laptop spec advice needed for a 12 year old

Soldato
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This is going to be a hard one to answer - but I'll put it out there and see if anyone can offer any advice.

What makes it difficult is that I'm not defining a price range, which I'll explain in a moment. So I kind of want advice on what level and what price point I should be aiming at.

The situation is that my daughters school gives the kids a 'score' for every class. Normally a 2, but a 3 if they get a detention, a 1 if their attitude was outstanding during that class. The indications were that they had to be really standing out to get a 1, so we agreed with her that we would give her a small reward (say £10-20 worth) any time she managed 5 '1's in a week. She was getting the rewards quite regularly, so over Christmas we decided that rather than getting throw-away stuff regularly, we would offer her the option of tracking her rewards in a spreadsheet and using it to save up for a laptop. She liked the idea - and the motivation seems to have worked! She was already doing well, but is in danger of bankrupting us, she's getting so many rewards! (we also set up other rules - like extra money if she get more than 10 in a week, extra money whenever she passed a multiple of 20)

So - we talked about the possibility of her getting a 'normal' laptop for £3-400, or continuing saving to get one that would allow her to play 'proper' games if she wanted to. She decided to do the latter. The intention is to leave it entirely up to her when she decides to bite the bullet - but it will come down to me to advise her on what to get.

So - can anyone advise what would be a decent make / spec / price for her to aim at? She's at about the £450 mark currently, and I suggested to her that she'd probably be ready to buy at around £650 - but that was largely a guess from me!

I play on a (desktop) i7-8700K with a 2070 super, and it doesn't seem to struggle with anything at 1440p. What is she going to need to achieve similar results? Aim for a 3050 gaming GPU? Or does she need to go even higher than that?

She will also be using it for school work and for a drawing tablet, but I think the gaming is going to be the most challenging use.

Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
I'd actually argue the drawing side of things will make this harder unless you mean plugging in a tablet approach.... what approach are you taking here because this could limit your choices

As for the cpu side... pretty much any modern cpu will match yours and the gpu I'd be aiming at 3060-3070 mobile range or above purely due to the gpu being lower power etc.
Should have been clearer - she already has the drawing tablet, a Wacom, which just plugs into the laptop. Currently constantly nicks her mum's laptop for this purpose!

Thanks for the tips about CPU and GPU, that's exactly the sort of info I needed.
 
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