Now, high-end gaming is another class of laptop that focuses more on performance than being thin or portable. The Lenovo Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of my favorites in this class, with a beautiful white chassis and bright OLED display. Unlike some OLED displays, the Legion 7i’s screen can be cranked up to more than 1,000 nits of brightness. The result is some truly stunning HDR performance that brings games to life. HDR is a powerful way to improve the visuals of your games without costing performance. Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of the best in this regard.
It’s still pretty thin at 0.7 inches thick, while plenty of ports are found on the back. This is the definition of a “clean” gaming laptop. When it comes to performance, it’s no slouch, offering the RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080 for graphics.
Cheap Gaming Laptops That Are Worth It
No gaming laptops worth buying are actually cheap. High refresh rate displays and discrete graphics always make them more expensive than standard laptops. But as you approach $1,000, there’s one laptop I always come back to: the Lenovo LOQ 15. Pronounced “Lock”, this Lenovo sub-brand is known for its focus on giving gamers the performance they want at an affordable price. No laptop does this better than the LOQ 15. Many laptop manufacturers sell their RTX 5060 configurations for hundreds of dollars. In fact, if you’re shopping around $1,000, there’s no reason not to buy the LOQ 15. Just do it.
If you’re looking to save some extra cash, there’s another option that’s cheaper than the LOQ 15 with some compromises in key areas. Acer Nitro V 16 is the laptop, which comes with RTX 5050. At one point last year it was as cheap as $600 — before the ongoing memory shortage drove up laptop prices — but it’s the only laptop cheaper than the Lenovo LOQ 15 that’s actually worth it. It’s powerful enough for an RTX 5050, and while the screen is pretty poor, it’s not a bad-looking laptop. One big caveat is that the 135-watt power supply it comes with doesn’t provide enough power to charge it in performance mode. Read more about this issue in my review, as it’s important to know if you’re planning to buy it.
There are other cheap gaming laptops out there that I’ve tested, such as MSI Cyborg A15but either the Acer Nitro V 16 or the Lenovo LOQ 15 are better, cheaper options. You’ll also find many gaming laptops under $1,000 that use older graphics cards, such as the RTX 4050 or 3050. In general, I would recommend staying away from them. They’re only a generation or two behind, but remember: Nvidia only releases new laptop graphics cards every two years. So, an RTX 4050 laptop can already be more than two years old, and an RTX 3050 is more than five years old. Not only do you suffer from poor graphics performance, but these laptops are more likely to need to be replaced sooner.
Experimental material
One of the interesting things about the world of gaming laptops right now is the experience. While a clamshell gaming laptop with a traditional Nvidia GPU is the most standard way to go, there are a few different ways to take your PC games on the go that stretch the boundaries. You might consider a gaming handheld, for example, a Steam Deck or Xbox Ally X. These handhelds have their fans, and while you can’t even do your homework on these devices, they’re great on couches, trains, and airplanes.
