Let me address this before it falls through the cracks - You can play games on a gaming laptop on battery but the performance won’t be as good because the computer will slow down the CPU and GPU to save battery power.

From my college experience, I’ll say mobility and battery life are more paramount. Last minute changes happen all the time regarding studying, exams, library research, term papers, etc., so you really don’t want to be worrying if you have enough juice to make it through class or the rest of the school day.

You need it to still perform well in 5 years, your ONLY option is a high end gaming laptop. That’s what I did, and it did indeed last 5 years before dying (like, actually expiring, currently looking for the fault, but it looks terminal). Modern gaming laptops will last a few hours on battery which should be fine for lectures, there are likely plug sockets in the lecture theatres anyway.

You could do what I did and get a cheap windows tablet for mobility purposes and your high powered laptop for everything else. ANYTHING you buy that is thin and light will be woefully underpowered within 2 years, and as a student you won’t have the funds to replace it, so just spend £1500 ish now on a high end gaming laptop (4070, Ryzen 7/ i7) and it will last you.

gaming laptops are heavy @2.5kg, if u plan carrying it on lectures go with non gaming one which are 1.6-1.7kg and if u’ll get good cpu its integrated graphics could prolly run those games at 60 fps

Go for a non-gaming laptop with a low-end GPU or a strong integrated GPU. The following are pretty good:

1. 16-inch, pretty cheap: HP Pavilion Plus 16t-ab000 (make sure to pick the i3-13500H paired with the RTX 3050) for:
   1. $650 with 512GB or
   2. $760 with 1TB
2. 16-inch, more expensive but also powerful: Dell Inspiron 16 Plus 7630 for:
   1. $1000 with a 3050, 16GB RAM, and 1TB
   2. $1100 with a 4060 (way better value), 16GB, and 1TB
   3. $1400 with a 4060, 32GB, and 2TB
3. 14-inch, lightweight and enough for the games you want, but pretty weak: HP Pavilion Plus 14z-ey000 (make sure to pick the 7840U option, the 7540U is a bit weak) for:
   1. $740 with 512GB
   2. $870 with 1TB

Gaming laptops are heavier and, in my opinion, slightly less durable.

Still, if you do any gaming at all and you don’t want to crank down all the details and play with crappy graphics, you do need one a gaming laptop.

They usually have quite decent CPUs as well, however keep in mind that some of them have comically undersized batteries. Check out some review at Jarrod’s Tech Youtube channel.

get a high perforemence buisness laptop like the Vivobook or Probook with an 12th gen i7 and 3050 or 4050