Laptop for 12 year old - school work and Fortnite

[Gtom]

I’m going to get my lad a laptop for Christmas /birthday (only a few days apart) but I’m totally out of touch with computers now.

He likes to play Fortnite with his mates and has got some kind of gaming computer at his mums, what kind of spec do I need to be looking at so he can play this without it being a PITA?

Would a normal laptop be up to this or do I need to dig deeper?

I’m getting lost in a world of 2050/3050/3060 etc and it all means nothing to me.

I’m going to be at the lower end of the price range for a gaming laptop if it’s needed.

I want to try and get something bought while the Black Friday deals are about (although most of them are hardly special deals from what I have seen).

[grumbledoak]

Fortnite doesn't have massive system requirements.
https://www.epicgames.com/help/en-US/c-Category_Fo...

Video Card: Nvidia GTX 960, AMD R9 280, or equivalent DX11 GPU
Video Memory: 2 GB VRAM
Processor: Core i5-7300U 3.5 GHz, AMD Ryzen 3 3300U, or equivalent
Memory: 16 GB RAM or higher
Hard Drive: NVMe Solid State Drive
OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit

That's only a 2GB card, but you would still want dedicated graphics GTX or RTX not on-board like HD or Iris Xe.

An Amazon search for "laptop gaming i5 GTX RTX" is probably a good place to start. Looking at £600 and up e.g. at random
https://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-16-s0000sa-5-7640HS-Pr...

ETA more stars and reviews for this Acer
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-AN515-55-53E5-i5-103...

Edited by grumbledoak on Tuesday 26th November 20:08

[LuS1fer]

My son is 15 and still plays these lesser games and he wanted a gaming laptop as his school laptop is hopeless.

So I began with the notion that computers outdated very quickly and that buying one at the cheaper end is effectively rinsing 4 to 500 quid down the pan as a new one will be required in the near future. Kids graduate quickly.

So I looked at every goddam review out there and from my initial £1300 Lenovo Legion, I whittled it down to an £800 Acer TUF 15
from Amazon ( down from £1000) which lacks an OLED screen but has 1TB storage, 16GB RAM, a Ryzen processor and an RTX4060 graphics card. It also has something called Thunderbolt 4 which is "the future" of connectivity after USB-C (apparently and the Lenovo doesn't have it). I also took advantage of Amazon's Logitech G502 Hero gaming mouse reduced from 80 to 26 quid. They're like having a flick knife instead of a butter knife.

This is overkill, I know that but I also know that slow and outdated laptops end up in cupboards and landfill so feel my extra financial sacrifice will tide him over his transition to adult computer games. Bear in mind that the best gaming laptops are 2- 3000 quid and 800 is regarded as "budget" ( as is the Lenovo, hysterically).

Needless to say, desktop gaming PCs are better and far cheaper and more future proof but not portable.

[Gtom]

If I take advantage of verys credit I can get this at £523.

https://www.very.co.uk/asus-tuf-gaming-a15nbsplapt...

Any good or am I better spending a bit more and getting something else?

[HTP99]

Wowsers, so glad my girls are adults now!

[Gtom]

HTP99 said:

Wowsers, so glad my girls are adults now!

I’m not sure how this helps!

[grumbledoak]

Gtom said:

If I take advantage of verys credit I can get this at £523.

https://www.very.co.uk/asus-tuf-gaming-a15nbsplapt...

Any good or am I better spending a bit more and getting something else?

That looks to be a good spec at a good price, plus a free mouse and rucksack.

[richard-8zwx3]

Would a "geforce now" membership be an option?
Let the cloud servers do the grunt work and have a fairly lightweight laptop to access it?
They have a free tier you could use to trial it. then £10 a month if you want more...

[biglove1772]

Gtom said:

If I take advantage of verys credit I can get this at £523.

https://www.very.co.uk/asus-tuf-gaming-a15nbsplapt...

Any good or am I better spending a bit more and getting something else?

This is PC gaming, how much is a little more

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

Will he be taking the laptop to school at gaming laptops are heavy old beasts. I have a 3 year old Lenovo Legion Pro and it is 2.5kg with a massive power pack.

The 3050 is quite an old card now, if you can get a 3060 or even a 4060 that will be much better.

[LuS1fer]

The GPU cards are important as you probably can't change them. I "settled" for an RTX4060 because the 4070 is much better but I think £200 more.

The 512gb will also fill up quickly with more modern games though and external plug-in SSD will resolve that but obviously is additional cost.

So yes, it will be great for Fortnite and the like but it may struggle when he graduates to more demanding games.

https://www.pcguide.com/gpu/nvidia-rtx-3050-6gb-vs...

Edited by LuS1fer on Tuesday 26th November 23:13

[Gtom]

I had issues with very last night, they didn’t apply the 20% discount to my order. I have managed to cancel the order but they now won’t give me the 20% discount.

Tried again tonight with my wife filling everything in and went for this instead

https://www.very.co.uk/asus-tuf-gaming-a15nbsplapt...

It’s got a better graphics card and for £40 it made sense.

I hope he likes it!

[captain_cynic]

Gtom said:

If I take advantage of verys credit I can get this at £523.

https://www.very.co.uk/asus-tuf-gaming-a15nbsplapt...

Any good or am I better spending a bit more and getting something else?

I've a similar laptop (Ryzen5/3050) and whilst it's good then graphics card can be a little lacking..it will show it's age shortly.

I recommend the Asus TUF brand but would go with a 4050 or at least a.3070 (30 or 40 is the generation, the other numbers indicate how powerful it is) 3050 is the weakest card of the 30xx series.

I only use mine for light gaming on the road. The laptop is good in almost every respect. You can probably get a 40xx model for about the same. or a little more.

[captain_cynic]

Gtom said:

I had issues with very last night, they didn’t apply the 20% discount to my order. I have managed to cancel the order but they now won’t give me the 20% discount.

Tried again tonight with my wife filling everything in and went for this instead

https://www.very.co.uk/asus-tuf-gaming-a15nbsplapt...

It’s got a better graphics card and for £40 it made sense.

I hope he likes it!

Sorry, didn't see that before I posted

If you got that for £700 you did well..

The TUF series is good because you can replace that tiny 512 GB SSD with a bigger one or, if they haven't changed the design since mine, add a second one.

Easy to do, Asus have a video on how to.

[Gtom]

captain_cynic said:

Gtom said:

I had issues with very last night, they didn’t apply the 20% discount to my order. I have managed to cancel the order but they now won’t give me the 20% discount.

Tried again tonight with my wife filling everything in and went for this instead

https://www.very.co.uk/asus-tuf-gaming-a15nbsplapt...

It’s got a better graphics card and for £40 it made sense.

I hope he likes it!

Sorry, didn't see that before I posted

If you got that for £700 you did well..

The TUF series is good because you can replace that tiny 512 GB SSD with a bigger one or, if they haven't changed the design since mine, add a second one.

Easy to do, Asus have a video on how to.

I paid £560 for it.