Best laptop for using an eGPU in early 2019?

[BArms]

I'm looking to get a laptop that will serve two purposes but I'm having a hard time finding one that hits all my requirements. I want to be able to game with it, but only when using an eGPU, so when on the move I want the best possible battery life. But I also want a good screen, and it's incredibly hard to find a laptop with a good screen that doesn't come with a high end battery slaughtering graphics card.

High quality 1440p or 4k screen, 100hz or more.
No discrete graphics for maximum battery life.
Best CPU available.
Thunderbolt 3.
Slim and minimalist design.
8+ hours of battery life for basic things like browsing, videos, etc.

This is probably a Unicorn because I haven't been able to find a decent candidate. Some get close like Razor Blades but they all add in higher end video cards which kills the deal for me.

 

[Space Lynx]

High quality 1440p or 4k screen, 100hz or more.
No discrete graphics for maximum battery life.

huh? pretty sure you can't have both.

 

[SL2]

Yeah it's hard to find, dunno if impossible.

These are the reasons why I won't get an eGPU, no matter how tempting it is:

- Price. You might as well buy a desktop and a laptop.

- Performance. You need high clocks to get the full potential out of a high end eGPU, something that won't happen with a slim laptop.

 

[king of swag187]

No laptop that I am aware of natively comes with a 120/144hz screen with no iGPU. There are quite a few that do fit if you remove the refresh rate limit

 

[SL2]

There are laptops with both decent GPU and battery life, this one gets you almost 8 hours of browsing.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Alienware-m15-i7-8750H-GTX-1070-Max-Q-Laptop-Review.374921.0.html

Idle power usage is usually the drawback with Max-Q laptops in general, I hope it will improve soon.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

I'm looking to get a laptop that will serve two purposes but I'm having a hard time finding one that hits all my requirements. I want to be able to game with it, but only when using an eGPU, so when on the move I want the best possible battery life. But I also want a good screen, and it's incredibly hard to find a laptop with a good screen that doesn't come with a high end battery slaughtering graphics card.

High quality 1440p or 4k screen, 100hz or more.
No discrete graphics for maximum battery life.
Best CPU available.
Thunderbolt 3.
Slim and minimalist design.
8+ hours of battery life for basic things like browsing, videos, etc.

This is probably a Unicorn because I haven't been able to find a decent candidate. Some get close like Razor Blades but they all add in higher end video cards which kills the deal for me.

if you're using eGPU then discreet GPU will be disabled/idle/low power state and won't suck up your battery life anyway, will be hard to find igpu high refresh rate screen as they can't drive them properly at least at anything other than Windows and in most cases there's no need for high refresh rate in that use scenario anyway. You might be better off with an NUC/mini ITX build.

 

[BArms]

There are laptops with both decent GPU and battery life, this one gets you almost 8 hours.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Alienware-m15-i7-8750H-GTX-1070-Max-Q-Laptop-Review.374921.0.html

Idle power usage is usually the drawback with Max-Q laptops in general, I hope it will improve soon.

Oh dear goodness, no, that thing is hideous. I'd never want to be caught using that in any public place.

No laptop that I am aware of natively comes with a 120/144hz screen with no iGPU. There are quite a few that do fit if you remove the refresh rate limit

Yeah and I'm afraid it would probably get a lot of bad press if it wasn't marketed just right. "120hz screen and can't even play Crysis at 10 fps, lol stupid ____" it would be a meme so fast it would kill sales probably. Damn, I want a unicorn.

 

[SL2]

Oh dear goodness, no, that thing is hideous. I'd never want to be caught using that in any public place.

I know.

This is what happens when you put together a RTX 2070 eGPU with a slim laptop; you'll get half the performance, more or less.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Aorus-RTX-2070-Gaming-Box-with-Dell-XPS-13-9380-Review.413819.0.html

Also, even if you have a budget for a 4K display, that will lower battery performance a lot, in this case 8 hours with 4K, and 13 hours with 1080 (Dell XPS 13).
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Power...r-battery-life-by-several-hours.414493.0.html

 

[Vya Domus]

If you plan to use an external GPU, I recommend you reevaluate your options. Either get the laptop with the desired specifications from the get go or get a desktop, eGPUs are a sub optimal solution.

 

[Caring1]

Why not build your own and leave the dGPU off your parts list.

 

[eidairaman1]

Thicker Laptops handle thermals better, still worth to get a laptop cooler pad, you can research the web for cpus/memory for laptops out too.

 

[Bill_Bright]

I'm looking to get a laptop... ...I'm having a hard time finding one that hits all my requirements.

What size screen?

What is your budget?

Why not build your own and leave the dGPU off your parts list.

Too bad there is not a well established, and competitive build-it-yourself notebook components industry like there is with PCs. And sadly, there never will be because no way will all the makers agree on an industry standard like they have with the ATX Form Factor for PCs. None are willing to give up their proprietary designs.