Thinking about buying a new HP laptop

[sneakypete]

Amazon today has some daily deals on gaming laptops, but nothing that provides much encouragement for you to get everything you want at the price you're looking for.

@Snarknado

Thanks! I plan on calling HP tomorrow to sort this out. Depending on what level of "chemo brain" I have tomorrow,I will either try to get tech to update my screen refresh rate to 144Mz,and if I can't do that,will send it back for one that does have the screen I ordered.

Providing of course HP can track down that chat conversation and verify that is what I ordered. For some reason I didn't get an email copy of that after the deal was made.

[Snarknado]

@Snarknado

Thanks! I plan on calling HP tomorrow to sort this out. Depending on what level of "chemo brain" I have tomorrow,I will either try to get tech to update my screen refresh rate to 144Mz,and if I can't do that,will send it back for one that does have the screen I ordered.

Providing of course HP can track down that chat conversation and verify that is what I ordered. For some reason I didn't get an email copy of that after the deal was made.

My last 3 PC's were HP, but when I shopped them this time it was unreal. I wanted a desktop with  a RTX 2070 Super video card, which comes standard with 3 DisplayPorts. HP was using cards that were inexplicably crippled with only 1 DP. They tried to steer me toward a business workstation with a Quadro card at more than double the price, claiming it was the only way to get 2 DP's. They also couldn't guarantee that the 32GB RAM would be 2x16 and not 4x8, filling all 4 slots. Fortunately, Dell was able to give me exactly what I wanted and the price was actually a bit lower (though that's another story - Dell's website and pricing are so byzantine that it takes plenty of perseverance and some Excel worksheets to figure out how to get their best price).

[Snarknado]

If the HP doesn't work out, this $850 MSI is a nicely-balanced configuration for the price:

https://www.amazon.com/MSI-Creator-15M-A9SD-044-GTX1660Ti/dp/B07YTFGXS3?ref_=Oct_DLandingS_D_799d04de_61&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&th=1

I also see that Asus has upgraded their Hero line, so there might be some good deals showing up on the earlier models. This one would be pretty attractive if it dropped below $1000:

https://www.amazon.com/8th-Gen-i7-8750H-processor-FireCuda-GL503GE-ES73/dp/B07BPB158F/ref=sr_1_21?crid=1T4CP2LI109AB&keywords=asus+hero&qid=1580001990&sprefix=asus+hero%2Caps%2C151&sr=8-21

I'm not recommending either of these, every gaming laptop I've looked at has its share of bad reviews. But I think they're good examples of what you can realistically expect to get in the $800-1000 price range. And bear in mind that thermal and cooling design is a major consideration in a gaming laptop - churning out 120FPS for an hour generates a lot of heat.

[sneakypete]

If the HP doesn't work out, this $850 MSI is a nicely-balanced configuration for the price:

https://www.amazon.com/MSI-Creator-15M-A9SD-044-GTX1660Ti/dp/B07YTFGXS3?ref_=Oct_DLandingS_D_799d04de_61&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&th=1

I also see that Asus has upgraded their Hero line, so there might be some good deals showing up on the earlier models. This one would be pretty attractive if it dropped below $1000:

https://www.amazon.com/8th-Gen-i7-8750H-processor-FireCuda-GL503GE-ES73/dp/B07BPB158F/ref=sr_1_21?crid=1T4CP2LI109AB&keywords=asus+hero&qid=1580001990&sprefix=asus+hero%2Caps%2C151&sr=8-21

I'm not recommending either of these, every gaming laptop I've looked at has its share of bad reviews. But I think they're good examples of what you can realistically expect to get in the $800-1000 price range. And bear in mind that thermal and cooling design is a major consideration in a gaming laptop - churning out 120FPS for an hour generates a lot of heat.

@Snarknado

Thanks,but I have decided to stick with HP. If I can't get this one updated to 144Hz,I will return it and get one that does.