The Best 17-Inch Laptops of 2017
Can a laptops replace a desktop computers or your only computer? This problem was solved many years ago, yes, absolutely.
Can a laptop, in fact, outperform your desktop? Unless your desktop is a nearly new, top-of-the-line Godzilla gaming rig or workstation, that’s a “yes,” too. In fact, you may be startled by what you can get from one of mobile computing’s top power tools: a 17-inch laptop.
Two different audiences or groups of users swear by 17-inch notebooks. First are folks who seek the most desktop-like experience from their desktop-replacement systems: While no laptop has the expandability or upgradability of a big tower desktop, a number of 17-inch models provide component access to let you upgrade the RAM or the onboard storage. (And all make room for more ports and features than smaller systems, by the very nature of their bigger chassis.) More important for daily use, though, their screens and keyboards are the biggest and most comfortable available in the notebook arena. Because of the wide body required to make room for the giant screen, the keyboard will typically have a full numeric keypad, like on a desktop keyboard.
The second group consists of gamers. A thriving class of 17-inch laptops courts the hard-core with speedy CPUs and dedicated graphics, as well as all the bells and whistles required to create space civilizations or battle zombie hordes. If sleek ultrabooks and convertibles are the sports cars, these are the beefy muscle cars or tricked-out SUVs of the mobile world.
But Yes, 17 Inches Is Huge
Of course, the words “beefy” and “portable” rarely go together. Seen on one of those quadrant diagrams, 17-inch laptops would be far along the capability axis but near the bottom in mobility. At seven to eight pounds or more, they’re more luggable than liftable—occasionally hauled down the hall to a conference-room presentation or stuffed into a backpack for a gaming party, but almost never seen in coffee shops or on airline tray tables.
They’re rarely seen away from AC power outlets, either. The typical Dell inspiron 1720 laptop battery life for a laptop in this size class is just three or four hours, compared to 10 hours or more from many slimmer, smaller travelers. Finally, while some 17-inch consumer notebooks are affordably priced under $700, all bets are off in the elite gaming segment, where with just a few exceptions, $1,200 or $1,300 is a bargain machine and topliners can climb past $3,000.
Nevertheless, the best 17-inch laptops deliver a luxurious and powerful computing experience, with big-screen, easy-on-the-eyes viewing for videos and office apps, and serious chops for multimedia work such as video editing. Let’s take a quick look at what a king-size laptop can give you.
DISPLAY RESOLUTION & TECHNOLOGY. The term “17-inch laptop” is actually a generic one for this size class; most screens in this segment actually measure 17.3 inches on the diagonal. (Biggest exception? The display in the outlier MSI GT83VR Titan SLI, which we’re including in this XXL class, is a whopping 18.4 inches.) Almost all offer screen resolutions of at least full HD or 1,920×1,080 (often abbreviated “FHD” or “1080p”), while an increasing number feature displays with the big-screen resolution of 4K (3,840×2,160). Between 4K and 1080p, an emerging resolution in panels this size is QHD, or 2,560×1,440; QHD is showing up in a few elite-level machines, such as certain high-end configurations of the new Alienware 17. But 1080p is by far the most common resolution you’ll see.
One thing to know about 17-inch-class screens: Despite the prevalence of the touch-friendly Windows 10 in these machines, and the equally touch-centric Windows 8 before it, touch screens in laptops of this size are rare. (The Razer Blade Pro 2017 is one of the few gaming machines with a touch panel at this size.) In-plane switching (IPS) technology, which allows for broader viewing angles on smaller displays, is also rare in 17-inch panels. It’s a good idea to look at any 17-inch screen in person, if you can, to make sure you’re satisfied with the viewing angles and general appearance before buying. Also, you’ll usually see matte screens, as opposed to glossy ones, in this size class.
Beyond the Blade Pro, the exception that breaks the above rules is the glass-covered, glossy 17.3-inch touch display of the Dell Inspiron 17 7000 2-in-1 (7778). That device sports a touch display because it also doubles as a large (and heavy) tablet, thanks to its convertible 360-degree hinge. It’s the only 2-in-1 17-incher we’ve seen or handled.
CHOOSING THE GRAPHICS PROCESSOR (GPU). Though fine for productivity apps and casual gaming, the integrated graphics built into today’s Intel and AMD CPUs can’t cut it for serious gaming or other intensive pixel-pushing. (For Intel-CPU-based laptops, you can identify integrated graphics on a laptop’s spec sheet by the name “Intel HD Graphics,” followed by a three-digit number.) So you’ll want to look for a dedicated graphics chip if you mean to play any kind of major games on your 17-incher. This will almost invariably mean an Nvidia GeForce graphics chip.
You will still spot some 17-inch laptops with previous-generation Nvidia “Maxwell” GeForce graphics chips, which are easy to identify: The GeForce GTX 950M, GTX 960M, GTX 965M, GTX 970M, and GTX 980M are the most common. Newer models will feature GeForce GTX 1050, GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1060, GTX 1070, or GTX 1080 graphics chips, which are part of the company’s latest lineup, known as “Pascal.” If gaming is important to you, it’s worth insisting on one of these newer models, because the Pascal line delivered a huge leap in performance over what was available with Maxwell-based machines.
As for competitor AMD, it technically has released a trio of Radeon RX 400 series mobile graphics chips, but we haven’t seen them sold in (nor tested them in) a laptop of any screen size to date. Dedicated graphics in today’s big-screen laptops is almost exclusively Nvidia.
