Hey Tao1, you seem to know a lot about it.
I've long (sort-of) coveted a good gaming laptop, I imagine by now laptops are about as powerful as you'd need in a decent gaming machine.
Do you have any recommendations? Are there laptops that will do the job? I like the idea of a mobile computer I can use for some gaming and work. But, I like the idea of a console controller for fight games and possibly some FPS or adventure gaming like Skyrim. Do these controllers work as fast and stable as they would with a console? I am just not into playing games in the evening the same way I sit at my desk when I work, I want to kick back to play, not sit upright leaned over a keyboard and mouse. I do that all day and most nights to work as it is. That's pretty much the reason I abandoned PC gaming a long time ago for console gaming.
I have not personally used a controller on PC. As far as I know (and my knowledge is limited to tid bits I have seen here and there) Xbox controllers being a Microsoft product should work well. PS4 controllers should also work on PC fairly well. Anything USB
should. Take that with a grain of salt though as my knowledge on it is fairly limited, but I haven't come across any posts of people having problems.
Logitech and the other major peripheral manufacturers make gamepads specifically for PC.
If you don't like using mouse and keyboard, you could try a track ball hand held controller with buttons. These were a bit of a fad a few years ago, so I am not sure if any are still available, are a decent experience, or are even completely supported anymore. I just mention it as an outside the box option to look at for the sake of it.
There is also a controller from a couple years ago that you wear on your head that reads your brain waves (yes seriously). Forget what it is called, but took time and tons of calibration to your personal thought patterns. Worked well for some people from what I heard.
As for laptops:
You are looking at a starting price about $1300 for current generation technology.
I am a couple years out of date with what models are good build quality (especially with heat management). However I have seen a few things here and there, and there has been a big leap forward in laptop gaming:
Laptops have always had gaming performance, but the cost is considerably more for the same performance in desktop hardware. However you are somewhat in luck, since Nvidia's latest 10 series video cards can now be put into laptops. Before, the mobile (M series) cards did not have performance anywhere close to their desktop siblings. Now, they are putting desktop cards in laptops, however, with those laptops, heat, power usage, and weight are big drawbacks.
On that note, here is the extreme end of laptops for perspective sake:
Picking what you want will be a balance of price, performance, weight, and heat. I believe gaming laptops are assumed to be plugged into the wall while gaming, so I doubt gaming time on battery will be an easy stat to find for every model you look at.
For laptops I would stay away from HP, Lenovo, Dell, and those
older 'known' brands. They put together cheap junk, bloated with bloatware (although Dell may not be as bad). They may have cleaned up their acts in recent years, but some were terrible for overheating just running Windows. Currently, I believe Lenovo has been caught red-handed, thrice, with its own secret software (that you can't get rid of) that syphons off your information to be sold.
I recommend looking at Asus, Acer (but haven't look into them too much), MSI, Razer, Alienware (though Apple-like for charging for the logo) and others from the big names in PC and PC gaming components. (However don't buy anything from Thermaltake, they make junk).
Using desktop hardware for a benchmark, I recommend at least a GTX1060
6GB card. I come from more of a 'cheaper in the long run' mentality and try to recommend getting something that should last several years. A GTX1060 is a less expensive card, that will get a decent job done, but not quite in the sweet spot of performance/price/longevity as the GTX1070 would be (~$400 desktop card).
*my view of price/longevity is based on desktop prices, not so much laptop ones.
Processors aren't as important as video cards. Generally you want a quad core i5. Dual cores can get the job done, but you will notice some tasks being slow if there are a few things running on your system. Generally the handful of dollars you save going from a quad core to a dual core insn't worth it.
*After taking a look, it seems any laptop with a gaming graphics card in it is going to come with an i7 standard anyway.
Next will be the screen. I don't know much about screens on laptops. I assume they are similar to monitors. Taking a look already, I see some expensive laptop with high end, 120hz refresh rate (true 120hz refresh rate than can actually be used in its entirety unlike the tech in TVs). For this I would recommend looking at a sample in store before you buy, but this may be hard as you may not be able to find the model of laptop you are looking at online carried locally.
SSDs are good, especially in laptops as spinning hard drives in laptops are 5400rpm drives and really slow. If you can find a model with a 7200rpm drive that is a good find (price depending).
Here is a good starting place for you to look. Amazon with some of the filter boxes ticked to clear out the chaff. Be wary of those older models with 900M series cards in them, as they aren't worth the $1000+ I have the filter set at. For the 900M series models, I would look at the $800 offerings (they are filtered out though with that link).
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_36_6?rnid=2421885011&keywords=laptops&rh=n:172282,n:541966,n:13896617011,n:565108,k:laptops,p_n_feature_seven_browse-bin:3012497011,p_89:Acer|Asus|Alienware|MSI|Razer&qid=1498465868&low-price=1000&high-price=
Anything that looks neat, I would go check out the manufacturers page and check the full specifications to compare with the others you are looking at.
Most importantly try and look up reviews on the models you are looking at from the larger tech reviewers on Youtube to get feedback on the not so obvious things such as heat management. You can also start by looking up reviews of gaming laptops to give you a better starting place.
