Wife switching from Mac to Windows, video editor & graphic designer

Razer blade 15 is the best "Macbook" replacement type laptop on the market, but its relatively pricy for what it is. I personally would advocate for the GS65 like you have, despite is obvious gamery looks. I do like the tongfang models but only walmart sells them for a good price as far as I know and stock goes quick. As well, GentechPC seems to having a sale on LM'ing laptops, so I would turn over there instead of HiDev, HiDev charges a little more than is stomachable for anything that isnt a top of the line machine in my opinion, but its obviously not without good service and forum reps, same for Gentech.
However, if she needs just raw power in a mobile form factor and doesnt care about the laptops build quality or reliablity, I'd go for the Clevo models such as the P751TM1. The offer arguably one of the best performing laptops on the market given its advantage in having a fully TDP unlocked CPU, as well as the "potential" to upgrade, although I've never seen Clevo officially support a laptop longer than two generations since 2014, so I wouldn't really take the LGA/MXM into consideration. Of course, there are always modders.

 

Hey thanks for your response!
That's an interesting option as I've been hearing more and more good things about Acer recently, though I've never had good experiences with them, and I've had a couple of the lower-end models. However, I can't find your recommendation in a 17" screen and that's one of the more appealing features to me. But I do like the look of it, and the reviews, so I will certainly keep my eye on it.

I had no idea that it was such a slight difference. When I look at its pictures in comparison to the sager np8972/8977, it looks so much thicker and bulkier. I'd like to see these in person, do you guys know of any retail type store that would have these models available to look at?

 

Thanks for the reply!

That does seem like a pretty fun beast of a machine, however, it seems a bit out of our available price range right now, and it's a bit on the large side as well. Our biggest thing is ultra-portability, it'll rarely be in the same place for more than a day at a time. Plus we have our desktop at home which gets the job done perfectly.

Good points, I have been looking at gentechpc, I just didn't know until recently that they have a payment plan option through PayPal, also I did like the extra warrantee options on HIDev

They are a bit pricy aren't they, also I've known a few guys at uni who have had a multitude of problems with their machines and have been given the run-around by razer's support

 

Yeah they have VRM and pretty heavy thermal issues afaik, also only one M.2 slot. I really want to recommend the GS65 as you have personal experience and can attest to it, but its very "gamery". I'd also consider the Thinkpad X1E or the the XPS 9570 (whichever is the current model)

 

I really would like to stick with the gs65/gs75s and personally, besides the RGB keyboard, I believe they're one of the most toned down gaming laptops, that was one of the reasons I went with this laptop vs other options. But they're super expensive and don't have as extensive of warrantees. I'm probably going to try to get in contact with @Donald@HIDevolution (within the next few days, I'm at the beach right now so I don't have a ton of time for phone calls and such), they sell the gs75 as well, and see which one he thinks the better option would be. My biggest reservation with them is the $2000-$2400 price tag

 

Another interesting option from MSI is the P75 Creator. Its got the 8-core 9880H which with a repaste could pull noticeably ahead of the 8750H in CPU tasks. Unfortunately it MSRP's for $2699, but for that increase you get 32GB of ram, a 1TB SSD, two extra cores, and the space grey finish which looks nice.

 

In terms of actual thermal performance at that price the Blade is honestly a fairly compelling option. Get a matte black dbrand to cover the logo and it's fairly discrete looking. The Blade has a bit of VRM throttle, but I'm not aware of that causing any failures, and the throttle is kicking in where the rest of the laptop market is performing (around 3.3GHz on the 8750H). The GS65 won't be holding above that without liquid metal and and undervolt. On the actual processors the Blade's vapor chamber heatsinks are actually some of the best on the market. (If only they also cooled the vrms) Its real achilles heel is quality control where I'd only recommend getting a Blade from the Microsoft Store because if something goes wrong they have pretty easy RMAs where they'll just give you a new one.