14" and Larger Notebook Buyers' Guide

The back-to-school season is coming and refreshed product lines are already starting to appear on store shelves. While Intel's “Core 2010” line-up (i.e. Core i3/i5/i7 dual-core Arrandale processors) continues to dominate in terms of raw performance, AMD K10.5-based processors are actually starting to trickle into the market just as they promised at Computex, with AMD-powered notebooks available from every major vendor. Meanwhile, Intel has quietly refreshed its mobile line and added some low-voltage kit. It's an interesting market full of sort-of-competition and it isn't at all unlike the desktop processor and graphics markets.

Just like on the desktop, AMD seems poised to deliver the best price-performance at the low end of the notebook market while ceding superior battery life and performance to Intel in more expensive machines. AMD has often touted the importance of a “balanced platform” in their presentations and there's something to be said for that; while Intel does continue to steadily improve their integrated graphics performance, it's difficult to argue for it against the Mobility Radeon HD 4200 you can expect from even the cheapest of AMD-based machines. Beyond all that, AMD has been able to bring affordable mobile tri-core and quad-core processors to market in the Phenom II.

At the same time, the notebook graphics market seems both fiercely competitive and strangely stagnant. AMD has produced top-to-bottom DirectX 11 parts, but their top-end Mobility Radeon HD 5870 is curiously underpowered. It barely eclipses NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 285M, yet another solution based on the DirectX 10-only G92 that is now practically ancient by tech industry standards. The Mobility Radeon HD 5650/5730, both based on the desktop Radeon HD 5570, are a modest improvement on last generation's midrange king, the Mobility Radeon HD 4650. While 5650 and 5730 are numerous, choosing an NVIDIA GPU cedes some performance in favor of their Optimus technology that is capable of completely powering off the GPU and seamlessly switching to the integrated graphics hardware for improved battery life. Do you want DirectX 11 and higher performance, or do you want Optimus and CUDA? Segmentation like this seems like competition at first, but mostly becomes an exercise in compromises. What's more important to you?

Notebook designs in the past couple of years have also taken some unfortunate turns, particularly for media enthusiasts. The now bog-standard 1366x768 resolution found on mainstream notebooks is woefully inadequate for any but the most basic of media work, and this year has seen the alarming disappearance of FireWire and ExpressCard ports from many consumer notebook lines. You can argue that these accessories are niche, but many prosumer-grade cameras still use FireWire (and indeed, many people are still probably holding on to their own tape-based cameras). Removing FireWire wouldn't be such a nasty hit if major manufacturers like HP and ASUS weren't ditching ExpressCard right along with it. ExpressCard never did seem to catch on the way PC Card did, but having some means of expanding notebook functionality beyond USB ports is important.

Mercifully, the tide of glossy plastic that made last year's models so downright unattractive seems to be passing. HP went through a massive redesign of their notebooks that resulted in a vastly simplified, unibody-MacBook-inspired line of sleek, attractive machines. ASUS is making a jump to rubberized and matte plastics on their consumer and gaming machines. Sony VAIO notebooks are as attractive as ever. And Dell's machines have become nicely understated, a far cry from ancient eyesores like the Inspiron E1505 you may still see people carrying around.

Next week Vivek will be walking you through the portable, the ultra-portable, and the downright diminutive notebooks and netbooks on the market and helping you decide which one is right for your needs. This week, however, I'll be picking out the best machines on the market for individuals looking for more desktop-replacement-sized fare. Battery life isn't as big of a factor here, given the larger sizes and increased performance, but we'll try to note any laptops that happen to do better than average in that area.

Portable Notebook: ASUS K42J

We'll start by horning in on a little bit of Vivek's territory: choosing a portable powerhouse. ASUS actually has a healthy history of producing 14-inch notebooks with performance characteristics that frankly shame their larger kin. Yours truly has owned two of these beasts (an A8Jm and an X83) and can attest to their quality and performance. Midrange graphics in a 14-inch machine? Yes please.

