When you think about gaming, specially upgrading from a non gaming laptop, budget is definitely a concern. Unless you have been using a serious pro type laptop (pardon my jargon, I am not sure what expensive laptops are called other than expensive), you will think about the next laptop to be up-gradable and not too heavy on the pocket.
Enter budget gaming laptop. Many lightweight ones sport the MX950, which is passable as being a mobile grade graphics chipset. Before the GTX series goes out of stock, the desktop grade graphics card, meaning it will eat your battery life and throw out awesomeness in terms of graphics quality, is the Nvidia 1050. Which is also on the laptop I am reviewing after a lot of usage. There are other chips from AMD too but for the sake of this being a specific laptop review I will skip that part. (Vamspaz is all about gaming so rest assured there will be more articles on other cards too.)
This model in particular comes with a 1080p 15 inch TN display, meaning a wicked refresh rate with bad visibility. It has 2 USB 3.0 ports and one 2.0. One HDMI 2.0 port, one card reader and the usual Kensington lock.
Powering this is a 6 cell battery with an 8GB RAM and a 1TB HDD. I have upgraded this to a 16GB RAM and a 1 TB HDD+ 128 GB(OS drive) SSD configuration. Also, it has the above mentioned GTX1050.
The laptop isn’t too much of a looker. It has a red backlit keyboard, plenty useful in the dark, on ok’ish track pad and a good keyboard. The track pad can be avoided if you are planning to buy a mouse to use with the machine. The laptop is on the heavy side and would not be a travel companion for most. The i7 7th gen HQ processor will make sure your tasks are run like a high powered horse.
For the most part, there hasn’t been a game that I have not been able to play on it. I have tested it with Apex Legends, The Witcher 3, They Are Billions, NFS payback. It does get mighty hot but the cooling is very efficient. It makes a lot of noise though; I have been told that it sounds like it is raining outside. Any decent pair of headphones will take care of it.
Where I felt I made a mistake in getting this was on the ports front. Just one type C would have given the long living sheen any gaming laptop deserves. Newer models too haven’t yet introduced this port in the model, but the Asus TUF range should handle your port thirst, if any.
All in all, I use this machine for gaming or any power hungry tasks and have never been disappointed. However, to get the best graphics quality, run any power hungry game while charging. On battery the performance takes a hit.
Medium sized story short, it is enough for any gaming needs until you limit it to a 1080 resolution.
P.S. Use a monitor via the HDMI.