You can't scale $700 laptop performance up to 4K 60fps without it being an absolute mess.

You mention the tech being similar, that is true, but upscaling from a, say, 1700p signal to a 4K one is an entirely different beast to 1080p > 4K.

Those "old" games would utterly destroy a $700 gaming laptop. You'd be very lucky indeed to get 60FPS even at low 1080p.

My comment was more about the irrelevancy of consoles once they start getting past the £500 mark, used to be that you'd have a good advantage over a mid-tier PC for about 2 years.

Consoles being vastly better price/perf at the start of the generation and then getting overtaken by PC towards the end has always been the case. Every generation at the start there's alarmism about consoles killing PC gaming, then mid-to-late gen people act as if console gaming is dead. Neither end up happening.

That said, you'd still struggle to build a $700 PC that outperforms a PS5 Pro. You could get reasonably close maybe if you're clever with the budget, though.

Where the PC library is huge, add in Emulation and it's even bigger.

I'm not arguing against PC. I think PC is the better and better value platform. I play on PC exclusively (well my kids have a switch, and I play with them, I guess, but just for me personally it's all PC or Steam Deck).

I'm just saying there is zero chance of you getting a 4K gaming laptop for $700. $1250+ seems a lot more likely.