At this writing, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1080 was the most powerful gaming graphics chip found in laptops on the market. It’s the one you’ll want if you aim to game at high detail settings with a 4K-resolution screen. A few exotic gaming rigs even feature dualgraphics adapters akin to their Nvidia SLI or AMD CrossFire desktop cousins. The previously mentioned MSI GT83VR Titan SLI has a pair of GeForce GTX 1080 graphics processors, as does the Origin EON17-SLX 10. These machines deliver truly extreme levels of performance, but they’re also beasts, both in terms of their physical size and their sticker prices. Keeping machines like that cool isn’t easy, either, so expect fan noise on these types of systems to be louder than on any other class of laptop (or most desktops, for that matter).
Now, a configuration like one of these will give anyone GPU envy. But the thing to bear in mind? You should match up the native resolution of the screen in your 17-inch laptop to an appropriately powerful graphics chip, and not let that spill over into overkill. Most 17-inch screens still feature a 1080p native resolution, and the sweet spot for PC gaming at that resolution is a GeForce GTX 1060, or perhaps a GTX 1070 if you want to be sure games will be playable at high settings for years to come. You probably don’t need a GTX 1080 for gaming at 1080p unless the screen has a high 120Hz refresh rate, or you intend to run your game on an external monitor (or monitors) with a higher native resolution than the screen in the laptop itself.
As for cheaper big-screen gaming laptops, we are seeing an emerging class of GeForce GTX 1050- and GTX 1050 Ti-based machines, just hitting the market at this early-2017 writing. They should also be good for smooth 1080p gaming with older games, and for play with some detail settings tweaked downward in new, demanding titles. In short: Just because you have a big screen in your laptop doesn’t mean you have to overbuy in terms of graphics-chip power for games. It’s all about pinpointing the right chip for the resolution of the screen, and today, the GTX 1050, GTX 1050 Ti, and GTX 1060 are very able at 1080p.
CPU & MEMORY. While some economy 17-inch models sport value processors such as Intel’s Core i3, the 17-inch norm is a quad-core powerhouse like a “Skylake”/6th-Generation Core i7-6000-series, or their newer “Kaby Lake”/7th-Generation 7000-series equivalents. A few boutique systems from the likes of Origin PC or Eurocom laugh at the very notion of battery power by using overclocked true-desktop chips (invariably, a Core i7). But these are appropriate only for desk-bound video editors and others who need the most raw processing power available for media-centric editing and crunching/conversion tasks.
If you’re looking at a stacked gaming configuration, you’re probably going to get a quad-core mobile Core i7 chip by default. The best of these have a model number that ends in “HQ.”
Entry-level laptops may make do with 4GB of system memory, but 8GB or more is far preferable. Because of the chassis size of 17-inch laptops, you are more likely than on most sizes of laptop to have access to the RAM bays via a hatch or removable lid on the underside of the machine, so it’s good to look for this upgradability in advance if you think you might want to boost the RAM later on.
THE STORAGE SCHEME. As for the onboard storage, a 240GB or larger solid-state drive (SSD) is your best bet as a boot drive these days, but that capacity probably isn’t roomy enough for gamers or those with large media libraries. So, ideally, look for a system with an SSD plus at least a 1TB conventional hard drive. (You’re more likely to see two drives in a 17.3-inch laptop than in any other laptop size class.) You can go overboard in this regard; configurations of some MSI machines ship with an outrageous four SSDs in a RAID array. But in 2017, we think an SSD boot drive is a near necessity in anything but the most budget-oriented laptop configurations, and in a 17-inch laptop, the laptop maker doesn’t have the excuse that there’s not enough room for an SSD and a hard drive inside.
One of the benefits of a 17-inch laptop is that most models are also big enough to host an optical drive, an endangered species on smaller laptops, even many 15.6-inch models. Upscale models also boast Blu-ray rather than DVD drives, the better to enjoy 1080p movies on their sparkling screens, and subwoofers to make the most of music, movies, and game audio. That said, these days an optical drive is not a given even on laptops this big, so be sure to check if you need one.
KEYBOARD. We alluded to it earlier, but 17-inch laptops have space for some of the best keyboards in portable computing, with numeric keypads for spreadsheet jockeys and, in some models, dedicated macro keys for PC-gaming fiends. Alienware’s gaming rigs are famous (but no longer unique) for backlit keyboards, and keyboards with multiple multicolored customizable lighting zones. A 17-inch keyboard deck also lets the keys spread out; we especially liked the well-isolated design of the arrow-key cluster on the Acer Predator 17 gaming laptop.
Going beyond Alienware, a few new-model 17-inch-class machines have graduated to RGB key lighting that is programmable key by key. It’s an elite-level feature, but you can check it out in a couple of top-end laptops we just tested: the Razer Blade Pro (2017) we mentioned earlier, and the Aorus X7 v6.
There’s also the issue of key travel. Big 17-inchers usually have more vertical room for comfortable key travel than most laptops. But you’ll want to try before you buy to make sure the laptop maker took advantage of the bigger chassis and passed on the benefits to the keyboard. MSI is one laptop maker that generally gets that part right. Many MSI laptop keyboards are designed in concert with SteelSeries, a leading manufacturer of gaming peripherals; and the MSI GT83VR Titan SLI is the only notebook we know of on the market at this writing with a true desktop-class mechanical keyboard, with the clicky switches that gamers love.
We’re also seeing claims of mechanical switches from laptop makers such as Razer (in the aforementioned Blade Pro 2017) and Lenovo (in its flagship gaming laptop, the Ideapad Y900), and while these are generally quite good, they are their own animal, with not quite the key depth as on the Titan SLI.
An additional keyboard pointer, beyond looking for an inverted-“T” arrow-key cluster: Look for crucial keys that have been trimmed to a smaller size for space reasons. Laptops of this size tend to let their keyboards breathe and have bigger keys, but best to check. Sometimes the number-pad keys are horizontal squashed, not ideal if you do a lot of numeric input.
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