Whether you want to take your rig on the road, carry it to the couch or just save space on your desk, a gaming laptop packs PC performance into a compact, portable form factor. Because people have different needs and budgets, the market is loaded with choices that come with screens ranging from 14 to 18 inches, graphics cards that can handle a variety of resolutions and prices that start at less than $999 but creep over the $5,000 mark. The best gaming laptops often come with fancy RGB lights, high refresh rate panels and, sometimes, even mechanical keyboards.
To help you choose the right gaming laptop for you, we test many models each year, benchmarking them in popular games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Borderlands 3, measuring the color gamut and brightness of their screens, determining battery life and, of course, playing with them. Below, we’ve listed the best gaming laptops for different sizes, price points and use cases. For those on a tight gaming budget, we also have dedicated pages for the best gaming laptops under $1,500 and the best gaming laptops under $1,000.
The quick list
The Best Gaming Laptop
MSI’s flagship gaming laptop has a gorgeous 18-inch Mini-LED display, an RGB touchpad, and a mechanical keyboard. For gaming, it’s powered by an Intel Core i9-14900HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU, plus luxurious amounts of RAM and storage. The downside? It’s $5,399.99, putting it out of reach for most.
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Best Budget Gaming Laptop
The Acer’s Nitro line has often a place on this list, mixing build quality, performance, and low pricing to create a reasonable product. The Nitro 16, replacing the old Nitro 5, delivers the entry-level power of an RTX 4050 and a Ryzen 5 7640HS, but with some niceties, you can get for under $1,000.
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Best Budget Gaming Laptop Alternative
The $999 model features a Core i7-13620H and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 and offers strong 1080p performance. It includes 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, which is nice to see, as those are often some of the first specs to get cut for a budget PC. Its 144 Hz refresh rate will be a boon for esports players. We also appreciate the quality of the speakers for the price.
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Best Thin and Light Gaming Laptop
The Asus ROG Strix G16 is catching up to Razer in powerful, portable gaming laptops well. The Strix G16’s Core i9-13980HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 provided great performance in a 0.89-inch thick chassis. Is the design as sleek as Razer’s Blades? No, but at $1,999.99 when we tested it, Asus is also competing on price.
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5. Lenovo Legion Pro 5i (Gen 8)
Best Esports Machine
Sometimes you want to run your games fast, and sometimes you prioritize making them look great. The Lenovo Legion Pro 5i splits the difference, with a 2560 x 1600 screen that goes up to 165 Hz, allowing for both quick-twitch esports alongside immersive action games. The fact that you can get it for under $1,500 sure doesn’t hurt, and the gaming performance with an RTX 4060 is solid.
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6. Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16
Best Dual-Screen Gaming Laptop
Sometimes one screen isn’t enough. The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo adds a second screen for chat apps, music, or guides so you never have to take your games off of the beautiful, mini LED display. The dual-screen design can create some awkward situations — the keyboard is at the bottom of the wrist rest — but this system is powerful and flexible if you need more displays.
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Best Gaming Laptops 2024
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The Best Gaming Laptop
The MSI Titan GT77 HX has everything, and, we’ll be honest, it should. We tested it at $5,399.99, which is way out of reach for most people (don’t worry, there are cheaper options further down the list). Between powerful performance, an excellent 18-inch mini-LED screen, and a clicky, mechanical keyboard, there’s a lot to enjoy here.
The Intel Core i9-14900HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop GPU are powerful, though they admittedly don’t offer a huge bump over previous generations. But with 128GB of RAM and 4TB of SSD storage there’s plenty of room for games and more memory than you’ll ever need for gaming. This would be a great machine for video editors.
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Admittedly, the 14th Gen Intel Core processor doesn’t have any huge performance gains over 13th Gen Core gaming laptops, but the Titan 18 HX did great in some of our most difficult tests, like running Cyberpunk 2077 on the Ray Tracing Ultra preset.
MSI is using a Cherry MX mechanical keyboard, which is clicky and comfortable. It’s a luxury for typing and gaming, though it’s unfortunate that MSI doesn’t also use these switches for the number and arrow keys.
