Honestly, In my opinion, buying a gaming laptop in under $800 is not a smart thing to do! Instead, I'd say, don't buy one yet, especially right now, as you do not have enough money to buy a good gaming laptop that you will love, and not criticize for the months you will be using it.
But still, If I can't change your decision, and you really, REALLY want one, in under $800 budget, I have found one for you.
Although, as you perhaps already know, that you will have to make some compromises, if you want a budget gaming laptop that has latest specs.
Keep reading, and you'll find out what are those compromises that you'll have to make, buying this laptop. Although, I don't believe these should change your decision of buying this laptop, let me clear that before you read further.
One last thing...
I couldn't find any other laptop with 8th Gen i7 CPU, which is the main part of any computer or laptop and decides its lifespan.
Dell Inspiron 17 5770
The laptop we'll be talking about today, is the Dell Inspiron 17 5770. We'll see what are its main Pros and Cons, and afterwards, you can decide if you want to invest in buying this laptop or not.
So, here we go...
Pros:
I'll be mentioning this that I like about Dell Inspiron 17 5770 in this section. Let's move on to the first thing I like about it.
1- Great Processor
It has the Latest 8th Generation Core i7 8550U Processor. It is FAST, POWERFUL and EFFICIENT at the same time. It has 4 Cores and 8 Threads. It has base frequency of 1.80GHz, and turbos upto 4.0GHz. It has 8MB of Cache. Seeing the specs of this CPU, I think it will help quite a bit in keeping your laptop's temperatures under control, most of the times, when it is not running at full speed of 4.0GHz. It will run all the games, no sweat!
Also, you can use this laptop with its 8th Gen latest processor for editing videos, if you plan to do some of that on it. Won't recommend solely getting it for Video Editing or 3D animation, though.
Helios 500 would be a better machine for editing videos or doing 3D work, solely. Whereas you are here looking for a laptop under $800, so I am not sure if you'll have any plans to buy a $2000 laptop like this one.
2- Plenty of Fast RAM
The Dell Inspiron 17 5770 has 16GB of FAST DDR4 2400MHz RAM. It is plenty for playing all the games, won't be a limiting factor in any game I know of.
3- Plenty of Storage
This is another one of its Pros, that it has a 2TB of HDD Storage. You won't ever have issues of running out of space, to store all those Large Size games. Although, the Storage is also one of its Cons.
4- A Big Display
It has a BIG 17.3 Inches of Full HD 1080p Display. It has a Pixel Density of 127 PPI. Unfortunately, you can't upgrade it either, to 4K or something. You shouldn't either. Because it will raise the overall price of the laptop, and we're talking about a gaming laptop under $800 here.
5- Is Under $800
Of course, one of the biggest Pros of this Dell Inspiron 17 5770 is that it is in our budget, under 800 bucks. In fact, its $800 price is the reason we're here even talking about this laptop.
6- Positive Reviews
I've looked at the reviews of this laptop, and found that most of the reviews are positive, 4-5 stars. And of course, why won't there be positive reviews, this is the best laptop they could get in this budget, and they're happy about their purchase decision.
Cons:
Let's now move on to discussing some of the Cons that I have found in this gaming laptop. I do not think these are that important, but still, we have to talk about them, right? Let us then...
1- It's Heavy
It's kind of heavy, I think. (for my taste at least)
Its weight is 6.15 lbs. The laptop I have right now, Helios 300, I thought THAT was heavy for me. Helios 300's weight is 5.95 lbs. (Pounds)
Well, if you don't travel much, and want it for mostly gaming at home, I'd say keep it on a table and don't move it too much, if you do not want sore arms from carrying it everywhere.
2- HDD Storage
You must be thinking, wait a minute, did you not mention it in the Pros of this laptop?
Yes, yes I did. 🙂 You're right.
But, the thing is, it where it has good storage capacity, on the other hand, it has a Hard Drive based storage drive. It is a 5400 RPM hard drive. I think they at least should've added a 7200 RPM drive in there, if they did not want to put an SSD instead.
But still, compromises like these are expected, when you are on a budget. So I don't think this is too bad, because you're getting a 2TB of storage capacity. At least they did not put a 1TB HDD in there, that would've been a deal beaker for me right there, to be honest, if they'd done that.
3- Its a Refurbished Laptop
Now you don't need to panic here. Because usually, people think that a Refurbished laptop should always be avoided. But it is a good way to save some bucks, and get the most specs in the lowest possible cost.
Also, this is not a regular Refurbished laptop. The Dell Inspiron 17 5770 is a Certified Refurbished gaming laptop.
Certified refurbishment is the distribution of products, usually electronics and electricals, that have been previously returned to a manufacturer or vendor for various reasons like not sold in the market or new launch of a product. They are repaired by the original manufacturer and resold. - Wikipedia
I don't think you should be worried about it being a Certified Refurbished laptop, honestly. Because this isn't something to be worried about in the first place, as mentioned in the above Wikipedia explanation of What Certified Refurbished Means.
4- AMD GPU
After the point of it not having an SSD, this was the second point that got my attention and got me thinking a little bit.
Because, an AMD GPU usually under performs, when compared to a similar spec'd Graphics Card from NVIDIA. If they'd gone with NVIDIA GTX 1050 instead, even a 2GB version would probably have been a better choice, I think.
But, to save some cost, they opted for AMD Radeon 530 instead. Probably because it had 4GB of VRAM, instead of 2 that you would have gotten with the GTX 1050. I guess they wanted to save some cost, and also at the same time, offer more where possible.
Conclusion
Overall, I think this is a good gaming laptop under $800. Affordable, and still offers the most value it can at the price. I am not sure if this is going to be Out of Stock soon or not, but if it is still available whenever you check it out, I'd say get it for sure. We do make compromises every time we're on a tight budget, but the ones I have mentioned in here, I believe are the ones that can be ignored, if possible.
▶▶ Dell Inspiron 17 5770: https://amzn.to/2OAR9Tt (affiliate link)
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