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.

Keep it as a backup laptop or wipe the hard drive and sell it for cash.

Yes it will work as a desktop pc just fine. But pick up a laptop cooling fan. It will elevate the laptop to ergonomic eye-level as well as provide underside ventilation. Something like this.

The hardware is current so the price isn’t outrageous. However, Amazon prices for high ticket items often command a higher seller fee which means that often gets passed onto the customer (hence, the $1,477 price). You can probably find something similar on HP’s direct website or on Newegg for less (and considering it’s Black Friday & Cyber Monday).

It’s overkill for casual use and school. That laptop’s hardware is power hungry so if you need a laptop with great battery life, this laptop is not it. It’s also very bulky relative to a slimmer laptop that’s 13" or 14".

14th Gen Raptor Lake is a refresh, not a complete new architecture so the performance difference is marginal. So no, I wouldn’t wait. If you can score a BF/CB deal on a 13th gen, I’d say pull the trigger.

Also 14th Gen just came out so it’s just now starting to trickle into the mass market in the next few weeks and going into 2024 (not enough time to show up for BF/CB).

Since you mentioned battery life, you’ll want to look for a laptop with a “U” designation as these chips are designed to sip power for max battery life (example).

If you’re going to spend $400, you might as well get a fully-functional Windows laptop. Chromebooks are basically laptops for G Suite (e.g. Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, etc.).

Fortunately Black Friday and Cyber Monday are around the corner (if you live in 'Murica) so there will be no shortage of feature-rich laptops for the same price (or cheaper).