But the highlight is the 18-inch, mini-LED display, which covered 112.4% of the DCI-P3 color gamut in our testing and measured an incredibly bright 559 nits with our light meter. Games and movies look excellent on this HDR display.
With the Titan, MSI has come as close to cramming a desktop into a laptop chassis as possible. It’s for people who don’t have room for — or don’t want — a desktop. It’s the best in many ways, assuming you can afford it.
Read: MSI Titan 18 HX review
The Best Budget Gaming Laptop
The Acer’s Nitro line has often a place on this list, mixing build quality, performance, and low pricing to create a reasonable product. The Nitro 16, replacing the old Nitro 5, delivers the entry-level power of an RTX 4050 and a Ryzen 5 7640HS, but with some niceties you can get for under $1,000.
Our $999 review unit included a 1920 x 1200, 165 Hz display with G-Sync support, which is great for esports gaming. It’s nice and bright at 371 nits on our light meter, and covered 91% of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
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In our game testing, we found that the system is not the most powerful, but that it has enough power for today’s games at the system’s native 1920 x 1200. In almost every game we tested, the Nitro surpassed 60 fps.
We also appreciated that the laptop offered 8 hours and 24 minutes of battery life on our test, which beat other laptops in i’s class — some by multiple hours.
The webcam isn’t amazing, and Acer has a habit of putting too much bloatware on laptops that you’ll spend some time uninstalling. But getting USB 4 under $1,000, alongside a solid screen and decent performance for the price makes this a great choice for someone whose budget it set at $1,000.
Read: Acer Nitro 16 Review
Best Budget Alternative
The MSI Katana 15 is among our favorite gaming laptops for those with just $1,000 to spend. We tested a $999 model with a Core i7-13620H and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 offering strong 1080p performance, though you may have to turn down some settings in some games.
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In our testing, the Katana passed 60 fps in most benchmarks at some pretty high settings, though some, like Red Dead Redemption 2, were run lower. As games get more challenging, budget laptops won’t run at the highest settings for long.
Even under $1,000, you get 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, which is nice to see, as those are often some of the first specs to get cut for a budget PC. Instead, the chassis is made of cheap plastic, but the internals should get the job done.
The display could be a bit more vivid, but its 144 Hz refresh rate will be a boon for esports players. And for its price, it delivers solid audio.
Read: MSI Katana 15 Review
Best Thin and Light Gaming Laptop
The Asus ROG Strix G16 is catching up to Razer in powerful, portable gaming laptops well. The Strix G16’s Core i9-13980HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 provided great performance in a 0.89-inch thick chassis. Is the design as sleek as Razer’s Blades? No, but at $1,999.99 when we tested it, Asus is also competing on price.
We also appreciated the Strix’s battery life — it lasted for 8 hours and 49 minutes on our battery test, as well as the RGB keys with 2 millimeters of travel.
The laptop’s lid is aluminum, but the rest is plastic. In our time with the laptop, not once did we think the ROG Strix G16 felt cheap.
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In fact, in each of the benchmarks we ran, the ROG Strix G16 surpassed 60 fps (often handily!), showing solid performance at both 1080p and its native 1920 x 200. Perhaps the biggest issue we had is that our unit had a 1920 x 1200 touch screen. The RTX 4070 should power that no problem based on our benchmarks, and in this price range you often see 1440p (or, in 16:10 screens like this one, 1600p) display panels.
Read: Asus ROG Strix G16 Review
Best 16-inch Esports Machine
For under $1,500, you can get a 16-inch esports machine with a screen that also allows for high-resolution, intensive titles. The 2560 x 1600 display goes up to 165 Hz, which is fast enough for esports at 1080p, while the high resolution will make action games look great. Sure, some gaming laptops have faster displays, but they’re often more expensive.
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The “i” in 5i Pro stands for Intel. We tested with an Intel Core i7-13700HX along with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4060. Our system also had 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB SSD.
