The best Notebook "ON THE GO" Thread :-)

Hey,

I would like to start a thread about a topic that where I think there is big lack of information.

My purpose is to define the best notebooks for gaming “ON THE GO”.

So the topic is not to discuss which gaming notebook is the best concerning its spec.

The point is to define which notebook allows you to play decent frame rate on common titles (let’s say Guild Wars or WoW) during a couple of hours WITHOUT to be plugged to AC.

For example, we all know that a M15x from Alienware is better than…let’s say a Lenovo X61 with X3100 for heavy gaming! 
What happen if you unplugged the M15x?
I suppose the dedicated card will be turn off immediately and if it’s not you will be able to play…5 minutes?
In this case isn’t the Lenovo X61 and x3100 integrated card superior?

So in conclusion this is not about the perfect “desktop replacement” but the laptop which can come with you in coffee an play WoW during 4 hours before the battery goes out.

I am open to all proposals, if you have an additional battery and it allows you to use a 8400m GS during 4 hours, I think it beats the x3100.
But how many Watt should be this battery, 60, 80, 120?

Let’s discuss about it ^_^

 

I don't think there is any laptop that will play a game (at decent res/settings) for 4 hours on one battery charge. Hell, many laptops barely get 4 hours of battery life with wifi off, screen on low brightness, and power plan on "Battery Saver" just doing mundane tasks like surfing the web and using Word.

But if somebody has data that contradicts what I just said, please post it

 

Erm. Dell Latitude D630 w/ 9 Cell Primary Battery + 6 Cell Media Bay Battery gets, reputedly, 12 hours. And that's from a review of someone who had it, not from Dell (Dell boasts 15 hrs, as usual). I don't know about gaming but if 12 hrs = mundane tasks then for gaming (and it's graphics card is rather decent -- dedicated) it should last at least 3 hours if not much more.

 

If it HAD a decent graphic card to play games in the first place, battery drain would be MUCH more... leading to a gaming battery life way <3 hours.

 

Well, I was referring to 1 battery, not 2. Yes, I know there are a few laptops that are meant to maximize battery life and last >4 hours, but they make up a small percentage of total consumer laptops (hence the "many laptops barely get 4 hours..."). Anyways, any laptop that is meant for long battery life is not meant for gaming (as Prasad007) pointed out.

Anyways, I'd be interested to know if even that D630 could pull off 4 hours of gaming at decent resolution and settings. It could probably play Warcraft 2 at 640x480 windowed mode low settings for over 4 hours, but what's the fun in that?

 

The m15x has power settings that would allow you run @ full speed even though it is not plugged in and with a smart bay batery you can last a pretty good time compared to others. Also you have to force the m15x to go into intergrated graphics buy pushing a button and restarting if you don't all that will happen when you unplug is ur card and processor clock down. Then agian like I said you can change all kinds of power settings. (ex high performance, balance, power saver, and also ur own custom settings.)

 

Thanks for the info!

tacomenace, you said that there is a "power off" button for the dedicated card.
By pretty good time, you mean more than two hours?
Is it possible to add another battery in the laptop?

However the integrated graphic in Mx15 should be inferior than a x3100, right?

I used to have 17inch laptop with the 7800gtx. When it was unplugged the performance was awful no matter what I was changing in the setup.
At the same time, with a Sony vaio with a 6200go I was able to play Guild Wars unplugged during a good hour with a really better quality.

I have a Zepto 6224w with 8600gt. Plugged this is a really good machine but unplugged even if it's rather small I can't play that long and I don't see any benefit of the graphic card...

So you see, I would like to know which is the best solution when the laptop rely on battery only.

Also can you use M15x with full settings when unplugged? Usually there is always a difference...

 

yeah there is a button to turn off the card then you have to restart the pc for the integrated graphics to work. To be honest with you I have never tried mine on the integrated graphics I always use the card I just lower the setting down when on battery. Yes also you can run the laptop @ full speed without the power being plugged the in. M15x has what called the command center where you can tell it what to do when there is no power and trust me there is no difference but it will drain the battery faster. You can have 2 batterys in at once but you have to swap out the cdrom for the battery which is what I do. I have the regular 6-cell battery and then I had the 6-cell smart bay battery (hot swappable with DVD rom). I can send you some screen shots of some of the options in the command center if you'd like.

