Suggestions for buying a new gaming laptop?

Criteria:
Performance - I'd like this laptop to be able to play most recent games at high settings but it doesn't have to be a complete powerhouse. If it can play games like mass effect 2 and GTA IV on high settings I'll be satisfied.
Portability - This should be at least a 14" laptop that is portable enough to take with me most places.
Battery Life - At least 3 hours (watching internet videos, movies, occasional gaming)
Price - nothing over 1300 USD

So far I've had a hard time finding a laptop with this performance that can get a decent battery life other than the alienware m14x. I started looking at asus gaming laptops because I can get much more for my money but all the models seem to have mediocre battery life while the m14x can get up to 5 hours.

Can anybody suggest a laptop similar to what I'm looking for?

 

My girlfriend uses her Dell XPS 15 for architecture and it offers great performance to price. Almost maxed out is about 1grand if I remember correctly.

Of course for portability I am biased toward my M11x (i've had all three revisions and love it)

 

Gamewise, GTA IV is badly optimized for the pc. With a lot of fixes its playable though. May I suggest Just Cause II instead ? No but staying ontopic, I think this one looks pretty good for your needs: Amazon.com: MSI GE620-021US 15.6 Full HD Laptop - Gray: Computers & Accessories

 

The xps 15 is out of my price range unless i lowered the specs of it so that's not really an option. The msi ge620 doesnt really have the battery life i'm looking for. m14x is still looking like the best option to me because of the nvidia optimus technology giving it a great battery life. the msi gx640 looked like a good option but it does not have a backlit keyboard or very good battery life. Any other suggestions?

 

Perhaps this?
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Notebooks- ASUS N43SN

Cant seem to find where to buy it though

 

I think i found my #1 choice:
Digital Storm xm15 Laptop

Any opinions on the manufacturer? From what it seems, they aren't very well known but this laptop seems to fit my needs perfectly.

 

Looks like a rebranded Sager/Clevo, similar in looks to one I was going to get before I got my G73. If it is, then IMO you should be just fine with it, they are great laptops from what I know.

As for the reseller, I am uncertain, sorry.

 

This is more a post for the: What Notebook Should I Buy? section.

You might see Bias views considering you are asking this in the Asus G Series forum.

But from an unbiased point of view I would recommended either the Asus G73/53 SW with the 192 bit 460M GTX if you can get a cheap deal or cough up a bit more for the really good deal on the G74-XA1. But dont expect it to max out GTA 4 it is not possible with a mid range card and you really need a desktop to get full benefit from the max view distances etc because it is poorly optimised.

Totally unbiased view. honest

(crappyalloy sort that light blue name tag out )

 

If your looking for a 3-hour battery life a laptop that has a good video chipset in it, get one that can shut off that dedicated video chipset when your not gaming so 3-hour battery life will be realistic. That would be a Sandy bridge laptop that has support to use the internal GPU inside the CPU instead of the dedicated video chipset when you don't need it running.
1 other thing is that you might want to get 1 that has 2 drive bays so 1 can have an SSD in it and the other can have mass storage.

 

i have the option of having a solid state drive and a hard disk drive on the laptop im looking at. also i can buy a 500gb hybrid hard drive with 4gb of ssd. i dont know much about the performance of ssd so what are the benefits of these options?

 

and thanks for the g73 recommendations but it doesnt have the option to optimize battery life by switching discrete gpu to integrated. it looks like a great, powerful machine tho.