Gaming Laptop prices are now unrealistic

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Hello, long time lurker on these forums but 1st post.

Having owned four gaming laptops over the past ten years , the current one being an Asus G751JY with 980m I find myself looking to upgrade to 10XX series nvidia.

Having never spent much in excess of £2200 on any one of those laptops , I am now struggling to find what i would consider a good overall package at around £1700 to £1999.

Whilst the price of other consumer electronics seems to be decreasing i.e TVs , mobiles and tablets whilst packing in more tech this doesnt seem to be the case for laptops.

I think that all gaming laptops should have at least a 1TB SSD and 1TB hard drive these days as a minimum with the size of game installations increasing exponentially ...Doom at over 70GB.

I realize there was a hicke in HDD prices a couple of years ago but that should've smoothed out now.

My current laptop -

ASUS G751JY 17.3-Inch Notebook (Intel Core i7-4860HQ 2.4 GHz, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD & 512GB SSD, Webcam, Nvidia 980m, Windows 8.1)

Cost just under £1700 in March 2015 and was pretty much top spec at the time

Just looking round overclockers, the rainforest etc a similar top spec laptop with that amount of storage seems scarce and if added as an option we now seen to be pushing prices north of £2700...

Have laptop manufacturers got more greedy in the past couple of years.....does a Gtx 1070 or 1060 cost more to bulk buy than the 980m' in 2015, are SSDs more expensive....or the screens...I'd really like to know as i can't justify the outlay for current gen of laptops
 
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I totally agree with you. Gaming laptops are very, very expensive but on the other hand, look how far they have come in the last couple of years. Some laptops are on a par, and frequently surpass, desktop machines.

I hate the prices, but at the same time, I see paying for it as an incentive for manufacturers to invest even more money in cutting edge technology for the years ahead. Some gaming laptops are a true thing of beauty, such as the Gigabyte Aero 15 or Asus Zephyrus.

I am sure within a few more years we will see even more thinner laptops, with better battery efficiency and low heat emission, playing games effortlessly with more monstrously powered graphics cards and it's largely happening because of the people buying expensive laptops nowadays. Gotta take the good with the bad and think of the future.
 
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KitGuru said:
The weaker pound will play a part here but it isn’t the only cause for a rise in average sale price. CONTEXT believes the currency issue has “had the biggest impact” but component shortages, fewer sales to retailers and a shift to higher-spec PCs will also play a role.

Over the last 12 months, there has been a major shortage in DRAM and NAND components, which has had an impact on pricing. Beyond that, the pound sterling is weaker against the US dollar now compared to before the referendum, acting as another factor. This isn’t the biggest surprise though, as the likes of Dell, Apple, Microsoft and Lenovo have all raised prices in the last year.

- Source.
 
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Got to agree, I'm waiting until november for some good sales hopefully on black friday. I bought a laptop for around £1500 which was 256gb ssd, gtx 980m, i7 processor, blu-ray player etc. etc. but to be honest the excuse of parts getting more expensive doesn't wash fully as nowadays no laptop comes with a blu-ray player near enough so they've even removed a component and still managed to push prices a few hundred pound northward. I can't say I'm impressed with the standard of pricing at the moment either, I'd be willing to forgive it as long as we get a good sale now and again to make sure people have the opportunity to buy at a decent price now and again but even the idea of good sales and competition is slipping.

I've ended up just having to shift priority and aim for a laptop of lower spec which is a bit weird to pay out around 1,000 or 1,200 and still sit on a gpu that barely goes above your old one 3 years down the line and lose components as well! Sadly it's the state of things nowadays, blame the brexit or blame the whatever but they are price gouging somewhat or the blu-ray alone should have helped make up a large portion of the difference. My main issue is my work gets me lifestyle vouchers too so I'd love to buy off a site like overclockers but if they put all their gtx 1060 or ryzen laptops around £1300 and I can get a 1050ti for not all that much performance difference but get it around 1000 and then use £200 of vouchers to get it nearly £500 cheaper I will. If they'd scrape out a 1060 for 1100 or so on a sale with a decent brand (asus / gigabyte) I would be very tempted but as it stands we're looking at 1300 for barely more performance than my old system. Of course with the life style stuff you are limited to certain vendors so I'd have hoped a place like OCUK could still manage a bit of competition but it's just stiff pricing, hope it changes but at the moment all companies trying to play games.
 
