Before you buy a new laptop this Cyber Monday

This Cyber Monday, many people will be looking for new laptops. And for some of them, it might be a bad decision I'm afraid. And it's not only because of "Fake Friday" deals.

Naturally, laptops have their own advantages over desktop computers. If someone has money and just likes such comfort of taking the laptop with them on the couch - sure, why not. There are laptops that are light, and will run Cyberpunk on high details, and last a few hours on a single charge.
Or perhaps you are a student. And every 2 weeks you are on the train home for a few hours. Therefore you need performance everywhere - in your dorm, at your parent's house, and on the road.
Or maybe you have to switch apartments every 3 months. Or you are a truck driver or a sales representative - always on the road. Or an architect, artist or photographer who has to make some corrections at the client's premises - it's understandable that you want just one powerful computer that you can take everywhere.

However, if someone is looking for savings and buys a laptop. And then keeps it 100% of the time on the desk (or maybe even under the desk, connected to a large monitor) - basicaly uses it like a desktop computer - unfortunately it has very little to do with "living on a budget".
There are a few reasons for that:

I) "Core i5", "Nvidia RTX" and other stickers are not a good indication of performance.
If the laptop has stickers such as Intel Core i5 + RTX 3050, it does not mean that it is even close in terms of performance to a desktop with the same stickers.
The i5-11300H is roughly half as fast in many benchmarks as the i5-11400F (1).
And the RTX 3050 desktop is ahead of many laptop RTX 3070s (2).
Naturally, graphics cards of different series may be closer or further away in performance from their desktop counterparts. But the overwhelming majority are at least one "grade" worse (eg a desktop card with an ending of 60 will always be more powerful than a laptop card with an ending 70) (3). You determine relative performance with tests and benchmaks, not by looking at the stickers.

II) Problems with longevity.
In gaming laptops, even decently cooled, component temperatures of up to 100 degrees are not unusual. Even the highly rated and widely recommended, and (relatively) well-cooled Legion 5 with RTX 3060 has over 90 degrees on the processor and graphics card under load (4)
And that's cool, this is one of the things we have to sacrifice for the sake of gaming on the go. And the temperatures are safe enough to allow to go through the warranty period smoothly (and often continue to function much longer - 3, 4 or even 5 years).
But nothing lasts forever. The auction portals are full of desktop graphics cards from ~ 18 years ago. 6000 and 7000 series cards (like 6600/7600 GT) are everywhere - on Polish Allegro there are well over 50 offers (5, 6).
And where are laptop cards from just 9 years ago? GTX 660M / 760M? There aren't even 6 offers for undamaged laptops with such cards (7, 8).
Not to mention the fact, that if the laptop's graphics card fails - it is basically unusable (9). And in case of a desktop, one defective part is simply replaced and you can keep gaming.
As you might expect there are exceptions - golden samples of laptops (or perhaps there is nothing golden about them - they were just hardly ever used) that will survive for more than a decade. But the overwhelming majority of laptops will fall significantly faster than their desktop counterparts

III) Laptops consume less electricity? Yes - offering less performance.
It is a fact that a laptop with RTX 3050 will consume less power than a desktop computer with RTX 3050. But as I mentioned in the paragraph about stickers - it does not translate into performance in any way.
So, with the desktop RTX 3050 with 115W power consumption we will achieve more or less the same performance as with the laptop RTX 3070 with 115W power consumption (2). We did not "cheat" neither the power plant nor Alessandro Volta - everything is fine.
The matter looks slightly worse for desktops when it comes to processors, especially the latest ones. In the world of desktops, the manufacturers do not pay attention to power consumption at all. And if you want to achieve the same performance per watt consumed, you have to either buy from the appropriate energy-saving series, or set lower voltages in the BIOS yourself. Which is probably neither easy nor pleasant for most users.
However, even counting that the laptop processor will consume 20W less (45 instead of 65W). And we will pay the high price for electricity such as 0.4€ per kWh. And it will be turned on 8 hours a day every day (under the maximum load). The total addition to the power bill per month will still be below 2€ per month. Within a year it will add-up, the difference is not as massive as many people imagine. (10)
So why do people with POWERFUL gaming computers pay such high electricity bills? Because they get performance unattainable even for the most expensive laptops. The RTX 3080 Ti in the laptop impresses with its performance.
The performance per 1 Watt used is excellent - the MSI Reider laptop with said RTX 3080 Ti achieves an average of over 60 FPS on ultra in 4K resolution in The Witcher 3 (11).
The desktop RTX 3090 Ti on the other hand is extremely power hungry - consumes over 3 times more electicity - almost 500W instead of 150W. But it achieves almost 3 times higher performance - just short of 180 FPS in The Witcher 3 on ultra in 4K (12).
So the belief that the performance per watt consumed is higher in laptops has grounds in reality. But the differences are much smaller than people imagine. Because they are confused by the stickers (one i5 consumes little power, the other i5 consumes a lot - let's just grab laptop i5 so we will save money on electricity).
There are also laptops with U series processors - Ultra Low Voltage - as the name suggests with very low power consumption (but also very poor performance) (13)

IV) A laptop is not "a great free monitor and a great free keyboard"
When you buy a laptop for 600€ no one gives you the equivalent of a desktop monitor worth 250€ "for free".
Of course, there are decent laptop screens (in adequately priced laptops). But never mind their small size, even "cheap" Samsung Odyssey G3 gaming monitors for 129€ will outclass screens in decent laptops.
And "cheap" gaming laptops like the popular Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 - which on paper may have 120 Hz, tend to be a disaster. In fact their the response time is as high as 25 ms GTG (14). So they will have a hard time catching up even with the cheapest desktop monitors. Not to mention relatively good monitors like the Samsung Odyssey G3.
It's a similar story with keyboards. Yes many of laptop keyboards are backlit. But good mechanical keyboards are only found in really expensive laptops. And any budget mechanical keyboards (much faster than keyboards of all "cheap" gaming laptops) with Outemu Blue switches (also backlit) can be bought for as little as 12.99€ - a fraction of the price that you would need to pay extra for laptops with comparable performance (15).

To sum up - desktops are simply cheaper. They are less comfortable, they are large, they are heavy, they cannot be put on your lap, they cannot be used while traveling, etc.
But they have a lower purchase cost, a similar operating cost, and a much longer life expectancy.
If someone wonders what a truly budget-friendly computer is (and not what the most comfortable, or the most appropriate in their situation right here right now, when they are sitting in their truck in Calais), then a desktop computer is the answer.