Table of Contents:
HP laptops and why I’m not buying them
Don’t buy Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 above 60k
Don’t buy the ACER 12th gen laptop
Legion 5 3050 too expensive in the offline and lenovo’s website
Intel 12th vs. 11th gen | Ryzen 6th vs 5th gen for gaming
Lenovo Legion 5 120Hz screen <60k Model high response time
ASUS TUF laptops on Reliance Digital (75-85k)
Asus TUF F15 11th Gen Intel 3050 (75W) for under 75k with three years warranty
I almost ordered this laptop but at the very I decided to buy the Lenovo Legion 5i
1) I was not really considering the 17 inch laptop till I saw this one in person at the store. I mean, it looks like a beast of a laptop. I kept thinking in my mind that this laptop is too big. And it was too big. The only reason I am even considering the laptop is due to the below.
2) The Acer Nitro 5 12th generation laptop weighs a whopping 2.5kg and you can feel it.
After much research it was confirmed that 1650 is only for people who are not looking to game. It’s a good enough processor if you were not considering buying a gaming laptop and yet stumbled upon the low prices online and thought it would be fine to get one.
The high cost of the 3060 laptops makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, at least when compared to international prices and I keep thinking that the price will fall for 3060 at least the higher clocked variant.
If you’re thinking of long term gaming, getting a 6GB VRAM (3060) laptop is much better than a 4GB laptop (3050).
The decision however comes down to either get a proper 3050 with the best CPU, or the 3060 with a decent CPU. So the decision is are you willing to play more CPU bound games (CSGO, Valorant) or are you planning to play a GPU bound game (those that look cool) because we have seen this multiple times in the past that CPU rarely becomes a bottleneck.
Dell’s G15’s display is absolute trash. I can’t even comprehend why reviewers keep saying that it’s an okay panel, it’s not. It’s absolute dog-shit in person when you actually see it. Seeing it with just a few degrees below makes the color distort just like a TN panel. For this reason, all the Dell G15 laptops are out of the picture.
I know that Acer’s service is amazing. Lenovo is still decent but I have no experience with MSI and ASUS service. My only point to say here is that if you do want to get MSI and ASUS laptops, do check if they provide in-Home warranty at your place or not, if not, don’t get them, because there can be multiple things that can go wrong with the laptop which might not be your fault but still would need to be fixed.
The first laptop I even bought was an HP and one relative and one friend also got the HP. The problem that happened to the two of us was the motherboard just blew up and replacing the motherboard was very costly. Mind you, I did not use the laptop in high humidity or what, it was completely dry weather. The other laptop’s hinge just broke completely.
And after reading a few reviews online it doesn’t look like HP’s service is as good as Acer’s.
I absolutely was blown away by the quality of the laptop in the store. I kept assuming that I would be seeing a cheap flimsy laptop like the normal Ideapad series but no, this laptop was pretty good looking and it felt sturdy and the display was pretty good.
I think if you can afford no other gaming laptop and you are under the budget, please go ahead and buy the Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 from offline stores.
Even the display of Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 is much much better than other laptops in the category.
The only thing that held me back was the few exhaust/intake fans and I kept thinking about my Acer Aspire 5, which also was plagued by the same issue and the CPU stopped turboing which meant lagging in games.
The exhaust and intake fans are pretty good, the only thing is that it’s not as good as a proper gaming laptop like the Lenovo Legion 5.
What stopped me from buying it is those few reviews online which made it clear that there are quality control issues with the laptop. I suggest you try this laptop in the offline market and only buy it if you're satisfied with it.
It doesn’t have a mux switch and upgrading the RAM (removing the old one) to a faster one makes a lot of difference.
I have got many laptops online on Amazon by Appario Retail Pvt. Ltd. and on Flipkart by TBL Online and they have been pretty good. Recent reviews, however, had made it clear that they are ready to sell you a 10-days returned laptop branding it as new and someone else might have logged into Windows and Office(if available) and you are there fighting with the customer service to get a new laptop which you should have got anyways.
For this primary reason, if you can get the same laptop for around 5k extra in an offline store, please go ahead. You can also show them the online prices and they might in some cases decrease the prices (Acer reduced their prices but couldn’t match prices offered by their own online store. Lenovo gave the laptop at the same price as amazon or flipkart).
That being said, I still would consider laptop’s own store like the acer and lenovo or dell’s store online.
P.S: I know that you get commission if you buy stuff online and hence so many amazon affiliate links everywhere. I think if you want to help me, just use the links to buy stuff you were already going to buy on amazon or flipkart.
I was absolutely thrilled by the laptop and almost bought the laptop while sitting there. The build quality felt nice, the exhaust fans were optimum and it felt like something that would last.
On average I saw that Legion 5 costs about 10k more than the Ideapad Gaming 3 for the same hardware usually but if you can get it cheaper you should absolutely consider Legion 5.
I kept thinking after reading the online reviews that the 120hz display of Lenovo Legion 5 which also has 250 nits brightness is very low brightness but actually, it’s not that worrisome if I am being honest. The laptop’s display was pretty good. The response time I couldn’t test but it felt fine, but someone had said that the 120Hz screen has bad response time which showed up as ghosting in CSGO and for that reason I didn’t buy this model right away (but also the fact that it had 1650 and not a 3050).
In games like CSGO that can hit higher FPS, it matters.
Acer’s 12th gen laptop doesn’t come with a mux switch (at least in the cheaper models) so even if it’s a good performing laptop, it will always be bottlenecked by the MUX switch, not to mention that it doesn’t have a mux switch in the cheaper models. If you go above 3060, it does have it.
