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[hououinkyouma00]

MacBook Pro. If too expensive, MacBook Air.

Just don’t expect to play games on it.

This. But don't bother with the Pro unless you want a 14 inch. The M1/M2 MacBook Air are more then enough for anything but graphic design/video editing and even then they can still do well there. The M1/M2 are crazy. Gaming Laptops are absolutely terrible for everything but gaming. You'll be stuck connected to outlets for even basic tasks, they are loud even in basic tasks, and big and heavy.

If you really don't want a Mac get something like a Surface Laptop. You can't find a better laptop under $1K then a MBA but the Surface Laptop is also under $1K.

Acer makes the Swift X as well which is a thing and light that comes with a RTX 3050. It's only 30w so it's not super powerful but will be able to game way better then dedicated stuff like Ryzen or Iris. M1 can do surprisingly well but it's much harder to find games that work being a Mac.

 

[T-Cake]

How do the M1/M2 Macbook Airs do with less demanding indie titles that are on Steam but may be x86 code only? I'm seriously thinking about getting one - I know gaming will be incredibly hit and miss on them - but I am primarily interested in learning to code iPhone apps with Swift. (It's very early days, I don't even know whether it's possible to get a career with knowledge of Swift only at this stage.)

 

[BreakOut]

So I looked over everything and even though I really wanted a game laptop I think I’m gonna end up going with a MacBook Air. lol. I really appreciate everyone’s input, I know it’s pretty far from what I originally wanted. But after talking with the school and doing a little more research, I think it’s the best bet. Seems fire fox works with all of the school website and her face stuff so I can still dodge Google Chrome. There is an Apple Store not 10 minutes away from my house so if I have any issues, I can just have it taken care of there. For me that’s a big deal.
Thanks again everyone.

 

[daveonezero]

Really any laptop be it windows or Mac will be fine ata gaming. It just depends what type of games you want tin play.

Me personally I’m looking at playing most of my old Steam library and something along the lines of a Steamdeck is about all I’ll ever need ever again. New games are just getting worse.

 

[Beechos]

Check out the new macbooks with the m1 chip they are actually very competent gaming laptops and the design and screen quality is top notch. I think you can get a macbook air m1 2021 model for like 799 now. Way better build quality to similarly priced windows laptops.

 

[hououinkyouma00]

So I looked over everything and even though I really wanted a game laptop I think I’m gonna end up going with a MacBook Air. lol. I really appreciate everyone’s input, I know it’s pretty far from what I originally wanted. But after talking with the school and doing a little more research, I think it’s the best bet. Seems fire fox works with all of the school website and her face stuff so I can still dodge Google Chrome. There is an Apple Store not 10 minutes away from my house so if I have any issues, I can just have it taken care of there. For me that’s a big deal.
Thanks again everyone.

I know it's extra but get the AppleCare +. It's $70 a year or you get 20% off 3 years for school. MacBook repairs can be expensive and with AC+ it covers you for everything but accidental and with accidental it's $99 instead of like $600 for a screen and $299 for liquid versus buying a new one.

 

[buenoblue]

I have a HP envy x360 Ryzen 7 from like 18 months ago and it's super thin and light. And even though it has no discreet GPU im surprised at it's gaming performance. It plays Skyrim high 1080 60fps ish. It has about the same gaming grunt as a xbox one in a chassis like 10mm thick. I believe the new Ryzen chips even have rdna 2 cores and game even better.

 

[anothertech]

Whatever you do, don't get apple