It is officially 2024 and while some might feel an air of uncertainty regarding technology, mostly thanks to artificial intelligence, we’re certain of a few things: choosing a gaming laptop isn’t going to get any easier this year, and it’s going to take a while before adding a ‘4’ to the ends of dates doesn’t feel weird.
We can’t do much about the second thing except suggest you avoid writing dates as far as possible.
We can certainly make choosing a gaming laptop easier but that’ll have to wait because we first need to make it harder by highlighting some of the new portable gaming powerhouses we expect to see this year.
We’re using the term ‘portable’ loosely here because some of these machines are portable in the same way that non-folding chairs are portable. You can technically carry one around with you but most people don’t because it’s a ball ache.
A better term would be ‘desktop replacement’ or ‘Johnny’s university fund’ because if previous models are anything to go by, these will be big, heavy, and cost as much as a year of tertiary education. But that’s partly why they’re able to offer the power they do.
Asus ROG Strix Scar 18
Those specs were impressive (and still are) but we’re sure the company has been hard at work in the months since cooking up something even more impressive. We’re not just talking about slotting in the latest generation of CPUs and GPUs, that’s a given. We’d also love to see display improvements like one of Asus’ OLED screens. If that’s not fiscally feasible then we’ll settle for a Mini-LED display as seen on the ROG Flow x16.
MSI Titan GT
Those specs don’t leave much room for MSI to develop. Aside from swapping out the old Intel and Nvidia chips for faster ones, maybe upgrading the Mini-LED display to OLED is doable. The 2023 model sold for north of R100,000 in SA so increasing it further doesn’t really matter at this point. MSI is one of the companies that likes to show off its new wares at CES so we shouldn’t have to wait long.
Dell Alienware m18
We might have to wait a while to hear anything from Nvidia on its RTX 5000-series chips but maybe Dell can squeeze more performance out of the RTX 4090 and bring the Alienware m18 closer in line with the competition.
HP Omen 14 Transcend
One of Intel’s Core Ultra processors will be among the new tech. It’ll probably be joined by a familiar RTX 4000-series GPU unless Nvidia pulls a fast one and much of the other internals are likely to remain the same. There was also mention of an upgraded OLED display but the Omen 16 Transcend already features an OLED screen so a better panel that costs more might prove to be a hard sell.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G16
The line hasn’t seen much movement lately, apart from a refresh or two so we reckon it’s probably time for a fresh lick of paint and a new feature or two. It might make a good candidate for one of those pretty OLED screens we keep going on about and with the way things went last year, we expect it will feature AI in some description. As with MSI, we won’t have to wait too much longer to find out more with Asus set to unveil its new stuff at CES 2024.