We're in the midst of updating all of our best of guides for the holiday season, and we've already covered what is likely the most popular category: Budget Laptops. Some of what we said there also applies to gaming laptops, and our budget gaming recommendations in particular will be rehashed here, along with any other potential candidates. But here we'll also be looking at higher performance offerings that can handle all of the latest games, perhaps even at maximum details. To be clear, not everyone needs or even wants a gaming laptop, and the presence of a discrete graphics chip pretty much requires that laptops include better cooling, which means they're also likely to weigh more and be bulkier. However, where other laptops can do most tasks except gaming, gaming laptops can actually handle pretty much everything a laptop that's fast enough for gaming is also fast enough for office work, image and video editing, etc. About the only area where gaming laptops sometimes struggle and this is more due to the notebook manufacturers not taking time to properly optimize for power draw is battery life.  Best Gaming Laptops and Notebooks - Holiday 2013