Five years ago, EVGA launched its own gaming laptop. What the hell happened?

There's a lot of money to be made in gaming laptops. Major manufacturers like Lenovo, Dell, and HP have always had a few gaming laptops under their belts, but it wasn't until a few years ago when they really started to ramp up their offerings and branch out into more gaming-centric sub-brands like Legion or Omen. EVGA, a well-known maker of PC parts and graphics cards, jumped into the laptop gaming arena in 2016 and 2017 with the launch of the 17.3-inch SC17 and 15.6-inch SC15, respectively.

EVGA's time in the laptop world proved to be extremely short lived. As opposed to the deeper pockets of Lenovo, Dell, or HP, EVGA focused on just one or two laptop models with just one or two SKUs each. These models were more expensive than anticipated which likely contributed to their downfall. The SC15 with Core i7-7700HQ and GTX 1060, for example, would retail for about $1900 USD which just wasn't competitive enough when compared to the similarly-priced and better marketed MSI GS65 and GS63 at the time.

The company has been silent about its laptop plans ever since 2017 and it remains to be seen if EVGA will even want to try its luck again. Our calls remain unanswered and it's possible that sales didn't meet expectations to continue the investment. EVGA had designed its laptops in-house instead of relying on white label options a la Schenker or Eurocom which may have bumped up R&D even further.

Though heavy for their size classes, we personally found both the SC15 and SC17 to be rigid, well-made, and not as loud as many other gaming laptops around their time. We need more companies like EVGA to step to the plate to avoid a future where only a very small handful of manufacturers are responsible for all gaming laptops in the market.