Posted 25 February 2024

Need a gaming PC laptop for my son and don’t have a clue as I use Macs

Hello, I want to buy a gaming laptop for my (autistic) 8 year old son. I set him up with a PC partition on an older intel MacBook and while he’s very happy with it, it’s really not fit for purpose (and I’d like my MacBook back 😁). The MacBook has a AMD Radeon Pro 5500M which I understand is about equivalent to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile so hardly top of the range gaming wise. I’d like to get him something small, cheapish (thinking £300-£400 ideally), and able to play games like Minecraft, Wobbly Life and Palworld (which the Mac plays ok actually). He also makes YouTube videos but I’m guessing any modernish laptop can do for that. Doesn’t have to be new, but eBay is pretty confusing when you don’t know what you’re looking for! Any suggestions anyone? Thanks in advance!
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  1. Mark_Hickman's avatar
    My son has this same laptop and its been great and the 2060 is still quite capable if you stick to 1080p.
    Only issue is if buy a 3 year old used laptop, it could break at any time and you have no warranty
    ebay.co.uk/itm…OPY
    Vinegar.Tom's avatar
    Author
    Thank you very much, I’ll check this out
  2. aLV426's avatar
    There is a distinct different between a laptop that can play games and a gaming laptop. Your budget would be on the low side for a gaming laptop. However if you are prepared to pick up an older model and be content with gaming at 1080P then you might find something in the £500 price range. A 1650 would play most modern games, however it's pushing 6 years old now, the 3000 series is probably out of the price range (and the 4000 range is silly money) so a 2000 series is a good compromise (2060 being considered medium entry back in the day - which was also pushing 6 years ago now!).
    You can play with 8Gb, however 16Gb RAM is so cheap I would recommend you upgrade it to at least 16Gb if doesn't already have it.

    The best advice I can give is check what games are going to be played, consider they will be played at 1080P and then look at the minimum spec and the recommended spec - all my laptops exceed every point except for the GPU, so again it's the GPU that makes the gaming laptop.
  3. WhichWord's avatar
    Three types of gaming laptops
    nvidia 4060
    nvidia 4070
    nvidia 4080

    try just getting a good laptop with a strong internal graphics chip for your budget
    cheapasch1ps's avatar
    What about a 4050? Bought one recently from Lenovo £550
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