it was worth making that financial effort. The performance of the video card is awesome and once you use this laptop for playing games, you can never go with anything weaker. It takes one day to get used to the performance and way longer to forget about it. The Binary GFX feature will help you make the graphics card run off of the integrated memory and this feature will help you save some serious battery life if you are travelling and need that extra power. You can go with the Media Center remote control that comes in handy when you want to watch some nice Blu-ray movies. Alien FX is definitely one of the coolest features we have seen a gaming laptop because it allows you to choose between different colors for the lid and touchpad border depending on the program you are going to run. People that are into the cool design of a laptop are going to love this feature.



The aluminum name plate which has the name of the user is another cool feature that can be personalized. Unfortunately that name plate can be easily detached by removing the 4 screws so in case it gets stolen, it will be hard to prove that unit is yours. The 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X9000 combined with 4 GB of RAM are the perfect combination for pretty much anything you want to use this laptop for. Is this really the world’s best gaming laptop? Well, the multi taking possibilities would definitely give a positive answer to this question. From office work, to student work, multimedia work and game play work, this laptop can cover pretty much any type of computing activity. Like I said, if a laptop is good for gaming, then it’s good for pretty much everything else. The 2.0 mega pixel webcam is going to be your best friend when you use video chatting programs like Skype because it beats all the regular 1.3 mega pixel webcams out there. The images are clear under different light conditions. the PCMark Vantage score for the Alienware is 3767 which is a notch weaker than the Asus M70sa which scored 3784 on this very same test.



The starting price for the Alienware m15x is $1800 but if you want a unit with similar specs to ours, it going to cost about $4800. I know the price is going to make you jump 3 feet high with anger but think of it as a long term investment. Also think of all the benefits you can get and think about Alieenware’s reputation of being the best gaming laptop manufacturer. The combination of the Core 2 Duo Extreme processor with the 8800M GTX graphics card is equal to speed and performance all in one very nice looking laptop. Few people have ever regretted buying an Alienware for gaming. You can always customize your own model as this $4800 one has all the top of the line specs that were available.



Remember that the reviewed unit came with an extra battery, a Blu-ray burner and a secondary hard drive with 300 GB of disk capacity. This is a premium gaming laptop and if there were a category above premium, Alienware would definitely fit in that one with the m15x. It’s only a matter of how much money you have to spend. You have a standard one year warranty period and if you want this period to be extended, you have to pay an extra $200 for two years in total and $300 for three years. In conclusion, the 15 inch Alienware m15x wins the race against many 17 inch desktop replacements and so called “gaming laptop wannabees”.