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…and are being replaced with handhelds like the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and Lenovo Legion Go, among others.
Not really, though. Those handhelds all have weak GPUs with very limited VRAM and performance. I don’t think there’s a handheld carrying a 4070M out at the moment.
I use my deck more than my powerful laptop. Because I can use my PC instead of my laptop and dock my Steam Deck and work wherever I need, instead of my laptop.
Laptops don’t have their place for gaming anymore for most people now.
But my dream laptop came out named Starlite from Star Labs which is small, has a detachable keyboard, can code and write with an stylus and live up to 14h. Like a chromebook or tablet. So idk. Some people would probably still need a Laptop for Blender and stuff on the go.
Regardless of if their gpus are weaker, they are absolutely causing the focus on gaming laptops to wane, and wane hard. Why build a high end $2000 laptop that sells 10,000 units when you could make a $600-1000 handheld that sells 250,000 to 3,000,000 units?
It’s all offset by the small screen. Playing Ghost of Tsushima on low-medium graphics coupled with frame gen is chef’s kiss on a handheld.
Which handheld has framegen?
But yes I agree, I play that game every weekday on the train on my Steam deck.
Ryzen laptops which feature capable integrated GPUs serve light and medium gaming tasks well. For heavy use, there are desktops, which is where the real power is. Portable systems like the Steam Deck are also hitting from the mobile side as well.
Gaming laptops have always been an extremely niche product and have gotten squeezed from all ends.
With everything trying to compete with the deck I can see why. Gaming laptops are going to have to compete with those from now on, too.
Exactly. What’s the point? Steam Deck exists and is a more reasonable option for gaming than laptops. Get a Chromebook or MacBook Air and a Deck and save yourself a bunch of cash.
macbook air
saving cash
dunno about you but where i live you can get a nice gaming laptop for the price of any mac
I guess one would have to define “nice”, usually it’s power:price:weight pick 2. I am assuming that weight is important, otherwise it’s just a portable desktop.
otherwise it’s just a portable desktop.
That’s the entire fucking point of a laptop.
isnt the point of laptops to be a portable desktop?
i guess gpus are now for generating bullshit text or something instead, so oh well
tell you what, make them modular and repairable and ill consider one
Every couple of years, a new modular laptop is brought out. And every couple of years, consumers don’t buy them because they’re bulky, expensive, and unwieldy. This killed laptops with MXM GPUs (among other problems, like GPU white-lists) years ago.
While they’re not gaming focused, the latest Framework 16" laptops have a replaceable GPU. They’re also incredibly repairable. They serve a niche market segment so expect to pay for all of those features.
its easy to blame consumers when these companies barely have any marketing and regular consumers don’t know the difference.
nobody would be buying devices for their thinnes if they understood the tradeoff.
I disagree. The thinness (and lightness) is a huge selling factor.
MXM has been around for ages and it died out of disinterested. Now, with GPUs and CPUs sucking down hundreds of watts of power, you’ll need a new swapppable GPU standard (like the standard Framework invented) because you have to design your laptop to get rid of all that heat. Manufactures have gotten pretty good at designing laptops that can just about cool their GPUs without weighing a ton and being thicker than a dictionary, but they don’t have that advantage when they don’t know what GPU is going to be installed.
People who care about this stuff will know to look for laptops that have the features they need, but very few people need them. Regular consumers don’t know the difference because they don’t need this stuff. The only general consumers who have ever asked me if their laptop can be upgraded in that way we’re the people who bought a 300 euro Window laptop who just found out “new” doesn’t mean “fast”, or people who think they’ve found This One Weird Trick to get a fast laptop for cheap.
Luckily, most modern laptops support eGPUs so you can upgrade your laptop, and carrying around the extra brackets and cooling capacity is an option.
we can agree to disagree then. people i know tend to favor thicker phones after i explain they can have better battery life and etc. they are just being misinformed on that one.
besides, engineers should be in charge of that. not the bean counters, not marketers and not designers.
people who are completely misinformed shouldnt dictate how we make our stuff
Gaming laptops have always been an extremely expensive but less capable desktop. Their portability is laughable, and pointless. Their battery life is non-existent, and if you can’t easilly move them, and you also have to plug them in all the time, then what does a laptop give you?
Not to mention their bad keyboards, bad speakers, a touchpad? and compromised screen. Not only should they be left behind, they shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
Hard disagree. I can game anywhere I can get power, wireless mice are ridiculously cheap, mine weighs less than 5lbs, heavy compared to ultra lights but compared to a desktop that’s literally nothing. If you’re using the built in speakers on any device, you deserve the bad audio quality lol. My laptop’s screen has no issues. 240hz, anti-glare, 1ms response time. This really should be about low end gaming laptops.
If you’re using the built in speakers on any device, you deserve the bad audio quality lol.
It’s possible to make good built in speakers. The MacBook Pros sound great, even the new iPads sound way better than you’d ever expect from such a thin device. My 13” M4 iPad Pro even has decent bass, it’s ridiculous.
Is it as good as a stand alone amplifier with two tower speakers? No, of course not. But I’m not bringing those along with me either.
Sure, but like you said you’re not expecting top-of-the-line quality from tiny speakers. Mine are pretty decent too but I almost never use them as I get much better quality from just plugging in some good headphones.
I’ve used a gaming laptop since 2016 an Acer Predator 15. I use it on the couch, always have done. It has none of the issues you describe. It’s perfect, I wouldn’t go back to a desktop.
With the way Nvidia made mobile GPUs before, the 4070M is all you need. The model numbers on their mobile cards didn’t really matter much, what really mattered was how much power you could pump into them and how well the cooler worked. An 90 class card would be beaten by a 70 class with decent cooling.
However, Nvidia’s power requirements have become absolutely ridiculous over time. There’s no 4090M that makes sense without disingenuous labeling. You’ll end up with one of those monster laptops that requires two power cords to function. They exist, but they’re not exactly good marketing material.
I suspect the future of gaming laptops may very well lie in external GPUs. Now that USB 4(Thunderbolt 3 is becoming commonplace, eGPUs are starting to make sense. Just grab yourself a laptop with a high-end CPU (preferably Intel as AMD still hasn’t figured out the whole Thunderbolt thing well) and any matching GPU if your choice in an external box. You get the benefits of a laptop you can carry with you without risk of back injuries and the gaming performance of the common luggable. Plus, you’re not stuck with the nerfed “mobile” version of GPUs that these companies name like desktop GPUs but sometimes end up being completely different architectures, let alone having any performance similarity to their desktop counterparts.
PC handhelds may also be eating part of the market segment. Gaming laptops make sense for someone in the move with an extensive PC games library, but handhelds easily replace that market trend. You can probably get your needs fulfilled with an ROG Ally or Legion or whatever it’s called, and throw in a mid tier Chromebook for the homework and office work that needs doing. Only the people that want the power hungry 100W+ mobile GPUs are getting stiffed in that regard, and they’re a niche within a niche.
I do expect laptops with a 5090M to come out next year, maybe even this year, but they’re not in a form factor that companies want to show off at trade shows anymore. We’re moving to a world where laptops with 4K screens lasting more than 24 hours on a battery is valued more than 30 minutes of mobile GPU gaming at 120Hz.
I suspect the future of gaming laptops may very well lie in external GPUs.
idunno, we’ve been saying that for years and it just isn’t catching on. I think it’s just too complicated to support, market, etc.
Nah, it’s because $400 for a GPU enclosure is insane, at that rate I can just get the mid-range GPU built in with the regular price of the laptop
