The MacBook Pro Exposes Flaws in Windows Gaming Laptops

I’ve owned several gaming laptops at this point, and honestly they are my preferred way to play PC games thanks to the versatility and mobility they offer, but there’s no arguing that choosing to be a laptop gamer comes with compromises—or at least, so I thought.

With more games getting native Mac versions, I’ve found that many of the compromises I thought were necessary to game in a laptop form-factor aren’t ones I actually have to live with.

I’ve Been Into Gaming Laptops for a Decade

The last time I owned a desktop gaming PC was in 2015, and even then I’d changed to a portable ITX build (my second one) since I often had to move my PC around. Not long after that, the rolling blackouts in my country became so bad, that my desktop computer couldn’t even be turned on for 12 hours out of the day.

This is when I made the switch to a gaming laptop. I’d always avoided this move, because, frankly, gaming laptops were too expensive and had weak performance. However, at some point, this changed with much more efficient components and lower prices. The six-core Intel processor and mobile GTX 1660 Ti in that first laptop outperformed my quad-core Haswell desktop with its AMD R9 390 GPU, and only cost around $1,000 in today’s money. I did my first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 on that Gigabyte laptop.

Since then, I’ve only had gaming laptops and haven’t really felt the need to build and use a gaming desktop again.

There Are Sacrifices, but It’s Worth the Benefits

Sure, dollar-for-dollar a gaming laptop will give you worse outright performance than a desktop, but that’s not the same thing as offering poor performance. Every gaming laptop I’ve owned has been able to run contemporary games at over 60fps at 1080p using the highest or close to the highest settings. Plugged into a 1440p screen at a desk with medium-to-high settings works just as well even before factoring in performance-boosting tech like DLSS.

In other words, for me, the performance and quality is good enough. It’s usually as good or slightly better than current-generation consoles at the more budget end of the gaming laptop spectrum, and if money is no object, you can in fact get high-end desktop performance from a gaming laptop, but the economics really don’t make sense as you climb the tiers.

But no matter which Windows gaming laptop you buy, there are real sacrifices beyond a lower performance cap. For me, the worst is the noise. All of my gaming laptops have been real screamers when it comes playing games. Which means noise-canceling headphones are a requirement. That’s great for me, but not for anyone else in the same room.

The other issue is you’re only going to be gaming while plugged in. Once unplugged, the performance plummets, and even then you’re lucky to get 45 minutes of runtime from the largest battery allowed on an airplane.

You’re also not going to be running these gaming laptops off a USB-C charger (though 240W USB-C has recently become a thing) which means schlepping a big power brick everywhere you go.

My MacBook Has Shown What’s Possible for Laptop Gaming

While I was already seeing big things from a gaming perspective with my old M1 MacBook Air, getting the new M4 Pro MacBook Pro has really opened my eyes to what I’ve been missing when it comes to gaming in the laptop space.

There are two games I play quite a lot that have macOS native versions: Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. My M4 MacBook has 24GB of unified RAM, and a GPU that on paper should only provide about two-thirds of the performance my RTX 4060 laptop does. In practice, both of these games run, subjectively, pretty much the same on my MacBook and Windows laptop. Even if the frame rates might be a little lower on the Mac, the visual settings and resolutions are comparable and both are comfortably over 60fps.

OK, but so what? Well, my MacBook does the job quietly. Even after several hours of Cyberpunk 2077, there is no audible fan noise. If you hold your ear up to the laptop there’s a quiet “whoosh”, and the chassis is barely warm to the touch. That makes sense since my Windows laptop can draw almost 300W of power under load, while my MacBook stays well under 100W even in the worst case. So there’s simply less heat to deal with and therefore less noise.

Even more impressive, if you unplug the Mac, the performance does not change. I could realistically play Cyberpunk at my typical settings for about an hour on battery, and perhaps twice that if I could stomach a 30fps cap. OK, so what? Who plays like that? Well, consider that the laptop charges via USB-C, and using the 65W power bank I bought for my handheld PC, I can more than double my full-performance runtime while on the go.

In more practical terms, when I’m done with work for the day, it’s much easier to simply grab my MacBook and go play an hour or two of co-op Baldur’s Gate 3 with my wife on her PlayStation 5 than lugging my Windows gaming laptop with its brick downstairs. In other words, if a game has both a Mac and Windows version, I’m playing it on my MacBook now.

It’s Hard to Accept the Downsides of Windows Gaming Laptops Now

Look, I know that I’m comparing Apples and oranges here up to a point—but having experienced laptop gaming on a MacBook that seemingly compromises on nothing and is far more convenient than even my old “stealth” ultra slim Windows gaming laptop, it’s very hard to enjoy playing my Windows-only games on my gaming laptop.

Now that I know it’s possible to build a quiet, small, and powerful gaming laptop (with a jaw-dropping screen, but that’s another conversation), Windows gaming laptops feel, well, obsolete. Old-fashioned. I might even say crude.

The good news is that advances in x86 chip technology have given us pretty amazing APUs from companies like AMD. These chips power Windows gaming handhelds and tablets, sip power, and could in theory be the foundation of an experience similar to what my Mac can provide. Until then, I’ll be gaming on my MacBook whenever possible.