Laptops for College and Gaming

The last two years of college are just the right period of time to invest in a decent laptop to last until graduation. If you had been using a hand-me-down laptop made three years ago that you have used through your sophomore years in college, it’s time to get a new one for the next 2-3 years in the campus. Not only are they more powerful, but in terms of price per MIPs, they offer more value across various price ranges. You can get a sub-$500 laptop today with the features and processing muscle reserved for laptops in the $700 price point just 18 months back. Chances, are, your last years in college will require a more reliable and robust laptop for your dissertation or thesis, not to mention restoring your sanity on weekends when watching HD movies or playing those upcoming games your old laptop is sure to crash playing.
Notebooks made over the last 12 months have the trendy aesthetics and slim profile that won’t embarrass you with your campus peers and while there are cheap models, we prefer to go md-priced knowing who college students demand a lot form their notebooks. Apart from the muscle to get all your eBooks stored, thesis written, and engage in social networking activities, mid-priced laptops today provide multimedia capabilities to play high definition movies at 720 to 1080 native resolution and play the latest high performance games. Stay clear from those with integrated Intel HD graphics 3000 or mobile graphics cards as they will not play many of those games even the lowest setting, except maybe those released in 2009. We look at some of these laptops and here are our recommendations.

Some of the best laptops for College and Gaming

3rd Gen i5 with 6gb ddr3 ram and 7730 video card, enough for everyday and gaming.

Dell Inspiron Special Edition i15Rse-1667ALU

The Dell Inspiron Special Edition i15Rse-1667ALU can be the ideal laptop for the student who is a serious gamers on the side. It sports a 15.6-inch screen with standard 1366 x 768 resolutions and a 750 GB SATA drive and weighs a rather hefty 9.4 lbs that is not uncommon for many beefy gaming laptops. Under the hood is a 3^rd generation 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5-3210M with 6GB dual channel DDR3 system RAM that can run the 64-bit Windows 8 bundled with the package. Playing the most demanding games won’t be a problem with its powerful midrange AMD Radeon HD 7730M graphics engine with 2GB of video RAM. With its Stealth Black anodized aluminum body and stylish design, this special edition Inspiron won’t disappoint, other than the fact that its $799 price tag may be a bit frightening to students or their parents. But consider it an investment that may even last you to your first few years in post graduate course or your first job.

Powered by the same AMD quad core A8-4500M processor clocked at 1.9GHz with 6GB SDRAM,, the HP Pavilion dv6-7010us is a $749.99 value that now retails at $449 used but in near mint condition.

HP Pavilion dv6-7010usm

The HP Pavilion dv6-7010usm at $699 can be the right laptop for college kids who are casual gamers with its 15.6-inch 1366×768 screen and 750 GB SATA drive that’s typical with most laptops at this price point. What’s not typical is the AMD Radeon HD 7640G with its own 3 MB video RAM on top of the 6 GB SDRAM and its muscled AMD quad core A8-4500M clocked at 1.9 GHz. A student’s weekend or after class hours can be a fun-filled casual gaming experience playing many of the 2011 games at low to medium graphics setting while the 2012 games can best be played at low settings.

A touch screen laptop with the power of Intels i5 processor a perfect balance of leisure and gaming.

ASUS VivoBook S400CA-DH51T

If you are the student who is always on the go, the ASUS VivoBook S400CA-DH51T at just 4 lbs and 0.83” thin won’t tire you lugging it in your backpack. At $688, this vivobook model sports a brilliant LED-backlit 14-inch screen with 1366 x 768 resolution, a 500 GB SATA drive with integrated 24GB solid state drive, and is bundled with 64-Windows 8. Under its hood is 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U engine integrated with the Intel HD Graphics 4000 sharing a 4 GB DD3 system RAM.

This Pavilion provides the best value among the cheap HP laptops in playing many of the latest RPG and FPS games for casual gamers who don’t mind low settings for these games.

HP Pavilion g7-2270us

A generous 17.3-inch LED backlit display with 1600 x 900 HD resolution is just right for a student’s multitasking needs to display simultaneous files for his or her thesis while surfing the net or listening to mp3 files. On the other hand, a student is not supposed to be playing games all the time and the Intel HD Graphics 4000 is just right for a student to play a few of the demanding games released in 2012 at low setting while not too muscled to encourage him to spend more time trying out all the new games in the market. At $529.95, discounted form its $629.99 MSRP, the HP Pavilion g7-2270us has these two features, and gets powered by a 3^rd generation Intel dual core i3-3110M with a 3MB L3 cash and 6GB DDR3 system RAM. In addition, it comes with a 750GB SATA hard drive housed in a body weighing just 6.6 lbs and a 1.4-inch profile.

Equipped with new windows 8, fast and easy to use, perfect for people in all ages.

Dell Inspiron i15N-3910BK

Slightly more expensive with a list price of $690 now discounted to just $549,99, this Inspiron is powered by the 3rd generation Intel quad core i5-3210M clocked at 2.5 GHz and supported by a 6GB DDR3 system RAM. Its 15.6-inch LED backlit screen has a 1366 x 768 HD resolution powered by a modest Intel HD Graphics 4000 that is good enough to play many sophisticated RPG and FSP games in low game setting which is just fine for students who are more serious with their studies than with their games. It has a generous 1 TB SATA hard drive running at 5400 and an 8x optical drive housed in a slim 0.8-inch slim body. It comes preinstalled with the Windows 8 OSD and a McAfee Security Center good for 30days.

