Hi my surface laptop 4 has died, So am looking for a replacement laptop but must have a touch screen, Is there anything that is suitable in the £1500 range. I have had a look but kept getting confused.
Microsoft store AI bot came back with this
For running Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, you’ll need a laptop with sufficient processing power and graphics capability. A great budget-friendly option is the Surface Laptop, Copilot+ PC, 13-inch, which starts at £599.00. It features a Snapdragon® X Plus (8 Core) processor, 16GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD, which should provide a smooth experience for most gaming and productivity tasks.
Why dont I think this will be suitable
Whatever you do, if FS is an important thing for you, get a laptop that is designed to game on. Almost all others will throttle very fast due to overheating. You need serious cooling.
That said, SU4 is very kind on computer resources.
Mathijs
I’d be wary of this processor. I know someone who recently went down that path and found that many of their essential apps weren’t supported by it. I don’t know anything about it’s gaming capabilities, but you also didn’t mention anything about the GPU in that Surface Laptop? Is it an integrated Intel GPU of some kind?
The last time I had a laptop for MSFS was for the launch of 2020, it was a $3000 gaming laptop and struggled above MED settings. Laptop hardware can run MSFS but its very hard on the components as MSFS is a demanding sim to run if you want to run it well.
With that I wouldn’t trust the AI that much, as TheFalconOne said, get one that is geared towards gaming, they often have far better cooling(I remember my laptop fans screaming for most of my simming) they often come with dedicated GPU’s albeit the laptop versions which are usually purposely underpowered for thermal management. I would go with 32GB of RAM minimum even with RAM prices today being crazy and a 1TB drive as well
my belief is its intergrayed GPU which is why I was suspect
Something like this?
Alienware 16X Aurora Gaming Laptop - NVIDIA Laptop | Dell UK Alienware 16X Aurora Gaming Laptop - NVIDIA Laptop | Dell UK
While it looks good I cant see a spec saying its touxh screen
There are generally configuration possibilities with Alienware machines, worth running the options.
I’m going to assume since you linked a laptop that’s what you’re looking for. Have you considered a desktop PC? ~$2000 will buy you a PC that can run MSFS very very well, while a ~$2000 laptop can still struggle. the 16X above comes with a laptop 5060 that’s 8GB VRAM which is the lower end recommended for 2024
That Alienware 16X is NOT a touchscreen, do you specifically need a touchscreen?
Definitely a touch screen though a bit more expensive.
https://amzn.eu/d/hhagLou
yep touch screen required
That’ll limit your options as gamers don’t really care for touchscreens and they cost more.
That looks pretty good, the only thing would be 8GB is near the bottom side of the recommended VRAM, 12GB would be better and 16GB and above are where you get the best graphics and performance
I don’t know much about the Yogas, but I had a Legion 5 laptop during most of my life with MSFS 2020 with only a 1050 GPU that did all right, in low to medium settings (capped at 30FPS). Today my Lenovo desktop with a 3070 and only 8GB of VRAM kind of struggles with MSFS 2024 (capped at 40FPS).
I’d recommend a 50 series GPU with at least 12GB VRAM if you want to have much quality future time with it in MSFS2024.
Neither of mine supported touchscreen, though. So that Lenovo Yoga might be your best shot. Sacrifice the VRAM for touchscreen. There are several very effective ways to control the VRAM demands of MSFS 2024, at least today.
Lenovo Yoga seems to be a good value that matches your requirements.
The last laptop I bought maybe 7 years ago (partly to play DCS) advertised that it had an integrated GTX 1060. Turns out it wasn’t a discreet nVidia chip, but a ‘helper’ chip that only kicked in when the Intel GPU needed it.
It worked, but I felt misled. In reality, it worked OK though, and it was my fault for not researching completely so that I understood before I bought it.
Came accross this ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 (16", Intel) | Our most advanced mobile workstation | 21KV0025UK | Lenovo UK
Processor
Intel® Core™ Ultra 7 165H vPro® Processor (E-cores up to 3.80 GHz P-cores up to 5.00 GHz)
Operating System
Windows 11 Pro 64
Graphic Card
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 4060 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6
Memory
32 GB LPDDR5X-7500MT/s (CAMM2)
Storage
1 TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Performance TLC Opal
Display
16" WQUXGA (3840 x 2400), OLED, Anti-Reflection/Anti-Smudge, Dolby Vision™, Touch, 100%DCI-P3, 400 nits, 60Hz, Low Blue Light
The Yoga might give you a slight edge for gaming - slight, because of its newer GPU, but overall the ThinkPad offers the better value. They are built like tanks, have been around for a long time and that OLED on it is actually higher res than the Yoga.
But there are plenty of options out there at the moment. You might want to take a look at this article from PC Gamer:
I’m not just tapping the sign, I’m banging it with a sledgehammer: The RTX 5070 Ti MSI Vector 16 HX is still just $1,299 this Black Friday | PC Gamer
As you can see from the responses in this thread laptops and serious simming don’t go very well together. Have you considered a desktop computer with a gaming monitor and a second touchscreen monitor? You could even use the touchscreen monitor with the sim as a second monitor. I’m just not sure of your portability requirements that would possibly negate the desktop altogether.