New Delhi, May 1 -- For years, the only way to get workstation-class performance in a portable form factor was to buy a gaming laptop. You put up with the aggressive "gamer" aesthetics-the neon RGB lighting and the bulky, tank-like chassis-because that was the only way to get the necessary horsepower.

Today, that category is being quietly rewritten as hardware makers recognise that a growing share of their most demanding users aren't gamers at all-they're creators.

And this isn't just a marketing pivot.

During a recent conversation with Paramjeet Singh Mehta, Product and Marketing Head for Consumer PC & Gaming at ASUS India, the scale of this transition became clear. "Post-COVID, people started monetizing their creative content," Mehta...