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The Samsung Galaxy S4 review

It's hard to know where to start with the Samsung Galaxy S4. After months of rumours, leaks, hyperbole and more than one launch event, this is undoubtedly the most lusted after Android smartphone to date. In fact, we'd say that interest in the phone before launch was at least as high as for upcoming Apple phones, including the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6.
Now we finally have an S4 to review, just two simple questions remain. Most importantly, is this the best smartphone you can buy today? But also, has Samsung taken a big step forward over last year's S3 or is this more an evolution of that handset?

It's finally here and it looks very similar to its predecessor

BUILD QUALITY AND DESIGN

At first glance you'd have to err towards an evolution. The S3 certainly isn't a phone to show off with; not that it doesn't look rather pretty, but more because it's almost unrecognisable from its predecessor unless you look up close. This is no bad thing in our opinion as it didn't attract any unwanted attention on the train home, unlike an iPhone 5 just after its release.
The new handset appears to retain the same white plastic finish, but look closer and you'll see a fine diamond pattern beneath the gloss surface. It's a nice touch, and one subtle enough to avoid accusations of unnecessary bling.

We rather like the subtle new pattern, but it's far more pronounced on the Black version
Given its big 4.99in display, the S4 is surprisingly svelte. It measures just 136.6x69.8x7.9mm and weighs only 130g. That makes it both smaller overall and lighter than both its immediate rivals, the Sony Xperia Z and our current favourite, the HTC One.
From the front the most obvious change is the thinner screen bezels, both down the edges and at other end. This puts the screen just 2.5mm away from the edge of the device and it's becoming hard to imagine this distance getting any smaller without seriously compromising the survivability of the handset when dropped. The sides have been squared off, compared to the S3, which makes it easier to grip though it looks a little chunkier for it.
The areas above and below the screen are now far smaller, which has significantly reduced the amount of space for the physical home button and touch sensitive menu and back commands. This could have made them awkward, but the button needs an appreciably lighter press and we had no trouble hitting the touch sensitive controls.

The screen fills the handset like we've never seen before
Despite the back being removable, which has advantages we'll discuss later, the S4 doesn't suffer overly for this practicality. The rear panel fits snug against the body with no flex or shift. When in place, the handset feels like a single piece of tech.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is among the best-looking plastic phones we've ever seen. It's a decent evolution from the S3, ironing out plenty of the minor flaws that its predecessor had. These include a USB port that didn't look very well cut out and a rear case that had quite a loose fit; with the S4, it feels that much more finished and as though more attention has been paid to the detail.
Having said that it's a very conservative design. Purely from a look and feel perspective we prefer the aluminium HTC One. The curved back and sharp corners make it look far more striking that the rather amorphous blob of the S4; plus HTC has squeezed in a pair of front mounted speakers onto the One, as we'll discuss later. However, as a piece of practical engineering the S4 is simply superior, because it fits a noticeably larger display into a similarly sized handset. You simply can't get more screen than this in your pocket for the size or weight.
The S4 is better designed from an ergonomic point of view. The HTC One's power button at the top of the phone is beautifully designed, it doesn't stick out but it responds reliably when you press it (once you've got the hang of where it is). The problem is its position, having pressed it with your forefinger, you can't then reach the buttons below the screen with your thumb. The S4's right-hand-side power button has a far more traditional and boring look, but at least you can use the handset one handed without having to shift your grip constantly.

DISPLAY

This is the first smartphone to use an AMOLED display with a Full HD resolution. Measuring 4.99in across this gives it an on-paper pixels-per-inch figure of 441, up from 306PPI on the Galaxy S3. As always, it's worth noting that the display uses a pentile arrangement of subpixels - with two colours per pixel, rather than three – which means its actual resolution is less than equivalent LCD displays.
This is less of a problem on a Full HD display than it was previously. The incredibly high number of pixels-per-inch makes the lack of refinement, usually apparent on the edges of text, practically unnoticeable. Furthermore, the incredible contrast you get from an AMOLED display more than makes up for any small perceivable loss of detail.
In practical use there's far less difference between this and the LCD HTC One than their technology would suggest. The pentile pixel arrangement doesn't seem to noticeably effect detail on the S4, while the contrast on the HTC One was also excellent. The colours on the S4 are a little richer at any given brightness, but then the HTC One is far brighter at its maximum setting, handy on sunny days - although run it that way all the time and your battery life will be severely diminished.
Speaking of brightness, Samsung's controls are far better, with a brightness slider always present on the notifications drop down menu. This also lets you tweak the auto brightness settings, allowing you to have it a few steps brighter, or dimmer, than the variable default. By comparison the HTC One makes you dig in the menus to adjust it and offers no such tweaking of the auto setting
Having said all that, the biggest difference is simply that the S4's screen is bigger. It's not a huge deal when using apps day to day, sending texts, or hammering out a quick email, but for browsing desktop website sites, playing games and watching video clips it's a big plus.


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