Who plays on the smallest laptop?

[Jawbreaker]

I'm looking to buy a small laptop so I can play while travelling for work, the smaller the better. I also want to multi-box on it for farming, any suggestions? i'm not technically literate so small words help 😛

[baster]

Ew small gonna suck. Unless you trying to go small so people don't suspect your gaming  haha, because we know that stering at TV 5 hours per night is perfectly normal but God's forbid ( both old and the new) that you stare at a PC screen., surely the world will end. 

 

I play on a LG 45 inch ultra wide 240 he refresh ) sorry can't help you.

[Scarlet Shocker]

I believe it's possible to play on a Steam Deck - portable, light but not sure how practical it might be.

 

Maybe an old Chromebook with some finagling and titivation?

 

otherwise just ebay and see what you can get. If it runs Windows 8 or later you'll probably find it runs CoH well although not as well as your home built custom desktop rig

 

[biostem]

I played for a bit on a GPW Win;  It had like a 5" or 7" screen.  It wasn't impossible, but reading some of the larger blocks of text was difficult.  I've also played on a refurbished 12" laptop;  That is about as small as I'd want to play on any sort of regular basis.  If at all possible, (and depending upon your budget), go for something with an actual GPU, otherwise I don't think you'll have a pleasurable experience, long-term...

Edited Saturday at 09:44 PM by biostem

[Octogoat]

A tuff laptop is around US $600 and pretty good for multiboxing

[Psyonico]

Going to second the dedicated GPU… I don’t know if this issue was ever fixed, but I remember at one point I-GPUs didn’t like city because it was designed with d-GPUs in mind.

[biostem]

4 hours ago, Psyonico said:

Going to second the dedicated GPU… I don’t know if this issue was ever fixed, but I remember at one point I-GPUs didn’t like city because it was designed with d-GPUs in mind.

I have an older Ryzen 3 laptop, and CoH runs decently well on medium settings.  If you just want something to multibox with, then even integrated graphics can work, if you use the -usetexenvcombine launch parameter.  If you want to seriously play on a laptop, definitely go with something beefier, but also keep an eye on your thermals, because things like particle intensive events or instances with lots of players can really crank up the heat, (or just temporarily disable particles for such instances)...

[Faultline]

11 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I believe it's possible to play on a Steam Deck - portable, light but not sure how practical it might be.

 

Not just to play, but to dev. I've used the Steam Deck as my main machine for everything in the last two years -- I have been moving around too much for various reasons, so reducing the size and volume of everything I have to pack is mandatory.

 

It's better to play it under SteamOS because the AMD drivers for Windows aren't super stable on old OpenGL apps. I've had some crashes when playing on a large league with all the particles flying that only happen on Windows. For dev work, where I'm usually by myself on the whole dev server, it's fine under Windows as well.

[Water]

You're going to need something with a discreet gfx card.

 

[Jawbreaker]

15 hours ago, Octogoat said:

A tuff laptop is around US $600 and pretty good for multiboxing

I've thrown so many of those out of ambulances over the years *PTSD triggered*

[Scarlet Shocker]

22 minutes ago, Jawbreaker said:

I've thrown so many of those out of ambulances over the years *PTSD triggered*

 

You don't need to call an ambulance to fix a broken laptop!

[arcane]

IIRC the best players play CoH on a 14-inch macbook with no mouse

[arcane]

It’s small and I can multi-box so not sure what the confusion is Jawbreaker 😉

[tidge]

No real recommendations, but I can share the following:

 

CoX plays great on my couple-of-years-old Lenovo Legion "Gaming Laptop". This machine travels, but it was slightly bulkier than I prefer, especially if I have to travel with multiple laptops for business. It is the extra 230W power supply more than anything else, although my laptop carry-on get cramped.

 

To support my business travel, I recently bought a slightly older refurbished Dell Latitude. It can play CoX, but without a dedicated GPU it is a somewhat miserable experience. I somewhat expected this. The biggest drawback for me of a 'small laptop' when playing CoX (after GFX)  would be the size of the keyboard.

[Jawbreaker]

On 6/1/2025 at 8:38 AM, arcane said:

It’s small and I can multi-box so not sure what the confusion is Jawbreaker 😉

Like I said, I'm completely computer illiterate

 

[Crysis]

I travel a bunch for work, have been playing COH since HC came back on GPD rigs.  Screen size is pretty irrelevant as I use a set of Xreal or Viture AR glasses, which are basically 1080P monitors in glasses format.

 

My smallest of the bunch….a GPD Win 3/4 (just upgraded) with a set of Xreal glasses.  I use a small bluetooth folding keyboard and a Pebble mouse.  Whole thing fits into a small sling bag.  The GPD Win 3/4 device itself is fine for last-gen AAA gaming.  I regularly play RDR2, Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher and many other games on it, sometimes on that tiny screen itself.  It also has onboard joysticks, mouse and keyboard but those are only meant for casual use.  Format is roughly the size of an XL Sony PSP handheld device.

