A Gamer’s Choice: Tablet or Laptop for Gaming on The Go? Which is Ideal

If you are contemplating about buying a portable gaming computer, you might be wondering whether to get a tablet or laptop for gaming. Tablets and laptops alike have evolved over the years and they have their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to gaming.

Should you buy a tablet or laptop for gaming on the go? While there is no straight answer to the question, the ideal choice depends on your gaming needs. Ideally, gaming laptops are best for heavy gamers but casual gamers can find a tablet satisfying.

If all you need is a device for casual gaming while on the go, tablets can offer a good gaming spot. They are easy to use, offer longer battery life, and can be carried with ease. On the other hand, gaming laptops are ideal for people with greater gaming needs and they offer a rich experience. Besides, they have better functionality and can be used for other complex computing tasks.

Laptops vs Tablets for Gaming

Price

High-end gaming laptops can cost more than $2000 considering their advanced hardware capabilities that facilitate seamless gaming. However, you can find the gaming laptops which are under $1500 but still deliver the desired gaming experience.

For about $400 you’ll get a mid-range tablet that can handle casual gaming needs. But for a high-end tablet with enough power for gaming tasks, you’ll need to part with about $700 to over $1000.

Portability

Portability is a major reason why gamers consider tablets and laptops. However, a tablet beats the laptop in this field. Tablets range from seven to eleven inches but there are larger sizes designed for professional users. The 8-inch and 10-inch models are more popular for their ergonomics.

Most lightweight tablets weigh about 300 grams while larger options can be around 700 grams. Laptops vary in weight depending on size. Normally, notebooks can weigh less than 1kg while 15-inch models are about 2 to 4 Kgs.

On the other hand, laptops can be 12-21 inches but most popular models range from 15-17 inches. 

Tablets are obviously lighter and more portable than the most compact laptop models. This makes them a clear winner against laptops and a better choice for gamers looking for higher portability in a device. 

Display

While laptops come with a larger screen, you can experience a superior display quality on the gaming tablets. Since they are smaller in size, the pixels are closer together resulting in a sharper image. For instance, a 1080p clip appears better on a tablet than it does on an average laptop.

However, it is worth noting that display quality is highly dependent on price. At lower price ranges, tablets have a superior display than most laptops in the same range. 

Battery Life

Having a gaming laptop or tablet makes more sense only when you can rely on its battery. While laptops can endure between 2 to 6 hours of active use, tablets can stay on for about 8 hours. This difference is influenced by size in most cases. Nevertheless, high-end laptops can offer comparable battery life enduring up to 12 hours of use.

Tablets use ARM CPUs which are less-complicated compared to CPUs on laptops. Since tablets have no cooling mechanisms, the CPUs are designed to generate less heat and the operating system is quite optimized.

Operating System

Tablets use iOS or Android software while laptops run on Windows and macOS. This means that you can play most games on a laptop but not every game is compatible with tablets.

If you are a casual gamer with no interest in advanced or sophisticated games, gaming tablets can be a great choice. But for hardcore gamers looking for a superior gaming experience, laptops offer a superior experience and gaming capabilities.

Generally, mobile OS on tablets tends to be more limiting in terms of the games you can play. Also, the controls are better when using a laptop as opposed to tablets.

There are also hybrid tablets like the Surface Pro 4 which runs on Windows 10 OS. While this OS is for desktops and laptops, it offers a combination of desktop and tablet experience.

Storage

Laptops win over tablets when it comes to storage. While tablets can have about 8GB of available storage laptops at a lower price range have about 500GB of available storage. Of course, high-end tablets can have up to 128GB of internal storage.

Nevertheless, you can always change the HDD to one with higher capacity or better speeds. While you can extend the storage on a tablet through SD cards, they are slower than SSDs making a gaming laptop the better option.  

If you need to store several games on your device, then a gaming laptop is your best choice.

Hardware

When it comes to gaming, the hardware on your device will determine the gaming experience. Tablets have chips that are designed for efficiency while laptops come in different configurations and there are a lot of hardware options for gamers at all levels.

Most advanced gaming laptops perform at par with desktops. Besides, you can get one with core i9 CPU and NVidia GPU optimized to play any game seamlessly. Most importantly, the hardware comes with ray tracing features.

Due to the variety of hardware choices that a gaming laptop offers, it clearly wins against a tablet.

Functionality and Productivity

While you may be looking for a gaming laptop or tablet, you will be using the device to do other tasks besides gaming. In this case, Netbooknews.com has a wealth of informative buying guides that will help you make an informed decision. 

As far as productivity is concerned, a laptop comes with more flexibility than tablets. There are lots of software available for laptops making them more suitable for a host of tasks. On the other hand, tablets have software limitations and some programs won’t run on the mobile OS.

Conclusion

There are clear differences between a laptop and a tablet and they are designed to offer different experiences. In fact, tablets are a bridge between laptops and mobile phones and they can accomplish some tasks better than laptops or phones.

For casual gaming on the go, a tablet can be a good choice considering portability and better battery life. On the other hand, heavy gamers looking for the main gaming computer settling for a gaming laptop is the best option.