I'm close to pulling the trigger on a new laptop. I'm not considering 17" laptops, and it won't get a huge amount of use as my desktop is my primary rig, so I don't need a 10lb $4,000 gaming beast, just something that is decent and portable, for gaming, media and maybe some multi-core apps (rendering etc.). This is what I have my eye on, which will cost just over $2k with o/s preinstalled (Windows 11 Pro):
Sager NP8753R
15.6" 1920x1080 144Hz
i7-11800H
RTX 3070 Max-Q (8GB DDR6)
2x16GB 3200MHz CL20 ram
1TB Samsung 980 Pro m.2
To upgrade to the RTX 3080 Max-Q adds ~$500 to the price - not worth it imo - it's not a huge performance jump relative to the $ jump, and my desktop is my primary rig anyway. Likely same goes for the incoming 3070Ti laptop GPUs which are due any time now (MSI already have a 3070Ti range listed).
Not really looking at i9 CPUs - too much heat for a laptop, and again not really necessary for my needs.
Only thing I'm wondering is if I should wait for the Intel 12th Gen laptop CPUs, more specifically i7-12800H or similar... apparently 12 Gen are a significant jump in performance over 11th Gen and only about $60 more... of course that would probably mean DDR5 as well, so perhaps a little extra cost involved there, but that's acceptable.
So.. pull the trigger, or wait a little longer for 12th Gen? ..from what I am reading, it may be worth the wait.