Our pick for the most portable performance machine goes to the ASUS K42JV-X1, available at Newegg for the princely sum of $949. This tiny terror comes equipped with an Intel Core i5-450M running at a nominal 2.4 GHz clock speed on both cores (2.66GHz with Turbo), 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, and a GeForce GT 335M with 1GB of DDR3 video memory. The GT 335M is equivalent to the desktop GeForce GT 240, but with a reduced shader count (72 instead of 96) and the lowered clocks that are par for the course for mobile graphics.

While we don't have hands on experience with this particular model, its predecessors have been traditionally reliable and popular machines that have offered middling battery life but outstanding overall performance. The low resolution screen (1366x768) and lack of ExpressCard or FireWire make the K42 a tough sell for multimedia work, but for raw performance and portability it's a very tough nut to crack.

Portable Runners Up: ASUS UL80Vt and Alienware M11x

The K42 may use more full-bodied, luscious mainstream processors, but if you demand greater portability you'll be looking toward notebooks utilizing Intel's CULV platform. In that instance, the 14-inch UL80Vt line certainly fits the bill. It's last generation in every sense, using a Core 2 Duo and switchable GeForce G 210M instead of a modern Core 2010 chip and Optimus-enabled NVIDIA hardware, but it's reviewed well and you can pick it up for $700 these days. The UL50Vf was essentially the same system but with a 15.6" chassis and Optimus, but the 14" model was far more interesting. Odds are ASUS has a refresh of this notebook on the way, so it may not hurt to hold out and see what shakes loose. Other alternatives from ASUS include the UL30Jc—it's a 13.3" unit that packs a much more potent CPU, though the GPU isn't at the same level as the K42.

If you want to go simultaneously smaller and bigger, the Alienware M11x is universally beloved even by reviewers that ordinarily hate gaudy Alienware machines (such as yours truly.) With the M11x, Alienware produced something no one else had: an authentic gaming netbook. This one horns in on Vivek's territory, too, but if you're of the belief that more of less is more and are willing to take the hit to processor power, the M11x makes a convincing case as an alternative to the very similarly equipped K42. The original M11x used switchable graphics with an overclocked Core 2 SU7300, similar to the UL80Vt; an updated model with Arrandale ULV and Optimus is now available on Alienware's site—we're still waiting for our review model, but there's no reason the new unit shouldn't surpass the original in every important metric.

Frankly, we'd like to see more Optimus laptops with reasonable GPUs (like the K42Jv above—why doesn't it have Optimus?), but most of those will fall into the ultraportable category so we'll save further discussion for next week. The U30Jc had all the goods but still needs more than a 310M if you want gaming performance. The M11x refresh looks to be the most potent Optimus laptop out there right now, which is why we had to make room for it even if this isn't the ultraportable guide.

Budget Performance Notebook: Acer Aspire 7551G-5821

Individuals looking to get as much performance as they can for as little money as they can spend would do well to check out many of Acre's larger notebooks. Individuals looking to get four authoritative cores worth of performance for little money are likely to find themselves staring down the Acer Aspire AS7551G-5821.

While $899 is on the higher end of the word “budget,” only Toshiba produces a Core i7 quad-core notebook for the same price; every other vendor is offering dual-core or the odd tri-core machines. You can configure Dell and HP machines with similar specifications, but you'll be spending up a bit. The AS7551G-5821 (such catchy names on these Acer notebooks!) sports an AMD Phenom II N930 running four cores at 2 GHz. Acer partners this processor with 4GB of DDR3 and a Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with 1GB of DDR3 video memory. The benefit of the meaty 17.3” form factor comes in a screen with a 1600x900 resolution, certainly adequate for doing serious image or video work.

Like the K42 and many other notebooks today, though, this Acer does eschew the FireWire and ExpressCard ports people with older kit (like yours truly) may need. Another downside of going the Acer route is having to use...the Acer keyboard. This is going to come down to a matter of taste, but even though reception of the keyboard is mixed Acer continues to use it on every notebook they produce. Those of you with a sense of history will remember the curved keyboards that were a trademark of Acer notebooks in years past; at some point hopefully their designers will just put a regular keyboard on their notebooks and call it a day. But if you don't have qualms with the keyboard (and you can always check it out at retail), it will be difficult to find anything with this much oomph for a better price.

