I’m an associate staff writer at Wirecutter covering video games and gaming hardware. I started playing video games at 4 years old, and for the past three years, I’ve tested hundreds of peripherals such as keyboards, controllers, and headsets for Wirecutter’s other gaming guides.

For this guide:

• I spoke to each of the most prominent gaming laptop manufacturers—including Acer, Alienware, Asus, Gigabyte, Lenovo, and Razer—to research the newest models available for less than $1,500.
• I consulted Wirecutter’s other tech experts and the previous authors of this guide to understand and troubleshoot laptop hardware, and to update our testing plan over the years.
• I played over 50 hours of games combined across our top picks, ranging from first-person shooters and RPGs to point-and-click city-builders.

A gaming laptop isn’t right for everyone. If you don’t need a computer that you can take with you, consider an entry-level gaming desktop, which can play games better and can provide higher-quality visuals than a laptop of the same price. Desktops are also easier to upgrade in the future.

If portability is what you’re after, keep in mind that most gaming laptops are still bigger than a standard MacBook or a Chromebook, with bulkier chargers that take up more space in a backpack or on a tabletop—and they suffer greatly in performance and battery life when not plugged in. But if you want to take your games from room to room, or if you frequently stay at different houses or hotels, a gaming laptop may suit your needs well.

Spending more money buys you a slimmer, lighter, and more portable gaming laptop, but you don’t need to spend more than $1,500 to get good performance. In recent years, more affordable gaming laptops have been getting high-refresh-rate displays and powerful graphics hardware with support for ray tracing (a type of graphics rendering that allows for more sophisticated and realistic visual effects and lighting), as well as upscaling technology like DLSS for Nvidia GPUs or FSR for AMD GPUs. These features are showing up in more games, and our main pick in this guide can utilize ray tracing without sacrificing performance or frame rates.

A great gaming laptop should deliver consistent, high-quality performance without overheating—a challenge for gaming laptops of any price. For this guide, we evaluate laptops costing less than $1,500; we’ve found that more expensive models aren’t worth recommending because they typically run too hot to touch or don’t perform well enough to justify their price.

Here’s how we select the most promising options, in order of importance:

Performance: We examine several variables to determine whether a gaming laptop is powerful enough to be worth the money.

• Graphics card: The graphics processing unit, or GPU, has the biggest influence on what games you can play and at which settings you can play them. You can’t upgrade your laptop’s GPU, and if you cut corners at the time of purchase, you’ll have to shell out for a new computer sooner to play new games in the future. For our latest round of testing, we evaluated laptops built with the newest generation of Nvidia’s 40-series GPUs and AMD’s 6000-series GPUs.
• Video memory: We also consider a graphics processor’s dedicated video memory, or VRAM. As of 2024, some demanding AAA games, such as Alan Wake 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Starfield, recommend 8 GB of VRAM, but we also consider laptops under $1,000 with less.
• Processor: A gaming laptop needs a processor powerful enough to coordinate effectively with the GPU. We recommend 12th- or 13th-generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processors and 6000- or 7000-series Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9 processors because they’ll provide acceptable performance for longer.
• Memory: You can get by with 8 GB of system memory, or RAM, in a gaming laptop if you aren’t live-streaming. But 16 GB of RAM is ideal for modern games, especially if you also live-stream on platforms such as Twitch or YouTube.
• Solid-state drive: A solid-state drive speeds up boot times and reduces loading times in games, so all of our recommendations have SSDs. We prefer at least a 512 GB solid-state drive. With games like 2023’s Starfield demanding 140 GB of free space for a full install, smaller storage options aren’t enough.

Heat: Without an effective cooling system, a gaming laptop can overheat while playing more-demanding games, which can slow gaming performance and shorten the laptop’s lifespan. It can also burn your fingers or your lap—or minimally, make your hands sweaty if the laptop vents heat out to the sides. We test many laptops that perform well in games, but very few stay cool enough for us to recommend them.

