One of the most common question we get is which laptop should I buy for playing Sims 4 and 5? The good thing is we are here to help you happily. There is no one correct answer that fits everyone. Also, it’s not bad if you get the cheapest laptop that can run Sims 4 & 5 under 500 – 1000!
Gaming laptops nowadays come in a wide range of power levels with different processors, graphics chips and that part of questions seems to get more complicated by the day.
To get the optimal results in animation, graphic creation along with playing games specially for Sims 4, we know exactly what kinds of laptops you will need. For you to be able to create transformative animation and graphics imagery you should have a powerful processor, plenty of RAM memory, good storage, and a high-end graphics card.
Our BUDGET Choice For Sims 4 & 5 Compatible Laptops –
- MSI Katana GF66 15.6″ (Best Quality and Performance)
- Lenovo IdeaPad 5.6″ (Budget Real Gaming & Portable Laptop)
- HP Pavilion 15-Inch (Best Bang for Buck Gaming Laptop)
| Sims 4 Laptop Requirements (EA authority has some requirements to play Sims 4 on a laptop) |
|---|
| Minimum |
| OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 and 64 bit required CPU: 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo; AMD Athlon 64 dual-core- 4000+ or equivalent RAM: At least 4 GB RAM Disc Drive: DVD Rom Drive is required for installation only. Hard drive: 256 SSD Graphics / video card: NVIDIA GTX GeForce 6600 or better, ATI Radeon X1300 or better, Intel GMA X4500 or better Direct X: Direct X 9.0, 10 or 11 |
| Recommended |
| OS: 64 bit Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 CPU: Intel Core i5 or faster, AMD Athlon X4 or upgraded RAM: 4 GB or upgraded Hard Drive: 512 – 1 TB Graphics: NVIDIA 650 or better Direct X: Direct X 9.0, 10,11 |
Cheapest Laptop That Can Run Sims 4 (2022)
MSI GF 66 KATANA
The MSI GF 66 KATANA has been truly built targeting gamers and animators on a budget. This is one of the proper cheapest laptops for the Sims 4 this year. I have been still playing on it since the beginning of this year and I am amazed at what budget means and delivers.
Nowadays people on the internet especially animators and gamers will think that finally, MSI has figured out a laptop that is sleek, enough for portability, bang performance for SIMS 4 and gaming, and awesome enough to keep your wallet happy.
It is equipped with the newest 11th generation Tiger Lake processors and GPUs from NVIDIA RTX 30 series. What else can get well for a starter for the money?
I always consider 5 elementary parts performance of a laptop while gaming. These are
- Display/ screen performance
- Keyboard and trackpad performance
- Battery performance
- Thermal, clock speed, and noise level
- Gaming performance
But as THE Sims 4 is a life simulation game and is related to the graphics creating and editing game, I have emphasized more on GPU performance.
Now let’s move on to its overall performance….
DISPLAY SCREEN: The 144 Hz screen is actually pretty decent and pleasant, much better than I expected. The color gamut was better than the previous one. Not the best but still good enough for your animation color sensitivity workload. I have seen the issue in many expensive laptops struggling over the color gamut.
The brightness level could still get above 300 nits when at maximum.
The MSI center software, the control panel for this laptop, lets enable and disable panel overdrive, which affects screen response time. While in default mode it screens responding time as 5 ms on average which is a very impressive result for creating the Sims 4 considering the rest of the machines.
While turning off the overdrive it could get able 8.5 milliseconds which is still ahead of some expensive laptops.
KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD: Considering a budget affordable gaming laptop, it has a quite nice keyboard with one zone red backlit. There is a good amount of key travel and while gaming and designing Sims 4 it offers an experience that is similar to the more expensive model.
On the other hand, the touchpad performance was enough responsive.
BATTERY LIFE: MSI has equipped a 3-cell 53.3 Wh battery inside. I could say it is still small in terms of battery. You will get near 4 hours of Sims 4 productivity. But we should keep in mind that it is a budget-oriented gaming laptop. Check the longest battery life laptop for your sims 4.
THERMAL, CLOCK SPEED: There are some heat pipes shared between the CPU and GPU and two fans towards the corners.
You also get several performance profiles that you can choose from MSI Center Software. This software sets the fan to maximum and you can optionally overclock the GPU.
