Looking for a new laptop? What’s best?
Thinking Apple Mac with an M1 chip
Does anyone have any concerns or recommendations with these
Dont bother with a mac, Zwift will try to rape it for every inch of power its got.
My Samsung S20 run zwift better than my mac
You can build yourself a gaming PC for a lot less than a new laptop and get far better performance on Zwift with Ultra graphics and high frame rates if you put in a decent video card. This assumes you only want to run Zwift on the machine and do nothing else with it.
Zwiftalizer.com is a great tool when considering a new machine. On there you can go into the Benchmarks tab and look at the aggregated performance Zwiftalizer is seeing for darn near every processor and GPU combination, all arranged by performance level so you can select a performance level and see what process/GPU it takes to get there. You can also search on a given processor so if there is a computer/laptop you are considering with given specs, you can see how it performs based on other’s performance that Zwiftalizer has seen. Similarly if you want to build a PC here’s all the data you need to decide on GPU. The point being, you can know what the Zwift performance will be before selecting a machine.
Here’s a list of recommendations from Zwiftalizer.com if you just want to go with what they are recommending to start with:
1440 and 4K Ultra capable GPUs
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
Nvidia Geforce GTX 2060
Nvidia Geforce GTX 2070
Nvidia Geforce GTX 2080
AMD Radeon RX 580
AMD Radeon RX Vega 64
1440 capable laptops
Alienware 4K Gaming Laptop GTX 1660
Alienware 4K Gaming Laptop RTX 2060
MSI Gaming Laptop GeForce GTX 1660
MSI Gaming Laptop GeForce RTX 2060
Acer Gaming Laptop GeForce GTX 1660
Acer Gaming Laptop GeForce RTX 2060
Asus Gaming Laptop GeForce GTX 1660
Asus Gaming Laptop GeForce RTX 2060
Short answer: unless you absolutely must have portability, don’t bother. Total waste of money.
Buy/build something for running Zwift at your expectations. If you happen to want or need a laptop as well, buy a normal one. You’ll get better results on both and probably save money anyway.
Not a laptop, but an Apple TV runs Zwift quite nicely and doesn’t cost nearly as much.
You cannot compare the graphics of ATV with a PC with (for example) GTX 1650, it is another world.
Hi
I’m an Apple “fanboy” and prefer not have any or a very limited amount of Micro$oft products in my home, but…
If you’re going desktop/laptop for maximum graphics ( otherwise you will just go for an Apple TV ), even the most low price laptop with a GTX1050Ti or better will make any Apple laptop look stupid… and that’s for way less money.
The only Windows PC here is the one I’m running Zwift on, and it’s not being used for anything else - that pretty much says it all
BooX