These Are the Best Gaming Laptops for Conquering Your Opponents

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A gaming laptop is a must for gamers who want all the power from a desktop, but with a smaller footprint. These products pack desktop-class graphics and processing power into an elegant and portable form factor.

Today's market for portable gaming notebooks is overflowing with stellar options in multiple price points — from under $1,000 products to big-screen, monstrously powerful ones that cost well above $3,000. To determine the best for spending your hard-earned upgrade money, I spent weeks scrutinizing highly rated gaming laptops from leading makers like ASUS, HP, and Razer, among others.

How We Selected

My obsession with computer gaming dates back to the late 1980s, when I played Karateka on an 8-bit desktop. Fast-forward a few decades, and gameplay is still part of my routine, if mostly on weekends. Today, I’m lucky to follow the industry closely and frequently have hands-on time with hardware and gaming titles.

For this guide, I handpicked several gaming laptops at various screen sizes and price points that deliver a robust experience for newbies and seasoned players. I only considered PC laptops with powerful graphics that will guarantee high-quality gameplay for years.

Screen resolution and refresh rate were also important parts of my selection criteria. So were the laptops’ connectivity options, design, and build quality.

Now that you're up to speed on what's important about buying a gaming laptop learn more about our top picks to find the best one for you.

Best Overall

The HP Omen Transcend is the best gaming laptop for most buyers, offering futureproof hardware specs, superb gaming performance, and a surprisingly sleek, nicely understated design. The Omen Transcend weighs less than 5 pounds — a remarkable achievement for a big-screen gaming rig. It's suitable for use on the go, unlike many rivals.

Another bit that impressed us about the Omen Transcend is its battery life and fast charging tech. With up to 8 hours of screen-on time between charges, the notebook is also suitable for daily use that doesn't involve high-powered gameplay. Its bundled charger can bump its battery to 50% after only half an hour.

Onto performance, the Omen Transcend can power through AAA gaming titles at high resolution and graphics settings. Its display panel has a fast refresh rate and response time, which, combined with NVIDIA G-Sync support, brings fast and fluid gameplay worthy of its price category.

The Bang & Olufsen-tuned notebook speakers deliver a sonic experience that's a contender for best in class and equally suitable for gaming and watching videos. In addition, the Transcend has a fantastic set of connectivity features (both wired and wireless) and a Full HD webcam with a privacy shutter. A lower-priced iteration of the notebook with a GeForce RTX 4060 GPU is also available.

Best Value

By delivering an amalgam of elegant and distinctive design, strong hardware that will bring years of high-quality gameplay, and big-name cred at an amazing price, the ASUS ROG Strix G16 is today's most value-packed gaming notebook worth your attention. For less than $1,400 — a number close to budget territory in the gaming laptop realm — the notebook offers a gaming and sensory experience that defy it in every way.

The first thing that impressed me about the ROG Strix G16 is its design. Its impossibly slim display bezels and a light strip underneath its trackpad and palm rest give it a decidedly premium look that belongs in a higher price tier. So does the device's keyboard with customizable backlighting and transparent space, QWER, and ASDF buttons (the most commonly used ones in PC gameplay).

Remarkably, the laptop's display panel can deliver uncompromising high-performance gameplay and provide accurate colors to go with support for Dolby Vision-enhanced content. I wish the screen had a higher resolution. However, given the product's sticker, this isn't a dealbreaker.

If you like the design of the ASUS ROG Strix G16 but want more graphics and processing power, I have good news. While undeniably pricier, this version of the product has a more powerful Intel Core i9 chip and GeForce RTX 4070 graphics.

Best Budget

Priced below $900 before potential deals and discounts, the Acer Nitro 5 gaming laptop is a great option for thrifty buyers because it'll run today's hottest games in 1080p resolution at a smooth frame rate and with plenty of detail.

The affordable notebook packs hardware specs that won't wow you but satisfy your gaming needs. A respectable GPU is crucial for any laptop, including budget-friendly ones, so it's great Acer included it. The same goes for the Nitro's abundant set of futureproof wired and wireless connectivity features.

The product's no-nonsense design and solid build are also impressive, especially considering its price category. Weighing below 6 pounds, the Nitro is also reasonably portable for a gaming rig and easy to lug around.

It's worth noting that Acer offers a Nitro 5 variant with a slightly less capable GeForce RTX 3050 GPU and 8 GB RAM for less than $800. That said, dropping an extra $100 over this version will make your laptop deliver robust performance longer between upgrades.

Best Design and Hardware

The Razer Blade 16 gaming laptop is hands down the most beautiful of its kind. Its design is headlined by an impressively thin machined aluminum body with a black anodized finish, plus a stunning mini-LED display with slim bezels. It's undeniably expensive but worth it if you want the best of the best and budget permits.

The display panel mentioned above is also incredibly bright and vibrant. It can also switch between UHD+ resolution with best-in-class sharpness at a smooth 120 Hz or a higher performance mode with less pixel-dense WUXGA but a faster 240 Hz refresh rate. Such functionality puts the notebook in a league of its own.

