I've owned two gaming laptops and never had issues like this.

First one was a Clevo (rebranded as Medion) with a GTX 970m that I bought in 2017. An absolute beast, I lugged it in a backpack around the world for 4 years, including to places you really shouldn't bring a laptop like beaches and rainforests. I passed it my girlfriend's nephew and it is still going strong and being used every day. I repasted once in that time.

My current laptop is an MSI GE66 with an RTX 3070m bought in 2022. It's loud, I've repasted recently because it started overheating. It had some problems with the screen connector which they fixed under warranty fairly quickly. But aside from that it's solid.

One thing about both of these laptops - they are very easy to open and it looks like I could repair/replace pretty much every removable component easily. No glue.

The only thing I consider a real problem is the MSI fan noise. Well, that and the power brick which is the size of a literal brick.

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nodja 6 days ago | parent [-]

Glad to see that there are laptops that don't suffer like this. But I think the combo of having a steam deck + business laptop beats buying a gaming laptop. Assuming you already own a gaming rig at home.

	▲	theandrewbailey 6 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		20 years ago, I had a midrange laptop with a dGPU and while it played games with mediocre results, the laptop experience itself was also mediocre. Stupidly, 10 years ago, I bought a laptop with a dGPU again, but because NVidia didn't play nice with Linux back then, I don't think I've used that GPU for more than an hour or so. Never again. A laptop with a dGPU runs counter to the things a laptop should be. Keeping gaming activities on a desktop is the best option in my experience. A few months ago, I started working at an e-waste recycling company, and discovered that used Microsoft Surface tablets are what I've been looking for. My work "laptop" is a Surface Pro 5 with Debian (my work desktop is an Optiplex micro). I'm typing this on a Surface Go (with BlissOS) that I bought for myself. The cameras don't work on either and the work Surface never knows it's battery status, but I don't care (it lasts an entire afternoon with a barcode scanner, good enough for me).
	▲	CoolGuySteve 6 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Almost any Ryzen laptop these days will have faster integrated graphics than a SteamDeck just due to the age of the chip set Valve still uses. I've had 2 now from different manufacturers and the firmware seems alright due to the integrated nature of the API making them all fairly homogenous.
	▲	esperent 6 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Well, I do play games on my laptops. But that's just a nice perk, what I bought them for is 3d content creation. Also, comparing a steamdeck to a modern gaming laptop is like comparing a $1 water pistol to a super soaker.
	▲	mey 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That is my current approach as well. A steamdeck/switch/none + FW13 while traveling.