I’m looking to upgrade my laptop so I am able to use Unity whenever I want to as my PC is shared so I cant always get on it.
I have found two laptops in my price range that have similar specs and good reviews. But I have heard a few negatives about each such as the Asus running hot, and the screen on the Acer being a little average.
When I bought my laptop last year, GSync was incompatible with Optimus so if you had a GSync monitor on the laptop, you were running the external graphics card all of the time so battery life sucks. I don’t know if that has changed.
From the information you’ve provided us with the second model is the better choice. You can always upgrade the system memory but the graphics hardware cannot be upgraded. It has an older 6th generation processor but the difference in performance between generations of Intel processors is often just 10% or so.
By the way you will want an SSD for Unity development. It massively improves performance of just about every task.
For playing games, the second, for developing indy titles, I would probably get the first because you generally need to do low poly work or 2d, so you just want a fast cpu with lots of memory. Having a slower video card generally lets you see more of what the average or low end player is seeing. Both would be fine, but you would probably want a larger screen for developing. I’ve used a 17 inch and it’s adequate, but a 24 is more optimum for working with editors. I’ve had a low end Asus desktop for about a year now with no problems.
Useful lifetime of the laptop for game dev is more likely to depend on the GPU than anything else, so that’s what I’d prioritise. Also, as @Ryiah says, the biggest other difference is the RAM, which you can upgrade youself when you eventually need to anyway.\
Edit:
As always, though, performance specs aren’t everything. I’d do my best to find out how comfortable they are to use and take that into consideration as well. If you’re going to be doing a lot of work on it then you want that to be a decent experience, not a drag. Screen, keyboard and touchpad quality are one aspect, things like weight and screen brightness and the size of the power brick are another. Basically, if you’re going to use it portably, check those things out and see if it’s actually going to be good to use that way.
I have a 17" laptop and a Surface Pro 4. I use the Surface on the bus quite regularly. The 17"er is a new acquisition, so I’ve no hard data yet, but I don’t see myself using it on the bus very often…
I’d take the 2nd laptop, but ONLY if the RAM sticks are replaceable so you can get 16GB. I’ve developed in Unity using 8GB up until a few months ago, and once you go 16GB, you never go back. Same goes for HDD vs SSD.
You’d be hard pressed to find a laptop that couldn’t go beyond 8GB at the feature level that one has. It’s very likely the ASUS Rog Strix GL702VM which has an upper limit of 16GB of DDR4-2133 (two slots).
That said I wish people would give us the exact model they’re interested in when asking which is better. That way we wouldn’t have to guess what the actual limitations of the laptop are.
Thanks a lot guys, I have decided to go with the Asus as I am unsure how good the screen is on the Acer + I would like the best GPU possible. @Ryiah I did give you the exact models I was interested in?