Noise: Noisy fans are a reasonable trade-off for a cool laptop, but they shouldn’t drown out the speakers or split your ears. They also shouldn’t blast during less-demanding activities such as browsing the web.

Keyboard and trackpad: The keyboard should be comfortable and responsive, as you use it for the majority of game inputs. And a decent trackpad still matters for web browsing and everyday tasks, even if most people use a mouse or controller for gaming.

Display: We think 15-inch laptops strike a good balance between screen size and relative portability, though we also evaluate 17.3-inch laptops that meet our testing criteria. Any pick we make for the best cheap gaming laptop needs to have a 1920×1080 screen—no exceptions. We also look for IPS panels with refresh rates around 144 Hz, because the higher the refresh rate, the smoother animations appear—so long as the frame rates are also high.

Portability: Plenty of gaming laptops also see use for school or work, so we still consider laptops’ battery life, size, and weight in this category.

Upgradability: You should be able to easily remove the bottom panel of the laptop to upgrade the memory and storage. But to keep prices low, laptop makers often design budget models to be less upgradable.

Software and bloatware: A gaming laptop should come with software for controlling the fans, performance, and lighting. Budget gaming laptops typically come with an excess of bloatware, but you can either remove unnecessary programs one at a time or run Microsoft’s reset utility to remove all that and reinstall any specific programs you need. Resetting Windows eliminates everything, including the useful programs that manage fans and some important drivers, so confirm that you can download those utilities from the manufacturer’s site before you nuke it all.

Build quality: Many cheap laptops flex and creak under light pressure, sound hollow or plasticky, and have wobbly lids, but a well-made laptop will hold up better over years of use (and occasional abuse).

In our latest round of testing, we benchmarked each laptop using Forza Motorsport, Gears Tactics, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage to check for any unexpected performance and heat issues. Then we played half an hour of Overwatch 2—a popular game, but not too taxing—on ultra settings. After that, we pushed our finalists with a more graphically demanding game, playing 30 minutes of Assassin’s Creed Mirage on its highest settings with VSync and DLSS off; we also turned up the ray-tracing settings to their highest value. We measured the internal temperature of the laptops using HWMonitor Pro, and we measured the surface temperature at various points on the keyboard and underside using an IR thermometer.

We used each of the finalists for many more hours of work and games to get a feel for the keyboard, trackpad, screen, and speakers. Using an X-Rite colorimeter, we set our finalists’ screen backlights to 150 nits and ran a web-browsing battery test that cycled through web pages, email, Google Docs, and video. Because we set each laptop to the same brightness, the results are directly comparable.

Tested configuration

The Gigabyte G6X (9KG-43US864SH) should play most games smoothly for years to come. It’s equipped with powerful graphics and processing hardware, and it consistently produced high frame rates in our tests. It also has a high-refresh-rate display, a decent port selection that accommodates up to four USB peripherals at the same time, and a convenient, rear-mounted power jack that keeps the power cable out of your way.

It should be powerful enough to play the newest games for the next few years. The Gigabyte G6X has enough VRAM and processing power to meet the system requirements for the majority of today’s most taxing games. Although video game technology advances quickly, the hardware in this laptop should remain capable of playing games smoothly at 1920×1200 resolution for years down the line.

It produces high frame rates, though you may need to sacrifice some of that to eliminate screen tearing. In most cases, the G6X delivered higher frame rates than any other gaming laptop we tested this year, averaging between 80 and 100 frames per second on the highest settings at 1920x1200 resolution in every game we used for benchmarking. However, the G6X’s display doesn’t support variable refresh rate (or VRR), so we saw considerable screen tearing, especially in Overwatch 2. We performed our tests with in-game VSync and Nvidia G-Sync settings off, but the screen-tearing issues went away when we toggled the VSync settings in Overwatch 2 on, and the frame-rate averages were still well above 70 fps.

