Can You Game on a $400 Laptop? #Helpful Post

Hey guys, this is Austin.

I do videos on a lot of very expensive gaming hardware

but today I wanna find out, can I game on this $400 laptop?

This is the Lenovo Z50, and it's currently less than $370

on Amazon right now.

Based on the giant Gears of War 4 picture they have

on the product page, I think it's pretty safe to assume

that they're aiming this at gamers.

Typically with budget laptops, you're getting integrated

Intel graphics which are fine for basic use

but really can't handle serious gaming.

However, here we actually have an AMD FX APU

which in theory should work a little bit better.

Also that was a very meaty seal.

Think I actually cut through the box.

Yep, cut through the box.

(laughs)

So inside, first of all we get the laptop itself

and the first thing I notice is that the battery actually

doesn't come installed, it has been a long time since

I've seen a laptop with a detachable battery like this.

This is a 2800mAh battery.

For reference, I feel like a lot of smartphones

have bigger batteries than that.

We also have the power cable and what I'm sure

is the power adaptor.

So nothing too exciting in the box but of course,

this is a budget laptop.

What we're really getting here is actual performance.

At least, hopefully that's what we're getting.

This battery is taking me back, it's been a long time

since I've actually used a laptop like this.

So at first glance, it looks very plastic-y

but once you open it up, you do see that it looks

pretty decent inside, mostly thanks to

the sort of fake brush metal here.

This is a very interesting selection of ports.

So not only is there VGA, which is really weird

on a laptop in 2017, we also have Ethernet, HDMI,

a USB 2.0 as well as 3.0, but the really weird part

is when you actually come around to the DVD drive.

Yes, this laptop in 2017 comes with a DVD drive standard,

which actually is not really a bad thing, just weird.

A big downside is that this does lack AC WiFi,

instead opting for the older school Wireless N.

Now to be fair, you do have an Ethernet port

so it's not all bad but there are a lot of very unusual

design choices with this laptop.

What makes this special are the specs.

Inside, it has a quad core AMD FX 7500 APU

with Radeon R7 graphics, as well as eight gigabytes of RAM.

This should give us a fair bit of power to game.

No, it's not going to shame a laptop with dedicated graphics

but the Radeon stuff really isn't bad and this costs less

than $400, you really can't be picky at this price.

However, there are some sacrifices to get that much power

at this sort of price.

The biggest one is the screen.

This guy is rocking a 15.6-inch panel

with a resolution of 1366 by 768.

It is not very good.

As a low-end TN panel, this really does bring me back

to the days where budget laptop screens

were kind of terrible.

One of the biggest places that you can see it

are with the viewing angles, so if you look at it

straight on, it's not that bad, but if you get off axis,

it ghosts really badly.

Plus, having such a low resolution on such a big screen

just makes everything a little bit weird,

there's very little screen real estate.

Now I have to delicately balance the laptop

so it doesn't completely wash out on camera.

Hey guys, this is Austin.

This is a $330 laptop and I'm going to be using it

for the next week.

The speakers are okay but this is not

going to be a great video-watching experience.

Thankfully, the keyboard isn't bad

so it has the sort of classic Lenovo layout

and it feels pretty good to type on.

Only problem is there's a fair bit of flex

on the actual keyboard itself, but it's totally usable.

And the same thing goes for the trackpad.

It's maybe not the most accurate thing in the world.

However, you are probably gonna want a mouse for gaming.

Although that's true for every track pad ever, so.

Remove three screws on the back and it's actually

easy enough to open the laptop up.

And one of the nice things about being a little bit more

of an old school design is that there's a lot

that you can actually upgrade yourself.

Not only can you get access to both of the memory slots,

but there's also a one-terabyte hard drive pre-installed

that looks super easy to swap out.

If this was my PC, I'd spend a few extra bucks

and throw an SSD in here, it will make a big difference.

The real test for this laptop, though,

is to play actual games, so to start with, we have CS:GO.

So right now, we're playing at 768p

which is the max resolution of the screen

and we're playing with a mixture of medium and high settings

and we're getting decent frame rates.

It bottoms out in the mid 30s

but in some of these more open areas,

we're getting in like the 40s and 50s.

Next we have Rocket League.

This is another game that isn't incredibly demanding

but here on quality settings, which is roughly equivalent

to medium, it's pretty smooth,

we're getting in the mid 40s to low 50s.

Next we have Minecraft.

Now yes, this will run on pretty much anything

including a Raspberry Pi, but on the Lenovo,

we're able to crank the settings up pretty much all the way

to the max and we're still getting really solid frame rates,

even flying around here as it loads chunks,

we're still on the 60 to 70 frame per second range.

Next we have Overwatch.

This is a little bit harder for the laptop to handle

so even on low settings here, it's a little bit choppy

so in less action-oriented scenes, it's fine,

but once we get a lot of characters

and a lot of effects on screen, we do sometimes dip

a little bit below 30.

It's kind of playable but you've gotta really

wanna play Overwatch.

The Lenovo Z50 is definitely not a perfect gaming laptop

but for less than $400, it's actually not bad.

As always, I will have a link to check this guy out

in the description and let me know,

would you pick up a $370 gaming laptop?

Let me know in the comments below

and I will catch you in the next one.