 

Try an ASUS Eee. Not the most powerful, but definitely portable and will play most pre 2005 games without much issue. Battery life isn't the greatest, but you can definitely stretch it out with some battery saving measures (wi-fi, screen brightness, camera off, underclock, etc)

 

I though about the EEE, but there is better available (more expensive though) like the flipstart. According to the Youtube videos Flipstart is the best handbook so far for gaming.
I still wonder if an X61 with 8 cell battery and x3100 is not the better choice...
Or maybe an Asus 12 inch with 8400m gs, is there a bigger size battery? I think any dedicated graphic will force the computer to shut down before two hours.
Am I wrong?

 

My Vostro 1500 with a 9 cell batter can roughly push out 3.3 (3 hours and 20 minutes) hours, doing words, surfing, wifi on, and still have around 10-15% battery power left.

 

well if you put like that my m15x can do all the same things for about 4:30 hrs(sometimes more) when i have the smart bay battery in.

 

well as hp compaq 8510w/p offers great power on battery for almost 2 hours (on the normal 8cell battery) and they have (as with other business models) possibility to connect external ultra capacity battery (12cell, hp says it prolongs seeing dead screen to 10+hours) one of my previous bosses had this set-up and he could play some tough games for almost 4 hours!! (i mean splinter cell chaos theory type, dark messiah of m&m type and tes4o and nwn2) that's quite impressive, isn't it? surely he used some mods and settings for some of these titles but the games looked really well. i'd say suprisingly well...

 

i usually get 5 hours with my 1720 while surfing the web or doing word.... i noticed that my battery life increased when I switched to XP (no Aero?). I run it in max battery mode, half screen brightness.

 

Does "On the go" also mean good portability and light weight?
Maby 14,1" Lenovo ThinkPad T61p with Quadro FX 570M GPU (~8600M GT GDDR3) and 9 cell battery.

 

well on power saver I can get 3 and a half hours....and I can prolly play low end games.....is big though

 

i only get 2 hours on mine just surfing and word. i would probably last half that if i was gaming

i do suggest a macbook pro, macbooks have best battery life imo. i always get outlasted by a friends macbook pro which can last more than 3 hours.

 

I can get 4+ hours of battery life with my 9-cell if I tweak the settings right, but I'd get nowhere near that amount if I was playing a game.

 

If you undervolt your CPU a lot, you can increase your battery life by a lot. I undervolt by 0.375 volts to 1.000 volts and I can get 2 hours of max gaming on high performance and full brightness.

 

i get almost 8 hours doing VERY heavy wifi internet surfing/streaming with a

hp dv2500 and 12cell battery

 

I got about 3.5 hours on the rig in my sig with a 9cell playing Oblivion. Vista tweaked for performance. (vista basic settings on vista home premium x64)

 

Znote 6224W?

I always wished they sold a 14.1" with 8600mGT in the USA... :[

 

Thanks to everyone for your posts!

A lot of good information already, I am sure we will find some good candidates for the best laptop “on the go”. 

So the computer should be able to stand >3 hours gaming. I think it’s not fair to take game made for Desktop so I want to focus on game which can easily scale like mmorg WoW, Guild Wars and Warhammer Age of Reckoning (I know we don’t have the spec yet but should be able to scale). I mean sometime the problem is not the hardware it’s just the software which can’t scale. If you compared FEAR to other FPS you will understand what I mean.

I will tell you my dream: when my Japanese wife is making three hours of shopping, I would like to be able to use this precious “wasted time” with a game which waste time anyway but in a pleasant way (WoW-like).
There is also all this time wasted during your daily life where you could play a bit, instead of playing when you have free time to go the sea or spend time with your kids ;-).

We have also a very good offer of wireless GPRS at 512mbits here so internet connexion is not an issue…only battery is.

Even if there is some AC plug in some coffees, I don’t know for you but I always have a guy staying forever there while I have to take a unplugged space.
So I think the size is definitely a plus. I consider 12inch as the perfect size to go around with your PC without going around with a giant bag. I did this with a 17inch and it’s really not “on the go”, IMO 15 inch are not qualified either. Maybe 14 inch would be the limit.
Today we have a couple of 12 inch with dedicated graphic (most from Asus) if I am not wrong. But according to the test their battery last 2h30 doing WIFI + Word.
WIFI + Word < GAMING for battery utilization.

Please help me to find the best laptop gaming on the go before the awaken of the Fuel Cell Battery era ! (where I will take an Clevo with the biggest graphic card possible!)