I did all profiles mode tests playing the Sims 4 and it resulted quite beautifully. In extreme mode using a cooling fan, I got 75.2 degrees Celcius of GPU and 79.2 degrees celsius of CPU. In silent mode, it was 69 degrees celsius of GPU and 72 degrees celsius of CPU on average. This is a pretty awesome subject for your Sims 4 running.
GPU Performance: Most of the game’s environment relies on GPU than on the CPU. This laptop comes with 105 watts RTX 3060. In reality, it mostly runs at 80 to 90 watts and hits only 105 watts from time to time.
This is a great GPU to aim for GTX 1650. This RTX 3060 will mostly run your SIMS 4 easily, smoothly, and flawlessly. In one word and it is 100% sure that this will be beyond your imagination.
THE SIM4 PERFORMANCE: After using this laptop for the Sims 4, I could say that I am still very much satisfied and satisfied and happy to tell that I could make SIMS’s all-new emotions and personality traits more expressive and a powerful impact on both autonomous and players control choices.
This laptop gives me to create all-new approaches to Sims. It was fantastic to control the build mode for dragging and dropping the building with both furnished and unfurnished rooms.
HP PAVILION GAMING 3
If you are just getting into the Sims 4 world and want a laptop that offers decent performance and enough power to run your games without lagging HP PAVILION GAMING 3 will be your first choice in 2022.
It is well balanced and great for entry-level laptops for Sims 4 gamers. This one is lightweight chassis that is ideal for on-the-go Sims 4 gaming.
Let’s straight jump into some crucial parts of performance…
DISPLAY: The screen of the display satisfied me with 69 percent coverage of the sRGB color gamut. From the price point, it was pretty decent to me with a 144 Hz refresh rate IPS panel, 250 nits anti-glare brightness and it is still a pretty good deal for the color sensitivity of SIMS 4.
BATTERY: Having 3 cells 57.6 Wh battery, it performed above 5 hours in the time of Sims 4 workload. I did the test keeping the background apps off and screen brightness 50%. Not too bad in terms of the battery size.
KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD: I had too much fun typing on it. the green back-lit keyboard provided my eyes extra comfort and of course, the keystrokes were perfect to me.
The touchpad also performed totally fine and I am satisfied with it.
THERMAL AND CLOCK SPEED: The thermal performance of GPU was better compared to CPU performance. If you want to get more stable performance, you can use a cooling fan. I got optimal results while using a cooling fan.
The max clock speed during my test was 3.9 GHz keeping the all-core TURBO BOOST off. while it was on I got above 4.1 GHz which is great for Sims 4 to play.
THE SIM4 PERFORMANCE: HP has brought a new dimension into the gaming world with the PAVILION GAMING series and has done a great job for the money.
I tested to manipulate and rotate my SIMS, I was able to get done my imagination into the SIMS perfectly. No issues were found with that. On the other hand, I could establish the personalities and genetics of any two age SIMS according to my aspirations.
I was also able to build the room-based building by picking up, moving, and rotating individual rooms easily. Of course in the playtime, I had a lot of easiness and great experience playing the SIMS 4 with my contents.
LENOVO IDEAPAD GAMING 3 vs LENOVO IDEAPAD L340
Which one will you buy to play Sims 4? IDEAPAD GAMING 3 or IDEAPAD L340?
I know you are in a confused state. Because there are some who are recommending GAMING 3 and others are for L340. no worries!
Let’s take a look at
QUICK COMPARISON
| Name of the component | Lenovo Ideapad gaming 3 | Lenovo Ideapad L340 |
| RAM | 8GB | 8GB |
| Hard Drive | 1 TB | 1TB |
| display | 15.6” | 15.6” |
| processor | AMD Ryzen 7 | Intel |
| graphics card | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 ti | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 |
| price | $895 | $798 |
If you are a gamer it is known to you that the GPU and CPU is the most important and undeniable part in gaming.
As you can see from the comparison, there is some difference between graphics card and processor.
Processor comparison: All gamers and game experts will admit that AMD Ryzen processor is the best choice and most powerful processor than Intel.
Graphics card comparison: NVIDIA GTX 1650 was released in 2019 nut GTX1650ti has been released in 2020. As a comparison, the GTX 1650ti is the latest one.
The GTX 1650 core base clock speed(930 – 1395 MHz) and boost clock (1125-1560 MHz) speed is a little bit ahead of GTX 1650ti (1035 -1350 MHz for base clock) and (1200 – 1485 MHz for boost clock).
