I have had a history of poor performing laptops that fall apart after a year, which has made me prefer desktops. Now that im starting college, I will need a portable computer, and I am also hopeful that today's technology can offer me a laptop I will be able to use for longer than a year.
With a good weekly income, I can now look at purchasing a windows laptop in the price range of around £800 ($1350).
I've been to my local trusted PC store, found the best they can offer and searched for reviews online. Unfortunately, all reviews told me that each of those computers gave less than average performance.
While I will be using this for college work, I will certainly also be using it to run a game or two. Due to this, I'm looking for something that will run smoothly and quickly when under pressure. Lags annoy the crap out of me, so I'm not about to spend my money on a laptop that's going to make my blood boil.
As far as specs go, I'm looking for something with no less than 1TB hard drive space, a screen no smaller than 15.6" (the bigger the better. For ram and processors, ideally I would be looking at 8gb and a quad core, but as long as this laptop performs very well, I don't mind what these specs are. Currently, I'm looking at two ASUS laptops, but the reviews are disappointing, since they say the performance is only "average" or "good".
So, to all my dollars friends, do you know of any laptop that would be perfect for such a use?
All responses are hugely appreciated, thanks for reading!

What kind of games are you playing?
Most laptops with 4gb ram, and an average Graphics card with an average processor can play games like League of Legends, but wont play it on high, medium is playable, but with fps drops and constant fps of 30-50.

But your budget is pretty high, so I would go with an MSI laptop, since I dont know where you are from, and youre definitly not from my country I cant suggest any sites, but MSI, is a very good computer which you can definitly get for your budget.

What're you even planning on downloading that you feel you need such a big harddrive? If you're saying its going to be mainly for college work, you probably wont even need 750gb, let alone 1k

For chips I suggest intel, and depending on the types of games you want to play a newer gen chip could be better. The main difference in the newer gen is they have an integrated gpu. I chose an hp pavilion for a laptop but upgraded to a desktop. Pavilions are good but the main problem people have with them is it overheats quite easily so I ended up getting a fan for it as well. The laptop I got has two 500 gb hard drives an older gen i5 and a separate graphics card. I think it ran about $1500ish at the time which was 4 years ago. It can play games but the graphics don't compare to that of my desktop, which I spent twice as much on.

One of the main complaints that I kept hearing about asus laptops was the battery life. I'm not sure if they still have that problem though. But an i7 chip takes up a lot more battery as well if you wanted a hyper threaded 8 core. An i5 will be a hyper threaded 4 core and need less power.

Personally I would go with an hp pavilion again. But also you can get a laptop directly from some of the manufactures website and you will have more options of what comes with the laptop. Some models you will be able to upgrade the chip, graphics, ram, hard drive, etc... Just food for thought if you were just looking at laptops sold at local shops.

>>2 Mostly MMORPGs, RPGs, maybe some emulators.
>>3 Regardless of what I need to be saving on the device, a 1TB hard drive is something I'm very interested in having.
>>4 A family member recently purchased an HP Pavilion, making me search for some reviews. Most of which, unfortunately, describe the computer's performance as poor. Performance is key in my search for a laptop.

Thanks for the replies, I will certainly take a look at MSI's, Kirbo. I had an MSI netbook a while ago, it wasn't great.
All and any replies welcome!

Just a tip, if you want to have a better laptop than normal, try to just build one yourself. Try to have the same processor as your videocard, this way these two work better then if they were apart. (Like amd graphics card, amd processor)

I'd say go with a 8 core for a laptop if you want the best performance. The chip is the main deciding factor in that. Ram also impacts the performance due to the amount some programs use, and how many you plan on using at once. If you plan on using a lot of graphic programs, or games, then get a better graphics card. The brand won't affect much else except the durability, heat displacement, aesthetics, etc. At least in a laptop.

Just looked around at the manufacturing sites and I'm disappointed that they got rid of a bunch of the customizing. When I purchased mine I had the options of 5 different intel chips, 3 graphics cards, multiple amounts of ram, and hdd capacity.

Alienware is one laptop that has good performance, but they are always overpriced.

You will probably have to spend over $1500 if you want a laptop that plays modern games at highest settings with no lag.

If you turn the quality down, you can get away with a lot more. My brother's computer has integrated HD 4000 graphics, and it plays LoL at medium-low settings at 60fps. On highest, it plays it at about 20-30fps.

You only 'need' 4GB of RAM for gaming. You can get away with it, 8GB is preferred, but if you have a budget that is always something to consider. More RAM =/= proportionally better performance in almost all cases, unless you are playing games while doing other RAM-intensive tasks. The highest RAM usage I have ever seen in any game I've played is 3.7GB, so if you were doing other stuff at the same time, that would cause issues with only 4GB. If not, there would be no problem. It depends what you are doing.

As for the processor, quad core at most will net you better performance. There are no games that use 8 cores, the highest I've seen is 6 at one time. I should know, I have an 8-core processor and I keep track of it during gaming. The first 4 cores are the only ones I ever get use out of.

ASUS is a good brand with very high quality products. However, I would instead recommend to compare performance not solely on reviews, but on GPU benchmarks like this one.

>>3 The savings are minimal. You can get a 1TB vs. 750GB for less than 10 dollars more in some cases.