 

My opinion would be the 15" MacBook Pro. Has pretty good battery life, nice screen. You can use both Mac OS and Windows. Has a 8600m GT GDDR3 video card and seems to play 99% of the games out there at about medium to high settings. For a 15 inch laptop it only weighs in at about 5 pounds. The Apple store has refurbish units on sale right now for excellent prices. I am thinking of buying one when my Tax Refund money comes in. Hope this helps. God Bless

 

If he is running just Wow, which runs in MacOS, then this might be a good idea...

Otherwise, I have noticed that my Vista battery life is much less than my OSX battery life, probably because OSX more aggressively steps the processor based on usage.

Otherwise, I have played Supreme Commander on this MacBook Pro before, sans battery. I think I got a little under an hour till the screen blanked and the system went into hybernation (a really wacked out process when 1.4GB of RAM is used by a game).

Now Starcraft, that lasted almost 2 hours, in Vista.

 

In fact, my Zepto 6224w is a very good laptop (when the motherboard is working ). Small, not heavy and a pretty good graphic card.
But 6 cell battery... There is no way I can play 30 minutes on medium settings.
If the 12 cells was available that would be a very good candidate.
I sent an email to Zepto about it, I'll give you their answer.
I saw the Panasonic R7 today...10 inch screen with x3100 chipset graphic.
I was thinking about the x61 but even this one is bulky compared to the R7...
Don't know for the game but it should pawn the Asus EEE.

 

I just love Supreme Commander, I used to have 5 desktop at home just for Lan parties. I play on my main rig with 2560x res screen and big setup...I just can't play these crazy games on laptop.
But WoW and Guild Wars are a bit different they are very appealing but they don't need so much raw powers. I think RPG game are really different from FPS and RTS where you need to feel the horses of the engine.
Panasonic R7 looks better and better to me, this tiny puppy still have a good processor and x3100 for 940grms!!!
Also you can drop coffee on it which is definitely a plus with me .

 

Yeah the mac books are sexy...but too big. In Japanese coffee shops I will be ashamed .

 

There is a LG tablet PC with a 8400m gs graphic...Only available in Korea.
Can't have it here, Japanese sellers get upset when I ask about LG and Samsung...Don't have many info about this tablet pc.

 

Is there a low voltage processor like the Core 2 Duo L7500 in any laptop with decent discrete gpu? That would propably help quite a bit with the battery life.

 

How do you get high performance on battery? I thought Dells were locked at lower performance while on battery and there's no way around it.

 

I just want to add my final comment before to close this thread.
I found the perfect (at this date) "on the go" laptop. This is the LG Xnote P300. 1.6kilos for a 13 inch with a 8600m gs dedicated graphic is extremely interesting but the amazing battery life of 3hours for a 6 cells is the cherry on the top of the ice cream .
Of course I am looking to find a bigger battery but with an external one it should be already pretty good.

Thanks for everyone's help!

 

my dell vostro 9cell and 8400gs, last 6hours with wifi on and set to powersaver
but gaming it last 2

 

has anyone got any info on how the 13.3 inch Dell XPS would perform?

 

Ok guys, I have some new info.
First of all, I have been testing the game world of warcraft "On the Go" in real situation. In a coffee in the middle of Tokyo with a 7.2mbits wireless connexion.
I tested three laptops.
One Zepto 6224w.
One Dell XPS 1330.
One Panasonic CF-R7 (Japan Only).
So basically 8600M GT vs 8400M GS vs X3100.
I have no benchmark and don't plan to make them, you'll have to trust my words.
My conclusion is that the Zepto with no AC plugged is still working better than the others but it drains the energy in one hour max. When plugged of course it's great but remember this is "on the go" thest.
The Dell is better I could spend one hour and half and even if it was clearly beaten when plugged the 8400m gs did very well "on the go".
Finally the x3100 for my big surprise was doing fine with a 10 inch screen at 1024 (very important to have low res). At the same time I was able to play 3 HOURS! And it was with Vista while others had XP. The battery was a 4 cell compared to the 6 cells of the other (not sure about the dell).
Conclusion: I bought the Panasonic. It is a strong build, it weight 980grms!
The battery is crazy and if I put an external battery of 150wh (AC Ryan) I can really plan to game 4-5 hours during all a long Shinkansen trip.
So yeah before everyone bash me for x3100. I want to add that I have a Mountain Mod custom case with 3 loops and I used to have 3 8800gtx in tri sli (WC cooled). So I know about performance and please to game at 2560 Dell screen. But still, playing Wow at cafe with a tiny cute screen with playable frame is perfect. And if you can do better with an AL good for you but in 2 hours you will have to shutdown. And I won't bother to find a sit confortable to put my tiny laptop .
And none the last, it is coffee proof! Tested!

