Last week, we covered a roundup on the latest gaming laptops equipped with Intel’s new 6th generation Skylake processors – budget conscious consumers will notice that the lowest priced machine listed in the round up is at $750 (before tax) and the highest priced configure is at high $1,450. What’s a budget minded laptop buyer looking for the latest technology to do!?
The good news is release week is almost always the best time to buy a new laptop – particularly since most OEM such as HP will do large discounts to get new generation of computers moving. Take HP’s mainstream Pavilion 15 laptop for example, the laptop has a list price of $639 but due to release week discount, there’s a giant $215 instant savings knocking the 6th gen powered laptop down to $415 with free shipping.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1816043,"post_type":"sponsored","post_chan":"sponsored","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"B"}']For the value shopper:
Steps needed to get this deal:
- Click the blue “Customize & Buy” button then click “Add to cart” red button
- Bottom left of checkout, click on blue “Add” button near the “Coupons – None applied” field.
- Now add in 15LESS75 and click “Apply”
- You should now see the price being $414.99, with a total savings of $215
For the budget gamer:
Steps needed to get this deal:
- Click “Customize & Buy” button then we’ll start picking the parts to make this into a gaming capable laptop :)
- In the “Procoessors and graphics” section, select Intel 6th Gen Core i5-6200U + NVIDIA GeForce 940M 2GB Discrete Graphics for $70 more
- In the “Display” secton, select Full HD WLDE-backlit IPS display (1920×1080) for $20
- Add to cart and add coupon 15LESS75 at checkout
- Total should be $504.99 before tax
Value config vs. budget gaming config
Wondering why we made the recommendations above? For value minded buyers, we still highly recommend you “splurge” an extra $20 for the Full HD 1080p IPS display upgrade. This gets you a full high-definition screen to watch movies with, plus an IPS panel where there’s a wider range of viewing angles. For those unfamiliar, think of the nice screen you’ll often see on smartphones such as iPhone/iPad where color doesn’t change even if viewed from a different angle.
For gamers, the 1080p display is of course a must – though the drawback is that you’ll have to run your games at higher resolution, and at a budget price this will mean a good number of modern games won’t be able to handle high graphics settings on this HP Pavilion 15t. Having said that, just by adding in $70 more for a discrete graphics option, you’ll be increasing your graphics capability by almost 30% from the stock integrated Intel HD 530 graphics (comparing 3DMark 2013 benchmark from the HD 530 vs. GeForce 940).
With the GeForce 940M, you’ll be able to play most modern games at low settings without a problem. While this may not sound impressive, don’t forget that we’re only looking at $500 for a gaming laptop with the latest Intel CPU. So all in all, a great bang for your buck.
In the future, for even more performance… you can swap out the 6GB of RAM for at least 8/12/16GB of RAM, or opt to swap out the hard drive for a solid disk drive for an even more noticeable improvements in your gaming needs.