new laptop
Im looking for a new PC laptop to play the sims 4 on the highest settings with all future dlc packs. I would like to spend less than $1,500. I live in the US and plan to use this laptop for sims 4 an...
Forum Discussion
No problem, take your time.
@macietayl0r Okay, so two days (and one extremely expert opinion) later, there's a pretty clear choice you need to make. Most gaming laptops have relatively poor battery life because the manufacturers don't expect people to care all that much—playing on battery is always a bad idea for performance reasons, and wall outlets are easy to find. So the choice is usually between mediocre to bad (4 hours or so of normal use) vs. awful (just over 2 hours).
You see better results with weaker hardware, of course, because the weaker hardware doesn't draw as much power. But from the description of what you want to use the laptop for (and your price range), you're in the category of a power-hungry processor and graphics card, and there's not much you can do about that. For photo editing, you'll benefit from an Intel i7-9750H (or 8750H from last year), which is much stronger than anything else available in comparable gaming laptops.
There's one obvious exception to the bad battery life: the Dell G5 series. Dell makes quality gaming laptops, and this one gets good reviews. The battery is significantly better than its competitors, other than laptops with much weaker graphics cards. The tradeoff is that the screen, although IPS (the highest quality) and 144 Hz, is dim compared to other options. This might not bother you—people have different preferences—but it's worth considering.
There are models with an Nvidia 1660 ti ($1,150), already overkill for Sims 4, and with a 2060 ($1,400), the next card up. You could upgrade the 1660 ti model to have 16 GB RAM for an additional $100 (kind of unreasonable), and the graphics card to a 2060 for another $100. All other specs are the same. So if you liked the 256 GB SSD/1 TB HDD combination better than the single 512 GB SSD, it would be cheaper to upgrade the first model.
Aside from the Dell, the other best choices with a strong processor all have an Nvidia 2060 rather than a 1660 ti. The prices are about equal, at least in 15" models, and the specs are better overall. For the budget option that has merely a mediocre battery, this MSI will do fine. It's $1,250 with an additional $100 rebate. It has an i7-9750H, an Nvidia 2060, 16 GB RAM, and a 512 GB solid state drive. One downside is that the screen is also somewhat dim, although not terrible. Still, MSI makes great gaming laptops.
This MSI Leopard ($1,400) has the same specs as above, except that it has an excellent screen. (Its battery life is also mediocre, but not terrible.)
It's hard to find good benchmarks for the batteries on Cyberpower laptops, but what I did see suggests that their batteries are not very good at all. If you do decide to go that route though, these two are $1,200 and $1,300 for an Nvidia 1660 ti or 2060, respectively, and otherwise the same specs as the other options. And of course you can customize the hard drive configuration however you want.
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-15V-VR-300
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-15V-VR-400
If you have more questions, please feel free to ask. And in case you're curious, here are some of the reviews I found:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-G5-15-5590-i7-8750H-RTX-2060-SSD-FHD-Laptop-Review.422281.0.html
(weaker processor and lower-power-consumption graphics card, for comparison)
- @puzzlezaddict Sorry i’ve taken so long to get back to this, everything’s been so busy, but thank you so much for the help !
@macietayl0r Don't worry about the delay, it's not a problem. If you want more options, especially as the prices have likely changed significantly since I posted, just let me know.
