Ireland - Laptop for The Sims 4?
Hi there! I've tried to research the best laptop to get in order to run The Sims 4, but there's so much varying advice out there and I really want to make sure I get the best laptop I can within my budget
Firstly, I'm in Ireland. And would ideally be purchasing it in a store (as it will be a cash sale), so somewhere like Currys.ie, Soundstore.ie, HarveyNorman.ie or Argos.ie if it was at all possible to get a link to any of the laptops on those sites.
In terms of my budget, I've been saving so I'm happy to go for anything between €500 and about €900. I would like to ensure I have enough space and that the graphics etc will run smoothly.
I will be using the laptop solely for The Sims 4. I don't play any other games. But I would intend on getting most of the expansion packs and downloading a number of mods and probably a little bit of CC aswell.
I know this question has been asked a million times, but any help would be greatly appreciated.
Vadish,
Cliona
@clionamarie Whether to get a gaming laptop or not is definitely a matter of personal preference. I for one would get a gaming laptop, but I care a lot about being able to play on ultra graphics settings at high framerates. You may care too, or you may think the game looks great on medium-high settings and that it's not worth €200 to upgrade. I'd suggest checking out a few YouTube videos comparing Sims 4 settings so you can see for yourself.
The framerates are a different matter, especially because you can technically raise the graphics settings on a slower computer and still play like that if you don't mind the stutter. Do you notice when play gets a bit choppy? Again, you can check out videos, especially ones that say hey look at how Sims 4 slows down on my very expensive gaming PC, I can't believe EA hasn't fixed it, etc. If you want to play on ultra settings while the game is as smooth as it can be, then a gaming laptop is absolutely worth the price premium. If you find you don't care so much, then save the money.
For the gaming laptops themselves, I'd definitely go with the HP Pavilion over the IdeaPad if they're close to the same price. You'll get a little more performance, a slightly better build quality, and probably a screen that's a little nicer to look at. That's not to say the IdeaPad is a bad option, just that it's usually the budget option for people who are straining to buy a gaming laptop at all. (It's also for people who buy a new gaming laptop every 2 years, but that's a different matter.) So if you can get something else for the same price, that something else is usually the better option.
If you decide you want a non-gaming laptop, there are really a lot of options aside from the ones I listed, so I'd still suggest going to the store and asking about other models with the specs I listed. I could have linked 20 laptops that were pretty much the same and a little more expensive, but that's too many to sort through and also a waste of time for you if your local stores don't have most of them in stock. But the task becomes much easier when you can ask the store "what models do you have with X processor?"
And again, it's really best to look at the laptop screens themselves if you can. Manufacturers take shortcuts with cheap laptops, and some of those shortcuts are trivial to many people but matter a lot to others. For example, maybe the screen is very pretty but it's just too dim for you, while someone else intends to play with the lights off and won't care. I can't tell you what you want or even what to ask for, just that in looking at the screens themselves, you might decide you have a strong preference for features that don't come across on a website's product page.
As long as the hardware inside the laptop is good enough, and it will be if you get a laptop with the components I listed, in-game performance will be fine. So you can focus on anything else that matters to you.
