The Sparsely Populated World Of Pink Gaming Laptops
Monday, December 21st, 2009There is an ever increasing number of pink laptops available on the market, but surprisingly few pink gaming laptops. Apparently, the manufacturers think that the color pink doesn’t go with gaming. Apart from adding a skin or customization, you have only a few options to choose from.
First – What should you look for in a gaming laptop?
In general, when buying a laptop to use for gaming, you want to spend as much money as you can afford on the graphics (or “video”) card, RAM and processor speed.
Graphics Card
You definitely want a dedicated graphics card, i.e. a card that has its own memory instead of sharing it with the system memory (as integrated cards do). And the more memory it has, the better. The dedicated cards have their own processor, called GPU, which handles all the image rendering.
In the laptops I’ll be talking about today, you have the choice between single and dual graphics cards. What’s the difference? Well, the dual cards split up the chores, which in theory should make rendering images twice as fast, right? It does speed it up, but not to that extent. And two is not always better than one. Two cards consume more energy, and users have seen stuttering with dual cards from both NVIDIA and ATI.
As far as which brand you should chose, NVIDIA or ATI, that’s a tossup. They’re both great, and it’s more a matter of preference on your part. If you want more of a techie view on this, check out Tom’s Hardware, a great website for this type of info.
RAM
In order for your computer to handle all these intense graphics, it needs to have a lot of RAM (Random Access Memory). These days, most gaming laptops come with DDR3 SDRAM, and you want to get as many GB of RAM as you can afford. Dual channel is a little bit faster than single (think of it as a two-lane vs. one-lane road), just make sure they’re the same size (for example 2GB+2GB = 4GB dual channel or 3GB+3GB = 6GB dual. Don’t get 2GB + 4GB to get a 6GB dual.)
Processor
The more GHz the better, and the more cores, the better. These days, you can get quad-core processors and if you can afford one, get it. The newer games have been developed to take full advantage of them.
Screen
For gaming, larger screens are preferred, and you want to make sure that the screen you choose has enough resolution. You want at least 1440 x 900 for a 15” screen, and 1680 x 1050 or higher for a 17”.
Hard drive – HDD or SSD?
SSD stands for Solid State Drive and HDD is the good old conventional spinning hard drive that used to be the only kind available. SSDs are expensive, but worth the money. The read/write speeds are a lot faster, they consume less energy, don’t give off heat, and are much more rugged than a regular hard drive.
Now, the Laptops
If you’re fine with it not being edge to edge pink, you have two great and one ok option: Dell’s Alienware M15x and Alienware M17x, and Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q708. The Alienware machines are black, red or silver, but you can set the logo (on the lid), the keyboard, touch pad, power button and loudspeaker grills to be illuminated in several different colors (pink is one of them). It really makes for an eye catching effect, and if you get tired of pink (yeah, right!), you can just pick another color. The Toshiba has a dark red lid with pink “flames” and pink accents on the inside.
The Specs
| Alienware M15x |
Base Configuration ($1,399)
Processor: Intel Core i7 720QM 1.6GHz (2.8 GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB Cache)
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit
Graphics Card: 512MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M
LCD Panel: 15.6-inch WideHD+ 1600×900 (900p) WLED
RAM: 3GB DDR3 at 1066MHz
Hard drive: 250GB SATAII 7,200RPM
Battery: 6-cell (56Watt) Li-Ion
Upgrade Options
Processor: Intel Core i7 820QM 1.73GHz (3.06GHz Turbo Mode, 8MB Cache) (+$300) or Intel Core i7 920XM 2.0GHz (3.2GHz Turbo Mode, 8MB Cache) (+$900)
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional (+$130) or Ultimate (+$150), 64bit
Graphics Card: 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M (+$200)
LCD Panel: 15.6-inch WideFHD 1920×1080 (1080p) WLED (+$100)
RAM: Lots of choices here, ranging from 4 to 8GB and 1066 or 1333MHz. The top choice is the 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz for an additional +$375
Hard drive: 320GB SATAII 7,200RPM (+$25), 500GB SATAII 7,200RPM (+75), 256GB Solid State Drive (+$520)
Battery: 9-cell (85Watt) Li-Ion (+$100)
If you went with all the top choices, this laptop would cost you $3,744.