Of course, the Blade 16 matches its striking looks and hardware with outstanding gameplay capabilities. It will have you playing today's hottest AAA games with the highest level of detail. In addition to being an excellent gaming rig, the notebook is also excellent for cranking out work, especially when it comes to graphic design and video editing. Its touchpad is one of the best in the game, and so is its keyboard with customizable Chroma lighting.

You can snag the Razer Blade 16 in black or mercury finishes. Consider this laptop version with slightly toned-down specs if you like the design but want to keep your budget below $3,000. On the other hand, this Blade 18 iteration is the Razer laptop to get if you want the biggest and baddest portable gaming rig, and your upgrade budget has no limits.

Best for Big-Screen Gameplay on a Tight Budget

This big-screen gaming rig by Acer will treat you to immersive gameplay at a price point that's impossible to resist. Priced just a tad north of $1,000, the Nitro has robust hardware specs, headlined by a powerful AMD processor, up-to-date NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 series graphics, a Full HD display panel with a high refresh rate, and a full-size keyboard with customizable backlighting.

The big-screen laptop will easily run virtually any game with high levels of detail. Its storage and memory are surprisingly plentiful for the money. The essential bits are also easily upgradeable in case your multitasking demands and game library grow down the line.

As expected from a big gaming laptop, the Acer Nitro 17 packs a ton of wired and wireless connectivity features. It is surprisingly elegant for its size, and it comes bundled with a storage sleeve that is handy for keeping its unwieldy chassis intact on the go.

If you like the product's design but want better specs, consider this $1,400 version with a beefier GeForce RTX 4060 GPU and a sharper screen. For $50 more, this GeForce RTX 4070-toting Nitro 17 is my pick in the range and one of the best laptops $1,500 can buy.

What to Consider

Though today's options span a broad price range, the best ones are a bit of an investment. So before you do anything, you should know what to look for in a gaming laptop.

The GPU Matters Most

The graphics card (GPU) and the processor are two essential hardware elements of gaming laptops. The GPU, in particular, is crucial because it renders the graphics of the video games you'll be playing. The more powerful the graphics card, the more expensive the laptop will be, but enjoying your favorite gaming titles to the fullest is worth it.

NVIDIA is the market leader in graphics by a large margin, and ideally, you should be looking for a notebook with an RTX 30 series card or better. NVIDIA's latest RTX 40 series laptop GPUs are widely available and the best if you want the latest and most up-to-date graphics for your money.

Here's a quick breakdown if you need help navigating NVIDIA's excellent lineup of laptop GPUs. A laptop with an RTX 4070 chip will deliver top-tier gameplay at a higher resolution than Full HD for years after you purchase it. An RTX 4060-equipped rig cuts a fine balance between power and value, so, depending on budget, it should be next to look out for.

The entry-level NVIDIA RTX 4050 will reliably power through gaming titles in Full HD between upgrades. On the other hand, if you want to game at the highest resolution (including 4K) with a maxed-out frame rate and level of detail, look for laptops with RTX 4080 graphics. Such products are costly, but the experience they deliver is worth it.

Screen

Most of today's gaming high-quality laptops come equipped with a display panel that rocks a higher resolution than Full HD — an industry standard over the past few years and the bare minimum for a new product.

Given the leap in graphics performance, I highly recommend you consider laptops with WQXGA (2,560 x 1,600 pixels) screens. These panels are sharper than Full HD and better for gaming and everyday use. Of course, premium notebooks with a 4K screen are also available for the ultimate visual experience. Their higher resolution puts much more strain on the GPU, but the visuals are second to none.

Display refresh rate and response time are two important features of display panels. Today's best gaming laptops have screens with refresh rates of at least 144 Hz; some even feature 240 Hz and up. For the best gameplay, you'll want a laptop with a higher refresh rate, which results in smoother gaming graphics and an overall more enjoyable user experience.

Screen response time is measured in milliseconds and should be as low as possible. Having a faster response time means that the display panel's pixels change to black, white, or gray tones more rapidly so that fast-paced action gaming has no on-screen artifacts that can ruin it.

About AAA Games

This term refers to today's big-name, big-budget video games from the leading studios. A good gaming laptop should be able to deliver the hottest titles in at least 60 frames per second. The bare minimum for a decent playing experience is 30 frames per second.

Typically, video games have at least four levels of in-game graphics — low, medium, high, and ultra. A good laptop should be able to effortlessly play games in its display's native Full HD resolution and high graphics settings. If you want to get started with PC gaming, we recommend that you opt for a notebook with at least an NVIDIA RTX 30 series graphics card — the minimum you'll need to achieve such gameplay.

Connectivity

When it comes to wireless connectivity features, it is imperative that you opt for a gaming laptop with support for futureproof Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 or higher. Every laptop we picked has these essential features on board.

All gaming laptops we picked have a full USB port and a fast USB-C connector — a must-have for connecting gaming accessories and legacy peripherals. Many of the product category's finest offerings also have an HDMI 2.1 port for delivering gameplay at a high refresh rate and resolution to an external display.

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