Now come to the main part. The main part of a game is the gaming performance. every gamer knows and gives major importance to gaming performance that is FPS.
You must get more FPS while playing Sims 4 or any other heavy and demanding graphics games on GTX 1650ti than GTX 1650.
The more you get fps the better gaming experience you can expect.
So, if you want a competitive gaming experience for SIMS 4 for a low-end price, the Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 can meet your needs. Because it comes with some solid features which are quite enough for proper gaming. Why you will ruin your smooth performance for 100 bucks.
The more reasons I have considered and want to recommend you for SIMS 4 are……
Balanced display: What do you expect from a gaming laptop? Great gaming performance or poor display, and great display or poor gaming experience? you don’t need to worry about that. The Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 will solve your problem!
It has a balanced display screen with above 250 nits brightness level, 120 Hz refresh rate, and 45% National TV Standard Committee (NTSC) gaming coverage which is beyond expectation for your SIMS 4 play.
Thermal and Noise level: During the playtime of SIMS 4 I got satisfactory thermal heat. The keyboard and palm area were relatively cool.
I recorded on 29 decibels in silent mode and 41 decibels in the high-performance mode in terms of the noise level.
The SIMS4 PERFORMANCE: The SIMS 4 creation existing households experience with this laptop was stunning. Focusing on the emotional category of traits was handy. I could make the SIMS more fun mode or angry mode and any other work like painting, putting an extra outfit on SIMS, adding more members to a household was pretty good responsive.
The renovation of the old house and to fulfill the 6 basic needs of SIMS were quite easy with this laptop.
Overall playing and controlling all approaches of SIMS were faster than the IDEAPAD L340 and the IDEAPAD Gaming 3 is the best cheap laptop for Sims 4.
I did not say that the Ideapad L340 is bad in performance. It is also one of the good laptops for SIMS 4. But as a comparison, the Ideapad gaming 3 can deliver gigantic performance with better fps than L340.
Acer Nitro 5
The Acer Nitro 5 is a different budget gaming laptop for sims 4. It has targeted gamers who are looking for the best specs without breaking the bank.
It is cheaper than some of the famous Helios 300 lineup and it competes directly with MSI BRAVO 15 and DELL G515se.
I think you are getting a lot for the money being that the SIMS4 performance. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 can really push your SIM4 playing frame rate at 1080p.
The Acer Nitro 5 has everything you need like visual intensity on SIMS, artificial intelligence (AI) boosted performance and of course optimized power.
Now let’s move on to this performances
Display: Honestly, for me, the color gamut was good enough. Although Acer claims to get 300 nits in brightness level, I recorded only 260 nits. It was satisfactory to me for the money. The contrast level also was good.
On the other hand, the screen response time seemed promising and it was ahead of the expensive ASUS TUF A15.
Color Accuracy: I must appreciate the color accuracy of this laptop. Color accuracy means how the human eye perceives color difference. I used the Delta E which is a change in energy of an internal system.
The value between 1 and 2 is barely perceptible and in nitro 5, I found that level on average 2.83 which is acceptable.
Keyboard and Touchpad: Acer keyboard has been always good since it launched. the key typing was excellent with 1.5 key travel. the keystrokes are medium-soft edge.
The touchpad was performing in an impressive way. No issues were found in that. Still, I want to suggest you use a good mouse and I always do it.
Clock speed: The clock speed I got from my test was above 4.1 Hz with turbo boosting on. So I got the full performance of SIMS 4. I was surprised by the nitro 5 that the CPU clock speed performed ahead of GPU. I don’t know how they managed it.
GPU and SIMS4 performance: You already know that this has NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 which is capable of running a high intended graphics workload. So for SIMS 4 is it was a really easy task. the GPU performance is really awesome for Sims 4.
Some important Sims 4 tasks like randomization, changing the aspirations like body shape, eye color, age, hairstyle, muscle definitions, and body weight were able to control very fast and flawlessly.
The creation of SIMS world such as a house, park, gym, the community was fantastic. I did not find any stress at any point.
The gaming experience of controlling SIMS was fabulous in one word. I could control each and each moves without any lagging.
Cheap Macbook For Sim 4 & 5
AMD and Intel-equipped laptops are not the only options for Sims 4 play, Apple Macbook Air and Apple MacBook Pro are in almost every way.
These are the best thin lights on the tech market now. They are extremely snappy, feel great to use, have an excellent screen for SIMS 4 gaming or any other workflows.
