My mom likes to play No Man’s Sky and Valheim, but her Asus TUF started freezing on games. RMA found no problems and sent it back to her but it still happens. I ordered a Legion for her but now I see these posts about all Nvidia 40-series laptops freezing up. What’s a gaming mom supposed to do?
Maybe get a Steamdeck if portability is important, otherwise get a desktop. IMO gaming laptops don’t last as long because of all the heat stress. Really just my opinion though.
*Funny, just seen this other post on Beehaw about valve selling refurbished Steamdecks. Just thought I would share just in case.
I’m not sure about Valheim, but I can vouch that No Man’s Sky runs well on Steam Deck.
Valheim too, even better than NMS, in my opinion.
Repost my comment why gaming laptop is a scam(can’t copy comment link cause the link failed for me):
gaming laptops are pretty much scam anyway, as person “once” fall for such scam.
- they are really heavy, not really good with travel.
- they are also power hungry, might be less than your actual tower rig, but significantly more than common “business laptop”
- the battery won’t last with degradation where you constantly plug it in.( to gain the boosted frequency where you can play games at higher settings/frame rate)
- your upgrade path is very limited and they won’t have the parts after like 2~3 years.(so anything broken you have to try find it on ebay/amazon/aliexpress)
for portable gaming during travel, your best choice is consoles. So switch, steamdeck, heck, even PS4 slim is better than gaming laptop.(hopefully PS5 pro/slim is made into form for easier box/travel format.)
Gaming laptops aren’t a scam, they fill a niche. For people like me they are the best option available. I travel frequently and then stay there for usually a few months before having to travel again. So a desktop doesn’t work for me at all. I need a decent computer for work. Most business laptop that fill my needs are also on the heavier side. The ones that are portable usually have integraded gpu’s, which just doesn’t work for me. So the step from business laptop that fills my needs to gaming laptop is minimal.
All of the drawbacks of a gaming laptop are barely affecting me. And while this seems like an edgecase, there are a lot more people who have needs that a gaming laptop fulfills and can’t be met by other devices.
I’d also suggest a Steam Deck, but for a different reason. My experiences with switchable graphics (both, nVidia and AMD) have been extremely disappointing. It’s quite frustrating to spend €1500 on a gaming laptop, and then constantly facing driver issues, tearing,…
If I were to buy a laptop, I’d therefore also go with an AMD integrated graphics unit, and no switchable graphics. Performance would be comparably bad, but at least an integrated (non-switchable) card works… And now we are at the point of having a dedicated gaming device like the Deck, which lets you have both: A performant enough gaming device, and a laptop that isn’t burdened by the price and issues of switchable graphics.
