unsure where to put this. want to get laptop for eso

Darkspecialist

i visit my mom often a few hours away and when shes napping or playing her own computer games id like to play my own game. was thinking about these two laptops.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/637466/msi-katana-gf7611ue-023-173-gaming-laptop-computer-black

https://www.microcenter.com/product/643199/hp-omen-17-ck0372nr-173-gaming-laptop-computer-black

im not much of a fan of HP. it seems they pretty much the same. i plan on buying by the end of the day. never had a laptop so im a lil scared to buy without asking for an opinion.

what do you think of these two options?

udaba

I would recommend a Asus laptop . Both of them are very good and would be able to play ESO at high settings.
Your money your choice .

Casul

I just upgraded to a desktop recently but before that I was playing on a MSI with a 1050. Other then a loud fan I had 0 issues. I did have to install another SSD manually but wasn't too hard with youtube helping me.

ixthUA

I'd go with AMD CPUs (they are more power-efficient, battery will last longer) and a 60 hz screen (battery will last much longer).

Darkspecialist

Asus not what I’m asking about.

fred4

Did you buy one?

They look identical in terms of specs and certainly those specs look spot on. Probably a bit better than you need for ESO, but just a bit.

I usually go to https://www.notebookcheck.net/ for reviews. By far the best resource I know of.

I recently got a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 4, a business machine that is arguably overpriced and only has a 60Hz screen, but was on sale. It has a vapor chamber cooling design. Compared to an earlier generation of that model, I find the Gen 4 eminently usable. Lenovo and nVidia seem to have put some work into that, which I have not seen mentioned in any review. There is a "Cool and quiet on lap" option in the BIOS, which I have selected. I then capped the framerate at 60Hz in the nVidia driver. I don't know whether the machine has an undocumented gyroscope to determine whether it is being used on your lap, but this thing is remarkable. When playing ESO, the fans stay at a medium volume. The framerate is at a rock solid 60Hz on the medium Windows 10 power slider setting or a steady 30Hz at the low setting. 4K screen btw. I use the medium setting and it's usable without headphones. Remarkable. When you Alt Tab out of the game to do other stuff, e.g. when you're multi-tasking, or when you set it down on a desk, the fan ramps up. ESO is not a terribly demanding game, but this is much better than the older model not only in terms of absolute performance, but in terms of usability. The power consumption and fan control adopt a steady state while you're gaming that is actually pleasant to use. I don't know whether the vapor chamber has anything to do with it. The laptop is not prone to ramping the fan up and down quickly, but only tends to do it gradually.

That said, there is an argument against laptops. If something breaks, repairs will be much more difficult than a desktop. I initially used membrane keyboards while playing ESO over the past 6 years and have ruined several due to the way I place my hands in a fixed position and only ever hit some keys at the edges. I see no deterioration with the mechanical keyboard I use with my desktop now. A further problem is that mechanical keyboards typically have n-key rollover, whereas membrane keyboards may not have that. If you hold down certain combinations of 3 keys on a membrane keyboard, the third key may not register. This is a very real problem on Lenovo Thinkpads. I have weird problems controlling my character on those laptops that I don't have with my external mechanical keyboard. You'd think a gaming laptop wouldn't suffer from that. I honestly don't know. It could be a Thinkpad specific thing.

Unfortunately I have no experience with actual gaming laptops, such as the ones you mention. I just wanted to share this experience to illustrate there is more to your choice than you will ever find in even the very thorough professional reviews on Notebookcheck. But I guess you already know that or you wouldn't be asking. Maybe someone on Reddit has used the exact machines you're comparing.

Chimaera13

Both of those devices look excellent, and essentially identical.

I don't know which vendor has better reliability or build quality nowadays, but last time I had to deal with HP support (on behalf of a client) they were very helpful and competent.

I'd recommend checking several review sites to see what common issues either model may have. The more reviews the better. Amazon is often the better choice for that sort of research as people are more prone to reviewing there than other retailers.