Are you trying to shop a gaming laptop and find them “untouchables”? Yes, gaming laptops are way expensive, you imagine, they cost arms and legs.
In the gaming community, there is a famous saying, “three things are considered the biggest purchase in a gamer’s life- A house, a car, and a gaming laptop.” Though it is taken as a joke, rightly explain the expensiveness of a gaming laptop. But, the question is, why are the gaming laptops are that expensive than a tower gaming computer?
On the flip side, if you look and compare the performances, tower computers are way better than gaming laptops.
So, what’s the real take? Why pro gamers spend that much in housing a compact machine to fulfill their sense of amusement. Let’s try to explain this, hope we could find something pivotal to justify that purchase.
Reasons why Gaming Laptops are Expensive?
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1. Customization and Upgradation options
One of the core features of the laptop is compactness. The laptops are compact, sleek, and slim, but with that, they must be as functional as possible.
You might have been seen Apple’s MacBook Pro or have been using it, have you seen anything thin and still be that good? That’s where the money spent on making these machines compact and portable.
Another thing you need to see that both laptops and computers run the same components- RAM, processor, graphics card, everything is similar and does the same job. But, in desktops, you see the parts are compatible, and assembly is mostly the same. One computer’s components can be used in the other, and vice versa.
Whereas in laptops every manufactures has different engineering, layout, and customization, that’s why the laptop components are not compatible with one another.
The laptop’s components are not compatible with each other; that’s why every brand has to come up with their own design and assembly.
In making them smaller and compact, the components in laptops are designed smaller than the desktop computers.
You might wonder why laptops are weaker in performance than computers.
The reason is simple, in laptops to save the space; the components are designed smaller, but weaker due to the lower clock speed and voltages. There may not be an issue to design components equally powerful to the computers, but when the processing happens, the components catch heats and overheating can lead to melting and permanent damage. That’s why the laptop’s components are designed smaller and weaker than desktops.
2. Overheating
Overheating is one of the biggest issues in laptops. In gaming laptops, the issue causes problems more than standard laptops due to the high performance and more usages. Let’s get back to the point heating, and why this happens.
Overheating is just not an issue with laptops but computers. In computers, the manufacture can leave spaces to maintain the optimal temperature. In laptops, we cannot take that liberty. Here, every left space is wasted space.
So, in that way, due to compactness, air does not cross through the components, and they start getting hot and reach to thermal throttling.
To counter the issue, designers must design the overall laptop layout in the way that every component keyboard, touchpad, processor, RAM, and graphics card could dissipate the heat outside and maintain optimal temperature.
Other than designing and engineering, brands are developing a cooling system to reduce the heat level inside. The system emits the heat outside and tries to keep the internal temperature as low as possible.
Thermal throttling or performance break down due to heat is the biggest issue, and manufacturers have to pay a lot to get the issue minimal in their products. Otherwise, the products suffer, and excessive heat sometimes melts down the integral components.
The cost of this cooling system is very high, and sometimes brands come up with two versions of the same laptop, without a cooling system and with a cooling system. If you could check up the price, at least 100 dollar stash up would be there with a cooling system.
Asus Zephyrus is an evident example of a cooling system laptop. The laptop is considered one of the best gaming laptop and cooling system of the machine has raised the bar higher for others.
3. Manufacturing Process
Engineering is a time taking process, but the manufacturing process is something more hectic than engineering. In manufacturing, the laptop requires more time in assembly and testing. From making the parts to assembling the parts and checking whether they are working right or not.
Though the manufacturing process is machine-oriented and undergoes using programmed machines, assembly and quality check process are human-based. The process is manual and requires the collaboration of various section controlled by human operators to put all the pieces together.
Once the assembly is done, the quality check process is full of stress where the produces ensures the proper functioning of different components. The entire process takes more time than computers and increases the cost of every laptop.
4. Battery
Why do you shop a gaming laptop when you can get far better performance using a desktop PC? The answer is simple: with a gaming laptop, you can play video games everywhere. You can take the laptop around you, and amuse where you want.
That comes at a price.
The battery that runs the laptop is an expensive tradeoff as gaming laptops are high power machines and make you play high-ended video games for hours. That’s why they consume lots of power and charging.
To provide the laptops enough power to continue the games for hours, the machines have to be powered with bigger and powerful batteries.
This is where the cost increases and gaming laptops are more expensive than normal laptops.
5. Graphics Card
The GPU in the desktop and GPU in laptops are different in performance. The only similarity is their architecture when we compare the performance we see roughly half as much performance out of the mobile version as you get from the desktop version. But, the games what you are going to indulge in are the same. You need FPS rates, image processing, and visual processing at the optimal rates so that your gaming performance could not be impacted.
To get the issue nailed gaming laptop manufacturers start designing ultra HD graphics card for video gaming. As compare to the normal laptops, the gaming laptops feature high-ended graphics card designed by NVidia and Radeon. These graphics cards are the latest designed and way powerful than normal computers and laptops.
So, the latest designed graphics card comes in hand at a price. That price adds to the total price and the price of gaming laptop hikes, touching the high skies.
6. Warranty and support
This is what happens when you buy a premium built laptop. A product designed by a local, novice company and the other with the same specification and features designed by a multi-national brand who has earned a big name in the niche, to who would you buy? Of course, you buy from a ranked brand that has the name in the industry. The other product produced by a novice brand may offer better performance than the experienced one, but no one (or few) would buy from them. This is due to the brand’s superiority, seniority, quality control, customer support, or reputation.
Take a look at the gaming laptops designed by ASUS, and Razer, they are big brands and known to produce quality gaming laptops and charge bit more than the others.
You should not always do that, if you are just paying to get a name or logo on the lid, must reconsider your decision especially, if their difference is more than you expected.
It is important to learn and understand that if you are investing this much of money in shopping a gaming laptop, you need to know that you are covered if there is any problem ever or for a limited time.
This means a product warranty, tech support, or getting the issue fixed. If you see any problem in your expensive gaming laptop, for whatever reason, you could have a dedicated expert on your doorstep to fix those glitches.
This is a big investment; you are breaking your bank in housing a gaming laptop that cost must cover the problem you face. This is not something you browse on the internet, and that’s it. Before you give your hard-earned money to someone, you need to see if that thing is covered for anything go wrong.
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Final Thought
Gaming laptops are pricey, that’s a truth. The reasons have been mentioned or been tried to mention. The effort, time, technology goes into making the laptops to come closer in performance to the gaming desktop, come at a price. This does not mean you should not purchase a gaming laptop. Today’s gaming laptops are combined with sheer performance, portability, and versatility. The companies have to spend a lot of resources into developing and engineering the quality gaming laptops.
That’s why the cost of each developing and producing each laptop as well as customer support, brand name increased the total price of it.
This article is written by Muhammad Umer Farooq. He is a gaming enthusiast and a blogger at Guru Verdict. He helps and recommended top quality laptops to personal users.