Budget Performance Runner Up: Toshiba A505-S6035

Odds are good the Intel Core i7-720QM will still beat the pants off the AMD Phenom II N930, so if you're willing to go for a slightly smaller notebook (with reduced screen resolution) for roughly the same price, Toshiba has you covered. We think the Acer is a more attractive notebook, and the Mobility Radeon HD 5650 is more desirable than the last-gen GeForce GT 330M in Toshiba's notebook. Still, if you're looking for as much processor power as you can cram into a budget, the Core i7-720QM is the way to go, and Toshiba's A505 offering includes the FireWire and ExpressCard ports Acer's doesn't.

Budget Gaming Notebook: Acer Aspire 5740G-6979

This one wound up being a very easy choice; a quick run through Newegg was evidence of that. Our budget gaming machine is the Acer Aspire AS5740G-6979 we reviewed a few months ago. The intervening period has seen new notebooks from many other manufacturers, but none has managed to hit the staggeringly low $750 price point Acer did. It is simply the most gaming notebook you can get for the price, and one of the cheapest notebooks equipped with a Mobility Radeon HD 5650.

For those needing a refresher of the Aspire AS5740G-6979's specs, it comes with a robust Intel Core i5-430M chip running both cores at 2.26 GHz, 4GB of DDR3, and a 500GB hard drive. In our own testing, we found the 5650 to perform quite well at the low 1366x768 native resolution of the AS5740G's screen. Just about every game we tested was playable at high settings, though DirectX 11 support wound up being more of a checkbox feature than something useful in practice.

There's very little to say about this notebook that we didn't already cover in our review, but if you're on a dire budget you aren't going to be able to find more power than this for $749, and the fact that it's sold out on Newegg at the time of this writing should give some indication as to the kind of borderline-Faustian bargain the AS5740G-6979 (complete with catchy title) provides.

Update: The 5740G-6979 appears to have been so popular that it is now sold out and discontinued! In it's place you can readily find the 7740G-6364 with similar components but a 17.3" 1600x900 LCD for $800. We've listed a few other alternatives in the comments, but really nothing comes close to the price/performance of the 5740G anymore. The updated 5740G-5309 is less expensive but comes with an HD 5470, so it's a big step down in gaming potential.

Budget Gaming Runner Up: MSI GX640

Let's be honest: $1100 doesn't exactly qualify as “budget”, but you'll be hard-pressed to find a GPU as powerful as the Mobility Radeon HD 5850 in anything cheaper than the MSI GX640. The 5850 is easily one of the fastest mobile GPUs available, and MSI makes great use of it with a high-resolution 1680x1050 screen. We weren't hugely impressed with the notebook's looks or its keyboard, and the price is a major jump from our primary recommendation, but again...it's awful hard to beat a Mobility Radeon HD 5850—a card powerful enough to actually make use of DirectX 11—for $1100.

Video/Multimedia Workstation: Dell Studio 17

If there's one category we know particularly well and have exhaustively researched—if only for personal reasons—it's this one. The aforementioned griping about ExpressCard and FireWire returns, substantially narrowing the field. A need for a high resolution screen narrows it further, and at the end of the day we're left with just two companies seeking to fill this particular niche: Dell and Sony.

Our initial leanings went toward Sony's F series notebooks. These sport Core i7 quad-core processors, can be custom-ordered with 1080p screens (or even found in retail with those screens), and have all of the needed ports and expansion abilities. On top of that, they're just attractive machines and the pricing is fairly reasonable. The only major complaint that can be levied against the F series is the strangely anemic GeForce GT 330M Sony chose to equip them with. The preceding Core 2-based series used a Mobility Radeon HD 4650, making the move to the GT 330M lateral at best. And since the F series uses quad-core i7s, there's no integrated graphics to at least try to justify the GT 330M through Optimus.