The battery life of MacBook Air and MacBook Pro is unmatched with other laptops. it has a beautiful machine, a much better keyboard than the others. in one word I can say All in One package for your SIMS 4.
MacBook also has cons. From my point of view …
- They are a more expensive
- Limited upgrade
I really recommend you to buy a MacBook to play the SIMS 4 if you have the budget. We have listed down the 3 best cheap MacBooks for SIM 4.
To play SIMS 4 on Mac, EA has provided some requirements.
MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR MAC
| Component | Minimum | Recommended |
| Operating system | Metal required. Mac OS® X 10,11 ( EI Capitan) | Operating system ® X 10,11 or later |
| CPU | Intel core 2 Duo, 2.4 GHz processor or better | Intel Core i5 or better |
| RAM | At least 4 GB RAM | 8 GB RAM |
| Hard Drive | At least 15 GB of free space and 1 GB additional space for custom contents and saved games | 18 GB of Hard Drive |
| Video | NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro or better. Video RAM of 256 MB or better. | NVIDIA GTX 650 or better |
| Input | Keyboard and mouse | |
| Online requirement | Internet connection required for product activation |
Apple MacBook Air Laptop
Apple MacBook Pro
Apple MacBook Air 13.3″ with Retina Display
Avoid Mistakes In Buying The Compatible Laptop That Can Run Sims 4
There is nothing worse than not getting the best laptop for your creation. There are many options out there at different price points that fit your budget.
let’s take a look at some mistakes that many gamers do before buying and how to avoid them for getting the best cheap laptop for sims 4.
Mistake # 1
I see many users making mistakes is over the display. You must see the laptop you are buying has at least 120 hertz or higher and a screen response time of less than 12 ms. This is the most important feature of your Sims 4 play laptop.
Mistake # 2
Things start to get a little complicated in the selection of GPU. In most cases, the model of GPU you choose and that you pay for can have less impact on real-world performance.
Suppose you have a couple of options to go with either a GTX 1650, GTX 1650ti, GTX 2070, or GTX 3050ti. Any of these should serve you well for SIMS 4.
But If you are on a tied budget, then go with GTX1650. But if you want better performance, you are good to go with GTX 1650ti. Because GTX 1650ti is more powerful than GTX 1650 for gaming performance-wise. Following that RTX 20 series, RTX 30 series, and it goes on.
As for CPUs, the AMD keeps things pretty simple. I can easily recommend Ryzen 4000 and 5000 series. They are both exceptional efficiency which means great performance in compact for SIMS 4 play or any other games.
Mistake # 3
Specs are another important factor for gaming. Many users go with the minimum specs because of the budget. It affects your workload.
I would like to suggest them to grab a laptop that has a storage slot or upgradability even it is an affordable laptop. when you will have money later, you can upgrade it. More storage you have, you can move your games in a short time at the same time.
You have to keep in mind that you are going to use your laptop for SIMS 4 gaming. Not actually for daily basis tasks like browsing, watching movies, web surfing, email, or word processing.
Mistake # 4
Another mistake that people make is overpaying for a laptop. This happens with every product. Buying the most expensive laptop for SIMS 4 that you are considering does not mean that the laptop can provide your feature value. If that laptop provides your feature value, by all means, invest it.
But if you are just spending money on a laptop that costs more because that laptop is better, that could be a waste of money.
Mistake #5
This mistake is done by maximum users for not buying pressing around the corners to check the stability. If the corners kind of dip below the chassis before it actuates, don’t buy that laptop. Besides, give the keys a press to see how consistent the force required to push it is. If some of them take more effort than others, keep looking unless you are a hunt or peck typist.
FAQs
What platform is the sims4 available on?
What languages are supported in sims 4?
They are- English, german, french, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Italian, Norwegian, dutch, danish, Finnish, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, Chinese (traditional), Chinese( simplified), Japanese, Korean.
Does SIMS 4 require the origin client to play?
Is a persistent connection required to play SIMS 4?
Will I be able to bring back any of my SIMS or content from SIMS 3 into SIMS 4?
VERDICT
SIMS 4 is a social simulation game. To enjoy the game perfectly the combination of display, screen response time, powerful GPU, CPU, and batter battery expansion in a laptop are required. after long research and what I got from the research tried to present before you in order to give you the beneficial and best results when you play SIMS 4.
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