How to choose a laptop and not to screw up - A Beginner's Guide

Every confident PC user sooner or later thinks about buying a laptop. A stationary computer, for all its power, has one weighty disadvantage - it is (unexpectedly) stationary. However, the transition to a portable format involves a number of nuances that you should know about. Which ones? About that in this material...

Why do you need a laptop?

And the first nuance with which you are likely to be confronted long before buying - the advisability of buying. Maybe, visiting a friend, you saw at him a powerful laptop and burned with the desire to buy himself the same. But you have not considered the fact that the friend, probably perceives the PC is not so, as you perceive it. Not to scatter, let us imagine that we want a gaming laptop, as they are the most versatile solution on the market. Determined with the goal? Now for the nuances: notebook and desktop PC configurations differ dramatically. When choosing, the buyer needs to pay attention to:

Display - By no means buy screens with a resolution less than Full HD, 720p - we definitely do not need. Matrix: IPS only. No WVA, no TN-Film. WVA and TN-Film are consonant with VA and TN, which in their time proved themselves in TV displays and monitors. But VA displays in contrast and color depth are only good in stationary PC builds, and TN is no longer needed, because the response speed of the IPS matrix has long been commensurate with TN. And we are talking about real TN and VA, not WVA and TN-Film...
Screen size is a matter of taste. If we are looking for a portable device, we should pay attention to 13-inch screens - the most compact on the market; however, 13 inches will not be enough for the layout of the browser and video editing. The optimal size - 15.6 and 16 inches. These screens are suitable for both home use, and for the road. There is no perfect diagonal - 27 inches is better than 16, and 32 inches is better than 27, etc., etc.

RAM - 8 GB of RAM is enough for now, but in the long run 8 GB will not be enough for you. When buying a laptop, be sure to specify: "Is it possible to put a second memory module? If it is possible - it is 100% our choice, if not - in question. The second memory module will allow you to expand the RAM up to 16 GB.

Video card - Worth the third in the list of importance and value. Video cards in laptops can be discrete - that is, on a separate board - and built-in. Laptops with discrete graphics cards are more powerful, but more expensive, and notebooks with built-in graphics cards, respectively, lower power consumption, the price tag does not bite, but the performance is inferior to laptops with discrete graphics cards.

If we choose a notebook with a discrete graphics card, the task gets more complicated and a new variable appears in the equation - TGP (Total Graphics Power). TGP is the amount of power (measured in watts - W) that the graphics processor needs to work. TGP should be at least 70-80W.

Optimal graphics cards for gaming are Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series. For the vast majority of games a 4 GB GeForce RTX 3050 Ti will be enough. Yes, 4 GB in heavy games like Cyberpunk 2077 will be not enough, but patented technology Nvidia DLSS as it smoothes the lack of video memory to the detriment of image quality. If that does not suit us, we should look at GeForce RTX 3070 Ti - it is one of the best video cards in laptops from the beginning of 2022.

As an alternative to GeForce RTX thirtieth series video cards should be considered AMD - AMD Radeon RX 6600M and above.

Для любителей бюджетного бюджета у NVIDIA припасена еще одна, не самая популярная видеокарта - GeForce GTX 1660 Ti с 6 GB видеопамяти.

HDD - SSD only. No HDD, eMMC, only SSD and only with the volume that suits us. If your notebook for work - 256 GB is enough, if you play games - 512 GB or more, because modern heavy games weigh about 70-80 GB. Disregard the tempting 1 TB on the HDD format - the file transfer will be so slow that you will devalue all the other components of the laptop.

Processors - It's easier with a processor. If you take a gaming notebook, it does not make sense to buy AMD 5800H or higher. FPS increase in the vast majority of cases you will not see. But if you are working with 3D, video editing, you'd better be guided by the principle "the more powerful, the better". But there are taboos for both purposes. The processors shown below in the screenshot are the ironclad minimum. Anything inferior to these processors in power is a granny computer.

We are interested in 11th generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processors, or fifth generation AMD Ryzen 5000. Intel Core is prioritized for heavy tasks, while AMD Ryzen is more energy efficient:

Is it worth it...?

But the main nuance, which no manufacturer will tell you, is the year in which it is reasonable to buy a laptop. After the crash of cryptocurrencies in 2022 video cards became 1.5 or even 2 times cheaper. Laptop mining was a perversion, but found an audience during the bitcoin craze. No manufacturer will tell you to wait with your purchase, to wait for the moment when a laptop for $1500 will magically be on sale at a 30% discount or even 50%. The rule also works the other way around. While minds are captivated by cryptocurrency, laptop price tags turn into scarecrows.