Since I bought the iPhone 4 in 2010, I’ve allowed the walls of Apple’s garden to slowly close in around me. It’s a good place to me, and it’s been the environment that I’ve found new music, learned about the world, grown in my career as a designer, and stayed in touch with friends during the pandemic. The Apple ecosystem works, and it makes my digital life a little bit easier.
What is missing is a place in that ecosystem for gaming. I’ve owned each version of the Xbox since the original, but when the new consoles came out I found myself completely uninterested. I wanted something more powerful, with more game selection, and more flexible (being stuck to a TV has meant my old Xbox almost never gets used). The conundrum is that Apple sells devices that are powerful, portable, and would integrate with the other devices I use from the company. On the immediate horizon are even more powerful and portable computers from Apple. Apple also has Apple Arcade, a service I get as part of my Apple One subscription.
One could say that I should be patient and wait for the next M-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro or Mac Mini, fire up the App Store, and keep those garden walls in tact. What that ignores is a thriving marketplace of games, computers, and technology (think Nvidia GPUs and VR headsets) that have no clear timeline for getting into the garden. And it’s not totally clear if they want to.
So I started going down the logic loop that I’m sure many others are going through at the moment. Should I build a PC? Too complicated, I’ll get a pre-built PC. Eh - not a great value. Might as well get a laptop. Even worse value. I should just build my own. Too complex. My brain went though this a few dozen times and eventually somehow stopped at the laptop step.
Mobility is kind of a new thing for PC gaming. At least for the very high end. On the same week that I bought my laptop, Valve announced the Steam Deck. In a year when people couldn’t leave their homes, the Switch sold amazingly well. People just like to have that flexibility I think.
So, why did the laptop make sense? I work at my desk all day, and when me and my wife are hanging out in the living room we’re typically watching TV (hence Xbox not getting used). So I wanted a way to play games outside my office and also wanted to be able to watch a show or at least be around while my wife is watching a show. So a laptop made sense even around the house. When traveling, or if I want to play games at a friend’s house, it’s also clearly great for those use cases as well. I also wanted a large selection of games, and felt like the Switch couldn’t quite match what’s available on PCs.
So then I started to shop around for different laptops. Honestly, to not choose Razer would have been a stretch for this minimal designer kind of guy. I looked at some Alienware laptops, some Lenovo ones too. There wasn’t much of a comparison really. And portability is important to think about even within the laptop market. If it’s a huge 17” monster, then is it really portable?
My timing seems to have been lucky. Razer recently added a 14” Blade to their lineup that has AMD’s best laptop CPU and some very nice Nvidia GPU options. Paired with a QHD display, it looked quite good on paper. The reviews seemed to indicate that it’s only downside was cost (which is a real downside for something that’s just for fun).
The lack of eGPU support was also pretty disappointing given that it could be possible (I think?) for me to have an eGPU that I could use for my Intel MacBook Pro and a Razer Blade. USB 4 will probably start to come to these laptops next year or the year after, so it will be interesting to see what that means for AMD machines.
So that was my journey to this console-Windows-laptop. An Xbox with a screen and a battery, in my eyes. It also happens to run Chrome and Figma. I might post another update about how this decision is panning out. In the meantime, I’m excited to have a new gadget to play with.