Soldato
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I've only bought mid-low end gaming laptops over the past ten years - no patience for building desktops and the constant painful upgrade costs. I don't see the point in forking out for the top of the range ones, as performance doesn't justify doubling up on costs over mid range ones. I'm also not worried about storing loads of games at a time, or playing with all settings maxed out (my eyes can barely make out the difference between medium and ultra graphics anyhow).

My current laptop is now 5 years old and has been creaking for a year or so. It cost me 800 back in 2012 with a third gen i7 and HD7970M. I'm just looking at speccing another one up at the moment with a GTX 1060, but the prices are utterly bonkers. For a mid range laptop, I can't seem to get it under £1,300. I'm just not prepared to pay that whilst the current laptop is still hanging on by a thread. I'm quite happy to sit it out for another year when hopefully there is the next gen of graphics cards, meaning 1060-1080 laptops come down to a reasonable price.

In terms of games, I'm always a couple of years behind anyhow, as I only buy games in whatever sale is happening.
 
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I am saving up to buy a new laptop, and am stuck in a predicament. I can't decide which one of these two PC's are better:

Asus G751JY or MSI GT72 2PE

They are both around $2300, so price doesn't change the outcome of the PC. Please don't say "Don't buy a laptop, get a desktop." I need a portable PC, which can play games, but also do schoolwork for next year. Our school has bring your own device in Year 9+.
The last two notebooks are very expensive, or there are cheaper to recommend to me.

Updated: I see this article: https://pc4u.org/best-gaming-laptops-under-1000-dollars/, I have bought Acer Predator Helios 300 gaming laptop, it's great.
 
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If you think £2000 is unrealistic, who is going to spend £3400 or so on a Gigabyte Aorus x9. It looks great on paper, but you would need seriously deep pockets
 
Soldato
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my last gaming laptop was rock XL something. it was top of the range and most expensive to buy. costed me £1899

now the price is.....errr.......

no comment
 
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I think you've got 2 big primary causes here: Brexit and NVidia's performance gains made on the mobile 10xx series GPUs.

As a result, the kind of money that would buy you a 6700k and 970m a couple of years back, under £1300, will get you a 7700k and 1050ti or 1060 now, rather than a 1070, which you may be expecting. The cost of the extra 3gb on the 6gb 1060 can push a laptop cost up at least a hundred quid as well.

And it will be interesting to see if this trend continues as Kaby-Lake R CPUs become a good alternative to full fat HQ Intel CPUs - Will Intel bump the prices of those and retain Pentiums for sub-£600 notebooks?
 
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I bought an MSI GT72 almost 2 years ago. Ran into trouble. Poor quality. Poor customer service. It was around 2200 quid. Not worth the money. Sending it for the fourth time for repair. with the same problem. I bought it from overclockers UK.
 
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I came into this thread and complained a bit earlier too, I figured I'd come back and be helpful after buying a new laptop. You can actually get a gtx1060 6gb for 1000 or less if you shop around (it's actually not the norm for most vendors and as others point out it's normally £1200 or £1300 upwards). Can't name names of course because of the rules on listing other retailers but the laptop I bought was Medion Erazer X7847, comes in various models. I settled for one with an i5 processor and it was £850 for it but that's the none ips version as well. You can get ips versions for £1000 eslewhere. I had the asus rog g751jy that I bought from overclockers previously but seriously didn't want to downgrade in graphics quality while still not spending what I did last time so I took a very modest increase from the old 980m which is fair for what I paid for it. Keyboard and build quality (on keyboard / lower part of the laptop) is better than the asus in my opinion but the top half of the asus one was very stylish and I use a mouse and corsair lapdog for gaming anyway.

Anyway, just thought I'd mention this laptop for anyone in need, it's definitely cheaper than the big name vendors and the laptop is worth the price if you need a decent gpu. According to people on a uk deals site they are meant to be pretty good quality and my testing so far hasn't encountered any issues with general use, will try some games when I get a chance too. Hope it helps someone. I did end up using some lifestyle vouchers on it too so got a gtx 1060 6gb laptop for £750, figured there was no point in waiting until black friday as it's unlikely to be beat. Just remember if you manage to get a none ips one to calibrate the display settings, it looked awful out of the box lol, quick tweak and it was fine even for a novice like me who just calibrates on a whim. I still have my old laptop so was comparing the images with the old £1500 laptop and I definitely will get IPS next time but it'll not hurt just once to go tn.
 
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