gaming laptops are not what we would call cheap. Still, they’re often more cost-effective than building your own gaming PC, peripherals and all, with the added benefit of being much more travel-friendly. Yes, you can spend over $2,500 for a fully featured laptop, but there’s still a lot of value to be found at the lower end of the market (about $1,000). We’ve played all kinds of games on a range of cheap gaming laptops and narrowed the list down to the best.
We prioritized laptops with Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards, at least an 11th-gen Intel or 5000-series AMD Ryzen chip, and 16GB of RAM. These specs aim for a benchmark of approximately 60 frames per second (fps) at 1080p pixel resolution in graphically rich titles and over 120 fps in competitive games.
Check out our guides to the best gaming laptops, best laptops, and best cheap laptops for more computer recommendations. Our guide How to choose a laptop can also come in handy.
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