Looking for a light laptop with good battery life and a graphics card

[IAteYourMother]

I'm looking for a laptop that's light, portable, with good battery life. The X220 seems perfect for me, but Intel integrated graphics just don't impress me, as I'd like to be able to play games on it from time to time like Diablo III. It doesn't have to me max settings or even high settings, but I like that graphics power. Is it possible to get all that in the X220 or other laptops AND some sort of graphics card?

Light
Good Screen/resolution
Good Battery
Graphics

 

[beginner99]

Could you elaborate a bit on "light"? For me anything light is below 2 kg and it's just obvious it's not possible to get light + good battery life + good gaming performance.
You have to sacrifice at least one of those 3. And while gaming battery life will be poor anyway.

Intel graphics isn't that bad but I don't know much about diabolo III.

 

[Chinoman]

You should really check out the Asus U36SD.
It's packing everything you've listed there

Light: 3.74 lbs (with battery)
Good screen: 13.3" is pretty much the optimal size for 1366x768
Good battery: 8 cell 56mAh
Graphics: Nvidia GT520m

Plus it's got the same i5-2410M which is in most full-size laptops.

This place is already taking pre-orders: http://www.gentechpc.com/showpages.asp?pid=1072

 

[mnewsham]

The HD3000 IGP with sandy bridge is about the same power as the GT520M so im not really sure why that is there (it will only be better because of Nvidia drivers not GPU power).

 

[IAteYourMother]

Could you elaborate a bit on "light"? For me anything light is below 2 kg and it's just obvious it's not possible to get light + good battery life + good gaming performance.
You have to sacrifice at least one of those 3. And while gaming battery life will be poor anyway.

Intel graphics isn't that bad but I don't know much about diabolo III.

Yeah, Well around 4 lbs I would consider acceptable. I don't need an ultra light laptop, but the smaller the better. Obviously, I can do with somethign a little heavier than the X series.

I know that while gaming battery life will be poor, but I'd like the flexibility of effective gaming or movie watching when I'm plugged in. The U36SD does look pretty awesomely good

 

[TheStu]

Yeah, Well around 4 lbs I would consider acceptable. I don't need an ultra light laptop, but the smaller the better. Obviously, I can do with somethign a little heavier than the X series.

I know that while gaming battery life will be poor, but I'd like the flexibility of effective gaming or movie watching when I'm plugged in. The U36SD does look pretty awesomely good

You don't need a strong GPU to watch a movie. Heck, the GMA950 in my old Core Duo laptop could playback 720p MKVs all day without breaking a sweat. BluRay playback doesn't require that much more power either, and the HD3000 that the latest Sandy Bridge CPUs use is more than capable of handling that.

Gaming requires it, some applications benefit from it, but video playback doesn't really need a whole lot of power behind it.

 

[mnewsham]

To be honest the HD 3000 is perfectly fine for some WoW at 1366x768 even. As long as you arent trying to play BF3 or anything then you shouldn't be too bad. The basic GPU's you are looking at in those laptops arent powerful enough to play games much better then the HD 3000 anyway.

 

[hans030390]

It's about as thick as a regular laptop, but I love my Alienware M11x. Compact size, decent enough screen, great battery life, switchable graphics, less than 5lbs I believe, etc. No optical drive, though.

 

[apac]

The X220 would support a DIY external GPU solution via expresscard. There is a huge thread on notebookreview forums that talks about how to do it.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/418851-diy-egpu-experiences.html

I believe that is the only way you'll get good graphics performance out of an ultraportable laptop.

 

[Chinoman]

The HD3000 IGP with sandy bridge is about the same power as the GT520M so im not really sure why that is there (it will only be better because of Nvidia drivers not GPU power).

The 520m is on average 40-50% faster than the HD 3000.

 

[mnewsham]

The 520m is on average 40-50% faster than the HD 3000.

In games where it cant get playable framerates the GT 520m cant either really.