 

In your opinion, what is the most powerful 15.4" (or smaller) notebook - excluding the M15x.

Also, how portable is a 15" laptop really. For the people who have one, how easy is it to carry around - on the street, through the airport, on a plane, etc.

 

Its kind of stupid... depends totally on the laptop... nothing else...

Gaming... as in WoW or Crysis? HUGE difference...

The newest IGP by intel can run quite well... but nothing like a 8600 or 8800

 

Sorry but you should open your eyes.
if you are on battery, you can't use 8600m or 8800m.

Perf won't stand long before to shutdown.
The only way to make it stand is to decrease the perf to reach the level of...an integrated graphic.
Except that your pc is a 14-17 form factor while you can have a 10inch.
Dont get me wrong I have a 8600m on 14 zepto, I love it.
But it s for lanparty, going to see a friend with it and play is perfect.
In a coffee, it's a 30mn fun and that's it.
And yes it will a pain to carry it around and it will be hard to find a sit where there is enough space.

 

how much you want to bet I can?

 

Yes you can for a very short time.
Using a high end graphic card for a period over one hour is just not possible today.
If you reach 1h30 that's impressive, but still over three hours is for me a minimum for a device which is suppose to work unplugged.
3 hours with dedicated graphic on nomal utilisation is just something that doesn't exist today.

 

uhhh, my vostro 1500 last more than 3 hours with no power features on.....

 

The only laptop which might make it is m15x with dvd replaced by additionnal battery. Still it's not possible to play during all a train/plane trip.

I don't see the point to carry three kilos (or more) of computer to play 30mn - 1hour (and at the beginning because after one year daily use it will be more like 30mn).
Mobility is pointless on these machine execpt if you access an AC plug.
Some truth are difficult to accept but I prefer give the right choice to future buyers.

 

Pai, >3h with the same perf than one plugged to an electricity wall?
I don't think so.

 

well, if you have taken economics you will learned that people faces "Trade off", that is the price you pay for mobility. Plus, the point of "mobility" is that a laptop is much easier to transport than a desktop which needs AC power ALL THE TIME.

 

According to this website:

"Battery life on the 1500 with the standard 6-cell battery was only average at best. Even with the screen brightness set to less than half, wireless on, and XP power settings set to maximize battery life, the 1500 powered down in just above 2 hours (2 hours and 3 minutes). Using the same settings the 9-cell battery provided 3 hours and 51 minutes of battery life. Unless size and travel weight are your primary concerns I highly recommend purchasing the 9-cell battery for the 1500."

The battery is good, but I doubt you can have more than 3hours while gaming when they can only use power saving battery mode.
Therefore the test was with a 8400m gs not a 8600m gt where the electricity will be gone faster.

I recognize this is a good machine in its category but it's not made for mobility.
It's not a PC which pop up from your bag rdy to play. You need big bag and really plan to use it because it's heavy and incovenient.

 

Yes you are right, they are ok to move around and that's better than desktop if you often have to move.
They are perfect for business man who only use laptop in office or in hotel.

In this thread I am talking about the PC which is always with you and even if you didn't plan you can still switch it on and play for a long time if necessary.
Like: for any reason you are waiting at the administration with nothing else to do, but you have your lappy and it plays well any online game or 2004 titles.
Your laptop is not good in this situation because you don't bring it in the morning if you don't plan to use it. If you do, your back will remind you to leave it home if not necessary ;-).

 

i bet i could do two hours on battery, if i put in power saving mode, my GPU has enough power that it could downclock and I could still murder 8600/8700m GTs.

 

Panasonic CF-R7 works like a charm.
Easy to go around, very strong build, not any problem to play WoW, Civ4, Defcon and old games like NeverWinter nights, Diablo2 etc.
I went to Sendai this week end by Shinkansen. It was so easy to bring the computer around and when I had to wait for the different trains, it was so easy to play a bit. I definitely changed my mind with integrated graphic, I used to think they were useless for gaming, I was just ignorant.
Can't wait for Celeron 2 chipset!