By Kimber Streams, TheWirecutter.com. The Wirecutter is a tech site that spends hundreds of hours testing gear to find the best of the best. To support The Wirecutter's in-depth research, consider checking out their longer piece on Best Laptops and buying through their site.)
Gaming laptops are the perfect solution for a very specific group of people—they're ideal for serious gamers who need a rig that can play demanding games while remaining somewhat portable for frequent travel or LAN parties. They aren't slim battery life champions, and building a desktop will always get you more raw gaming power for less money, so gaming laptops aren't the most practical solution for all gamers.
That said, a great gaming laptop can play the latest games on high to ultra settings with a good 1080p screen, keyboard, and cooling system. Less than $2000 can get you a machine that can play all this year's games on High settings, and even a few on Ultra.
At $1800 (~£1130), the Asus G750JS-DS71 is our favorite gaming laptop on the market. The JS-DS71 configuration has an Nvidia GeForce GTX 870M graphics card, a quad-core Intel Core i7-4700HQ processor, and 16GB of RAM, along with a 256GB solid state drive and a 1TB hard drive to store tons of games. Even better, it doesn't get magma hot like some other gaming laptops thanks to a great cooling system.
If you're looking for a gaming laptop with that will be future-proof for several years, and can play all this year's games perfectly on Ultra, you'll have to go for something more expensive: $2000 plus (or ~£2000). Cheaper gaming laptops won't be as future-proof, and will also have lower build quality, but the cost is more reasonable—around $1300.