If you want to save a bit of money, I would say go with the Home Premium OS, the 500GB SATA, the i7 820QM processor, and the 6-cell battery (if you’re gaming, you probably want to be plugged in anyway), which would give you a price tag of $2,449.
| Alienware M17x |
Base Configuration ($1,699)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4GHz (3MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB)
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit
Graphics Card: 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M
LCD Panel: 17-inch WideXGA+ 1440×900 (900p)
RAM: 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz
Hard drive: 250GB 7,200RPM
Battery: 9-cell Li-Ion
Upgrade Options
Processor: Lots of choices. The top of the line option is the Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad QX9300 2.53GHz (12MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB) (+$1,000)
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional (+$130) or Ultimate (+$150), 64bit
Graphics Card: Again, several options but top choices would be the Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M, 2GB – SLI Enabled (+$600), or if you prefer ATI, the ATI CrossFireX Dual 1GB Radeon Mobility HD 4870 (+$700)
LCD Panel: 17-inch WideUXGA 1920×1200 (1200p) (+$150)
RAM: Lots of options again. The top choice is the 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz for an additional +$375
Hard drive: Several different options. The two top choices are the 1TB – 2x 500GB 7,200RPM – RAID 0 (+$150) or the 512GB – 2x 256GB Solid State Drive – RAID 0 (+$1,040)
Battery: Additional 9-cell Li-Ion (+$180)
Selecting all the top choices would get you a price tag of $5,294.
Again, to save money, you could go with the Home Premium OS, the 1TB HDD, the Intel Core 2 Duo T9800 processor, which at 2.93GHz and 1066MHz FSB is faster than the most expensive quad core (and there aren’t many games yet that can take advantage of the quad core anyway) and skip the extra battery. This configuration would cost you $3,524 and it’s still a great system.
If you want to go even lower, choose the NVIDIA 280M (over the ATI) and drop the RAM to 6 or even 4GB. The price tag for this config with 6GB RAM (1,333MHz) is $3,274 and with 4GB (1,333MHz) $3,089. If you went with 1066MHz for the memory, the 6GB config would be $3,249 and the 4GB $3,049. Still a great system for gaming.
Whatever you do though, don’t skimp on the Graphics Card and the LCD panel 
| Toshiba Qosmio X305-Q708 |
Configuration (no customization available) ($3,199)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor QX9300
Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate, 32 or 64bit
Graphics Card: Dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS with SLI technology
LCD Panel: 17.0″ widescreen 1680×1050 WSXGA+
RAM: 4GB PC3-8500 DDR3 1066MHz SDRAM
Hard drive: 448GB: 128GB SSD + 320GB (7200rpm)
Battery: Li-Ion (3200mAh)
This is a decent gaming laptop, but technology advances fast, and since it came on the market in the fall of 2008, several new and improved laptop components have seen the light of day. It is, however, pink(ish).
The main complaint when it first arrived on the market was the price (at the time, it sold for around $4,200). It is now on clearance at Toshiba for $3,199. The processor is the same as the top choice in the Alienware M17x, it has two hard drives: an SSD and a 7200rpm HDD, the memory is the same as in the base config version of the M17x, but, and this is a big but, the top choice graphics cards in the M17x are much faster and more powerful than the ones in the Qosmio. And you can’t replace them in the Qosmio either, they are soldered with the system board.
So which is the best gaming laptop out of these three? If money is not an issue, and you don’t care about the weight, I would definitely go with the Alienware M17x with all the top choices. If you don’t want to spend over $5,000 I would still pick the M17x but save on some features (as described above). If weight is an issue, go with the M15x.