I dunno. I've had decent luck with Asus laptops that are at least somewhat gaming-capable. They've still got the same M-class GPUs you'd expect (outside of the

I dunno. I've had decent luck with Asus laptops that are at least somewhat gaming-capable. They've still got the same M-class GPUs you'd expect (outside of these eXXXtreme or external options) but you're still looking at a standard brushed aluminum chassis (maybe a plastic base depending on model), i5 or i7, 16GB of RAM, SSD, and $1000-1500 price tag. Not exactly cheap but certainly not in the same range as the GPU-laden Surface Books. I picked one of the Asus notebooks up a couple years ago when I needed something for occasional use (so I didn't want to go all out on budget) that could still handle some graphics work and live projection visuals which typically need OpenGL support past what you find in an iGPU. It's not as thin and light as an ultrabook or tablet/convertible but that's the flipside of powerful and not too expensive. Maybe if it was my main or only machine I'd have gone higher end and higher price but there's definitely some options in between the crappy $600-800 general purpose laptops and the $2000-3500 Decepticons and fancy detachable tablet offerings.