Unfortunately for Sony, Dell has an ace in the hole that they just can't touch: the Dell Studio 17 may not have been updated with the refreshed mobile Core i7 chips yet, but that's only a matter of time, and we'd gladly take the performance hit for one of Dell's RGB LED-backlit 1080p screens. If you're doing any kind of color-sensitive media work with the notebook, that screen is going to pay big dividends. Dell doesn't charge an unreasonable sum for the upgrade either: $150 isn't that much to ask for one of the best looking screens you can find on a notebook. Given how dismal the quality of many modern screens have become, and how vital a good one can be for any kind of serious media work, Dell clinches this recommendation. If you want a media workstation, look no further than the Dell Studio 17.

Video/Multimedia Workstation Runner Up: Sony F Series

Of course, if you don't want to shell out for the RGB LED-backlit 1080p screen in Dell's Studio 17, the Sony F series is mighty attractive on its own. The line was recently refreshed with the updated Core i7-740QM, and can be had with a 1600x900 screen for just $1000. That's not bad at all, and it's easy to custom order a fairly reasonable machine from Sony's site. It comes with the standard 4GB of DDR3, a 320GB hard drive, and the aforementioned underwhelming but still decent GeForce GT 330M. At just a grand for an excellent piece of video editing hardware, the Sony F series is very tempting indeed.

Full-On Gaming Machine: ASUS G73Jh

Our final recommendation in this roundup is for the best gaming machine you can get while still paying at least a sensible amount of money, and that machine is the ASUS G73Jh. We gave it our Editor's Choice award in our review, and it's pretty easy to see why.

For a second, let's ignore the meaty hardware built into the chassis and just appreciate the subtler, solid build of the G73. The stealth-bomber-inspired design seems unusual at first, but the notebook is virtually devoid of gloss, and is vastly more attractive than its predecessors. The old ASUS Republic of Gamers-branded notebooks were great in their own right, but the build of the G73 seals the deal.

Or is it the fact that our review machine came with a Core i7-720QM, 8GB of DDR3 (in four slots!), two 500GB 7200-RPM hard drives, a 2.1 speaker system with built-in subwoofer, and one of the fastest mobile GPUs on the market, the Mobility Radeon HD 5870? Stack all that with a high-contrast 1080p screen and a remarkably low $1505 price tag and you have both a bargain and a fantastic piece of hardware. If that price isn't low enough, ASUS sells a cut-down G73Jh-RBBX05 model at Best Buy that drops the screen resolution down to 1600x900, drops 2GB of RAM and one of the hard drives, but keeps the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 and Core i7-720QM...for $1199. Good luck even finding another machine sporting hardware that powerful for that price.

The ASUS G73 is big, powerful, quiet, and priced aggressively by a company hungry for market share, and it's our pick for the best full-on gaming machine you can buy without breaking the bank.

Gaming Notebook Runners Up: Alienware M17x and Clevo W880CU

If you're looking for alternatives, you can pick up laptops with Radeon HD 5870 CrossFire for around $2500 (with a few upgrades). Eurocom has a customized version of the Clevo X8100 with 5870 CrossFire (or you can get it with GTX 285M SLI), but the Alienware M17x looks better and packs some compelling features. Topping the list of nice extras is the WUXGA RGB LED display, a $200 upgrade that's worth every penny in our book. While we have little doubt the NVIDIA GTX 480M is going to be a faster GPU than the HD 5870, there aren't any SLI notebooks with 480M yet—and that's going to be difficult to manage, considering each GPU can draw 100 watts!

But there are advantages to single GPUs, like not having to worry about CrossFire/SLI profiles for your favorite game to come out. If you want GTX 480M, you can pick up the Clevo W880CU. One of the first companies to start shipping these bad boys is AVADirect, but it's not going to come cheap. If you must have the absolute fastest, most ridiculous piece of gaming kit, the W880CU aims to satisfy, available with the scorching 100-watt TDP GeForce GTX 480M. Given the lackluster lead the Mobility Radeon HD 5870 had on the GeForce GTX 285M, it's easy to expect the 480M to claim the crown of fastest mobile GPU available. You'll pay a pretty penny for it and the cooling required is going to be decidedly bulky, but if you must have the fastest, Clevo's W880CU will deliver. We're not sold on the design of the W880CU and we'll have a review in the near future, but the 480M is the fastest current single-GPU mobile solution.