 

 

[JasperStone]

On 5/31/2025 at 4:18 PM, baster said:

I play on a LG 45 inch ultra wide 240 he refresh ) sorry can't help you.

Gonna need a pic of your setup, please

[JasperStone]

I play on a Lenovo Legion connected to a 27-inch monitor.

 

I use the ingame keymapping and need the numpad. This laptop has one, so it is nice when I travel, but still want to play.

[MTeague]

I use a 17" laptop. LG, don't have the model number handy. Plenty big enough for me.

 

I used to be "desktops or go home". But life took some interesting turns, and I find myself travelling 1,000 miles for a few weeks at a time now. I now use my personal (non-work) laptop for my general gaming, surfing YouTube, etc.  Simply because it's easy to take it with me. Important documents get backed up to external drives at home.  It does help that this laptop had a decent graphics card when I bought it (4-5 years ago now?), but many diehard gamers would consider this laptop to be a potato, just by age. Still. It runs the games I personally want to play, with fairly high graphics settings, and that's where the rubber meets the road for me.

[baster]

[JasperStone]

9 minutes ago, baster said:

....damn ....

 

 

[tidge]

2 hours ago, MTeague said:

I use a 17" laptop. LG, don't have the model number handy. Plenty big enough for me.

 

I used to be "desktops or go home". But life took some interesting turns, and I find myself travelling 1,000 miles for a few weeks at a time now. I now use my personal (non-work) laptop for my general gaming, surfing YouTube, etc.  Simply because it's easy to take it with me. Important documents get backed up to external drives at home.  It does help that this laptop had a decent graphics card when I bought it (4-5 years ago now?), but many diehard gamers would consider this laptop to be a potato, just by age. Still. It runs the games I personally want to play, with fairly high graphics settings, and that's where the rubber meets the road for me.

 

This sounds like me and my life choices! As I wrote above, my perfectly excellent gaming laptop was my travel choice... and might still be if I didn't have to bring two laptops through TSA... Aside from the extra weight I found unpacking all the laptops to be a real mood killer at airport security, especially when the gaming one has a larger footprint. KTN makes this easier, but then I've still got a somewhat beefy carry-on for plane travel. I sometimes feel like I'm pushing the limits for carry-on as is!

 

I typically don't have enough downtime while traveling for gaming, but had I been able to get a smaller profile laptop with better graphics for similar (cheap) pricing I probably would have done it. The only thing I feel like I'm missing from the budget traveler besides reliable CoX is related... it's much less efficient at doing video and audio processes than my other systems

 

[Techwright]

On 5/31/2025 at 6:04 PM, Octogoat said:

A tuff laptop is around US $600 and pretty good for multiboxing

 

Are you referring to the Panasonic Toughbook line?

 

On 6/1/2025 at 9:29 AM, Jawbreaker said:

I've thrown so many of those out of ambulances over the years *PTSD triggered*

 

Assuming you're referring to the Panasonics as well, I can sympathize.   We maintained a fleet of them for the hospital system I worked for this last decade, especially for the ambulance teams.  The CF-C1 was a steaming heap o' garbage: blurry screens, cheap plastic unworthy of the name "toughbook", and a component easily prone to overheat under the user's left palm, causing cracking and carbonization of the cheap plastic.  The only thing I liked about those was the easy-swap technology for batteries and hard drives.  I was therefore loath to work with the CF-C2 model when it showed up, however, I was pleasantly surprised at the better, more rugged quality and performance.  I've not worked with other models, but its possible Panasonics vary wildly between models if these two set the example.

[Octogoat]

Asus tuf https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Display-NVIDIA®-GeForce-FA506NF-ES51/dp/B0CRDF25TQ/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?adgrpid=179256938772&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Wrt2XxI_2tmlo3xpxHPv2lFBv81wQ0kktc9DiUC8eSMGF15sSDxRQEoYz1rEpuihLDpnvwCiPdQ9yRh2w8saCMc_SyO_dxjZNL_mskLeSuW9_cyoilKiHuJvRMbjZr65tYHENOWa87AbpewsgMZAO6ldWSJepZ6DYvb8twGnpAG6nplXZXXYtvZ5Fp0inc4OxdRStzCLWF9kRWUn0q9nSQ.QtJmTvIPON5_VDTflrLM8vbDhvOMJCS3XoK0MqNsn6Y&dib_tag=se&hvadid=730534039413&hvdev=m&hvexpln=68&hvlocphy=9011791&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=2862229829803558065--&hvqmt=b&hvrand=2862229829803558065&hvtargid=kwd-545256791246&hydadcr=20104_13388471&keywords=gaming+laptops+asus+tuf&mcid=416ec96352603c72b281006a48b8bcf0&qid=1749037268&sr=8-3