Not to mention it is the worst display on a laptop and remember I ignored Dell’s laptop for the same reason.
Also it’s DDR4.
Also this is the worst thermally managed laptop too, as soon as it hits 90 degrees, it clocks down everything until it reacher 60 degress. Other laptops atleast hover around 90. I had the same issue with Acer Aspire 5 and the reason I am not going to buy Acer anymore.
Title says it all.
The offline counterpart of Asus’s laptop cost like 10k more and even though I said you should pay 5k more just to get the laptop offline, I really can’t tell you to go with 10k more.
I have however got my relatives whose budgets were around 50k and really didn’t care about gaming, this laptop from amazon and this from flipkart.
CPU Benchmarks
The difference between Intel 12th gen and 11th gen is significant and the intel i5-12500 beats all previous i7 and Ryzen 7 CPUs, however, the difference is not enough for gaming.
This laptop that is also available in the stores at the same price has a 120Hz 250 nits screen and it has been known to have the worst response time in a laptop (I will link the details later).
The following are the laptops from 75k to 85k on RelainceDigital.in and I’m not really a fan of reliance digital but the way Amazon and Flipkart are going, I am fine with them.
Although the main reason being there is Reliance Digital nearby and maybe I can persuade them to get this laptop for me at the same price.
75k~ Asus HN075WS TUF A15 Gaming Laptop (AMD Ryzen 7 4800H/16 GB/512 GB SSD/4 GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Graphics/Windows 11/MSO/Full HD), 39.62 cm (15.6 inch)
The highlight of these being they all have 3050 graphics card I have to check the wattage of each, and also, the last laptop is the 12th gen i5 one. Apart from that, they all have Microsoft Office or so they say.
Also, now that I look over it, I can see that the 77k laptop is better than the 75k laptop in CPU performance. (Geekbench Single core: 1330 vs 1078, although a bit lower in multi core), and for this reason I would much rather go with the i5 11th gen.
Also, I found out that they are giving about 5000 discounts on ICICI Cards. The only choice I have to make is either 11th gen for 72k or 12th gen for 80k, and also if the gaming laptop is really worth it. :D Ha ha I haven’t yet checked that LOL. Now that I remember, for gaming the difference is not that much.
Also the 72k one is with office and 16GB RAM. Also remember that you have to keep aside 3k aside extra for the warranty extension.
So now the only decision to make is if to buy this gaming laptop:
I checked the laptop on Asus’s website and it’s the 8GB model that costs more than this one here.
The 3k extra is for one year ADP and two extra years warranty extension. So effectively the cost is 75k.
I checked the TDP of the GPU and it’s 75W
To check these before ordering:
https://amzn.to/3cHiZOT
https://in.store.asus.com/fa566i.html
Well, shit happens!
I was going to order the ASUS laptop but I saw an offer on Lenovo.com that changed my mind. I was literally on the buying page about to enter the OTP but I didn’t. The reason for not going with Legion 5i earlier was simple: I had heard bad things about the 120Hz screen even from Dave2d and it kept bugging me.
Not to mention the fact that you can’t get a better screen at all in this price bracket. It’s above 1 lakh or near to that price.
I finally ordered the Lenovo Legion 5i for 70k(5k cashback after one month) for an effective price of just Rs.65k and soon I will be getting the cashback too.
Many things fueled my decision but the important thing was that my original budget was 60k and I was going to buy the ASUS TUF 10th gen 1650 laptop, I wanted to put in a bit more for 3050.
The second thing that fuelled my decision was the fact that I had Acer Aspire 6 and that laptop had a lot of thermal issues owing to the fact that it had just one powerless fan and not many vents. I was not going to buy a laptop that didn’t have proper vents in it and the reason why I stopped at the end was it.
I would rather buy an older generation laptop but with better cooling than a newer laptop with a better processor.
The lack of Mux switch also held me back a lot.
The laptop I bought was from Lenovo’s own website (Don’t have any affiliate links but I am still recommending it):
Legion 5i Gen 6 (15" Intel) | Intel®-powered gaming laptop with NVIDIA® graphics | Lenovo India
Processor: 10th Generation Intel® Core™ i5-10500H Processor (2.50 GHz up to 4.50 GHz)
RAM: 8GB single stick 2933Mhz
Display Type: 39.62cms (15.6) FHD (1920 x 1080), IPS, Anti-Glare, Non-Touch, 45% NTSC, 250 Nits, 120Hz
Memory: 8 GB SO-DIMM DDR4 2933MHz
Hard Drive: 512 GB M.2 2280 SSD PCIe Gen3/4
Windows, no Office.
Apart from buying the laptop, I also got 2 extra years ADP for 3k and I bought two mice^, one webcam and one headset for Rs.500 each from buyalenovo.com after getting the laptop:
1) Back To College Offer-July 2022- Lenovo 300 FHD Webcam Worth 5490 @Rs.499
2) Back To College Offer-July 2022- Lenovo M300 RGB Gaming Mouse Worth 3390 @Rs.499
3) Back To College Offer-July 2022- Lenovo 600 BT Silent Mouse worth 2890 @Rs.499
4) Back To College Offer-July 2022- Lenovo 100 Gaming Headset Worth 4690 @Rs.499
I know these are not the best thing ever but I bought it anyways considering the price points.
^ Mouse is one. Mice is more than one mouse but it feels like it should be mouses as this is the computer mouse and not the animal mouse but it was named after the mouse anyways so I think this should be it.