Notebook and DTR Wrap Up

The more astute readers are liable to have noticed certain patterns in our picks, in that some manufacturer names come up more than others. We've listed a fair number of alternatives, but a few names generally fail to make the grade. HP, Lenovo, Fujitsu, and to a lesser extent MSI and Toshiba could all use work.

At a basic apples-to-apples level, HP notebooks are frankly just not price competitive in the metrics we're examining. HP charges $200 to upgrade to the Mobility Radeon HD 5650 in any of the notebooks that support it, and that's highway robbery compared to what Acer and ASUS offer. They also almost completely rule themselves out for serious multimedia work, as there isn't a single modern HP notebook with FireWire or ExpressCard. It's a strange thing to keep harping on, but if you've sat in a class with other video students who are just trying to find the best deal they can for cameras and the hardware to edit with, it definitely matters to some and at least a few notebooks from any vendor should support these features.

All is not lost for HP, as their ENVY products have good build quality and look nice; find one of HP's periodic sales and the ENVY line is worth considering, but at the current prices it's substantially more expensive than the competition. HP also has business notebooks that are quite nice, with magnesium alloy frames that make typical consumer laptops feel like they're made of cheap plastic… probably because they are. The ProBook and EliteBook lines compete with the likes of Lenovo ThinkPad and Dell Latitude/Precision notebooks, but we didn't spend a lot of time looking at business options in this guide.

Speaking of Lenovo, the ThinkPad line has traditionally been solid and easy enough to recommend, but like most business laptops it's pricy. The IdeaPad line, on the other hand, has shown itself to be somewhat schizophrenic. Lenovo can't seem to settle on a style for their IdeaPads, and the notebooks are often overpriced for what you get. If you do want something extremely solid, a ThinkPad becomes easier to recommend, but even their screen quality has gone the way of the consumer (low resolution 16:9 widescreens). That's something you might need to research for yourself to determine if you want to make the trade-off.

Speaking of overpriced, but speaking concisely, Fujitsu notebooks often simply don't offer the same kind of power as other notebooks in their price class. If you want something business-class, you're still better off shopping at Dell, HP, or Lenovo, and for the tasks we're putting our notebooks through in this round-up, most of Fujitsu's current line is a tough sell.

Toshiba's offerings come down to a matter of taste. Toshiba notebooks are very distinctly styled in the marketplace, but they're inexpensive and make a reasonable alternative to Acer/Gateway machines in most of the lower price classes. The Qosmio is still overpriced and ugly compared to what ASUS offers for high-powered gaming and media notebooks, but Toshiba's less expensive notebooks can be compelling. Helpfully, Toshiba and Acer both have a strong retail presence, so you can check them out for yourself and determine which vendor's machines you like better. Personally, we prefer the wider selection of machines equipped with solid discrete GPUs in Acer notebooks, but your mileage may vary.

MSI notebooks do remain another healthy alternative, but unfortunately their retail presence is scattershot and mostly confined to their cheaper, less powerful notebooks. This is a shame, because anyone willing to take a gamble is liable to find a fairly well-built and well-specced machine. Like Acer, though, the keyboards can be frustrating enough to completely mar the experience.

Wrapping things up, there are also a lot of whitebook vendors that use Clevo and Compal-based notebooks. Clevo machines are monsters, but if you simply must have ultimate power at any expense, they're generally a good choice. The Compal systems we've seen on the market look reasonable as well, though price-wise they simply can't compete with the mass produced big OEMs. AVADirect, Sager, and others will sell you highly customizable notebooks, but you pay for the privilege (and it's a shame Clevo still hasn't come out with a good keyboard layout).

Hopefully it's clear that our recommendations aren't meant as the end-all-be-all; prices fluctuate, matters of taste and aesthetics come into play, and different people weigh different features with varying degrees of importance. At the end of the day, though, we're confident that our picks are going to be among the best options for the various market segments we've listed. Vivek will have a separate ultraportable guide up next week, with a focus on smaller sized laptops with better battery life. In the meantime, if you have other notebooks you think deserve a mention, or if you happen to come across an amazing deal, our comments section is open for input.