This model has an improved 1080p webcam over previous generations, which is good for working as well as gaming. We found that its SSD was fast in our testing, and it offered competing gaming performance. That being said, you may want to consider one of the best gaming headsets because there’s plenty of fan noise and the audio quality isn’t the best.
Read: Lenovo Legion Pro 5i (Gen 8) Review
The Best Dual-Screen Gaming Laptop
For when one screen isn’t enough, the Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 offers two, powered by AMD’s top-end Ryzen 9 7945HX and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 40890. The second screen, dubbed ScreenPad Plus, provides a bit of extra real estate for chat apps or guides while gaming, and lifts up in order to increase ventilation.
The main mini LED screen, at an incredible 684 nits of brightness on our light meter, looks excellent with HDR games and shows. It’s matte, while the ScreenPad Plus is glossy, but that’s a minor issue.
With shiny purple and blue lines, Asus eschews the standard RGB on the lid, and it looks refined and unique because of it. Now if only Asus could refine the placement of the keyboard and mouse, which have been awkward for a few generations now. You’ll have to decide if that second screen is worth the effort.
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On our gaming suite, the Zephyrus Duo didn’t perform as well as Intel-based competitors, so that may be worth considering if frames per second is the most important measure of your experience. But if you’re going by the number of screens, this definitely has an advantage.
Read: Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 Review
How We Test Gaming Laptops
How we test gaming laptops
Every gaming laptop that we review goes through a rigorous series of tests and benchmarks to decide whether it’s worth your consideration.
Currently, games that we run and may include in our reviews are:
| Game | Preset |
|---|---|
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | Highest |
| Grand Theft Auto V | Very High |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | Ray Tracing Ultra |
| Far Cry 6 | Ultra |
| Red Dead Redemption 2 | Medium |
| Borderlands 3 | Badass |
We also run a stress test, which currently consists of the Metro Exodus benchmark on the RTX preset, run 15 times in a loop while recording system statistics with HWInfo. (This is also when we take our heat tests).
Additionally, we run a series of productivity benchmarks, including Geekbench, Handbrake, and our in-house file transfer test.
We measure gaming laptop displays with our colorimeter and light meter, and report brightness in nits, as well as the volume of the DCI-P3 and sRGB color gamut that the screen covers.
Our battery test connects to a local web server over Wi-Fi, and continuously browses the web, runs simple OpenGL graphics tests, and streams videos. We report the amount of time the laptop ran for in hours and minutes.
We also think it’s important to actually use the gaming laptops we test. Our writers and editors spend time playing games and using gaming laptops in other ways, like writing their reviews, watching videos, and listening to music, so that we can report on our own thoughts and feelings about the keyboard, design, port selection, audio, and other features.
Because the ability to upgrade and repair gaming laptops is particularly important, we open every system to see which parts are user replaceable, and document that experience so you know what you can change down the line.
Gaming Laptop Shopping Tips
- Focus on the GPU: Most games are dependent on the GPU, and those aren’t upgradeable. If you splurge on a powerful GPU now, you’ll be gaming comfortably for a few years.
- You can upgrade some parts later: While the best CPUs for gaming and GPUs are almost always soldered down, most gaming laptops let you replace the RAM and storage, so you can buy cheaper now and add more memory and a bigger best hard drive or SSD down the road. Thicker, more powerful laptops are often easier to upgrade than thinner ones, so be sure to do some research before buying. (We include this information in our reviews).
- Battery life will probably be bad: Very few gaming notebooks get 8 hours or more on a charge, and you need the power supply to get the best gaming performance anyway. However, we’ve seen some strong times from AMD’s Ryzen processors, and Nvidia suggests its improved Optimus technology may help turn the tide. For peak gaming performance, however, you’ll want to be sure to be plugged in while playing.
Discounts on the Best Gaming Laptops
Whether you’re shopping for one of the best gaming laptops or another model that didn’t quite make our list, you may find some savings by checking out our lists of Dell coupon codes, HP coupon codes, Lenovo coupon codes, Razer promo codes or Newegg promo codes.
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