It stays cool under pressure. This laptop’s keys and underside never got too hot to touch, and its internal components stayed acceptably cool when we pushed its performance to the max.

The keyboard is comfortable to type on, and the trackpad is easy to use. The G6X’s keyboard includes a number pad, full-size arrow keys, and a clicky trackpad that’s easy to control.

It offers most of the necessary ports, and some of them are located on the back of the laptop. We love rear-mounted ports and power jacks because they can reduce the amount of cables that splay across your desk and get in the way of your mouse hand. The G6X has rear-mounted power, USB-C, HDMI, and Ethernet ports. On the sides, it provides two USB-A ports, an additional USB-C port with Power Delivery, and an audio jack.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It has loud fans, and you’ll have to learn to live with them. In regular daily use, and especially when we fired up a game, the fans on the Gigabyte G6X were so loud that the noise was sometimes intolerable—you’ll probably want to wear a good headset to drown out the volume. And unlike our other picks, this laptop can’t play most games properly when you lower the fan speed or select the quiet preset in the Gigabyte Control Center software; in some cases, we couldn’t run certain games at all.

Tested configuration

The Acer Nitro V 15 (ANV15-41-R2Y3) is the most portable and affordable gaming laptop we recommend, and it’s the best option if you play games that are less taxing than the newest, most graphically intensive titles. But as new games come out with increasingly higher system requirements, the 6 GB of VRAM built into the Nitro V 15 may not measure up for long, in comparison with our other picks.

It’s capable enough to play most new, modern games on high settings. Games we played on the Acer Nitro V 15 looked great and played smoothly. Unlike with our other picks, we didn’t need to modify any graphics settings for the Nitro V 15 to display Overwatch 2 without screen tearing, and it reliably produced more than 70 frames per second. We also measured close to 70 fps in Assassin’s Creed Mirage on ultra settings. However, it averaged between 40 fps and 50 fps on the medium and high settings in 2023’s Forza Motorsport.

It has an effective cooling system. At its default fan settings, the Nitro V 15 kept its most-touched surfaces and its internal components cool enough during our gaming tests, and the fans weren’t too loud. When we used the laptop’s quietest fan preset, it didn’t sacrifice frame rates or performance.

Upgrading the storage and memory is easy. The included 16 GB of RAM is plenty of memory for gaming, but depending on which games you play, you may want to upgrade the solid-state drive. With certain games like 2023’s Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield demanding more than 120 GB of space, this laptop’s 512 GB SSD may fill up fast. Fortunately, you can easily pop open the Nitro V 15 to add more storage, and you can get a 500 GB solid-state drive for around $50.

It’s lighter and more portable than our other picks. The Nitro V 15 has a slim form and a slightly smaller display in comparison with the other 16-inch laptops we recommend in this guide. It also weighs less, and it has a more petite AC adapter, which makes the whole unit easier to stash in a backpack.

The port selection is modest but still includes the important slots you need for your peripherals. This laptop has three USB-A ports, one USB-C port, an HDMI port, an Ethernet jack, and an audio jack. However, the power jack is located on the left side, which can get in the way depending on your setup, or if you’re left-handed.

The keyboard has a convenient, built-in software button. By pressing the NitroSense key located on the function row, you can instantly bring up Acer’s dedicated laptop software to monitor the CPU and GPU temperatures, adjust the fan speeds and power settings, and customize the performance. This feature is especially nice for quickly toggling the fans between normal and quiet settings to match your activity.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It comes with 6 GB of VRAM, which is good enough to play most games—for now. As games grow increasingly hungry for beefy hardware, this laptop may not provide as much longevity as either of our other picks.

You’ll find no fancy RGB lighting here. The keyboard backlight is white and does not support RGB colors or animations. But it still does its job, illuminating everything you need to use the laptop in the dark.

The Gigabyte Aorus 16X (9KG-43USC54SH) was our top pick in this guide in 2024, but it’s currently out of stock. If you can find a model with with our recommended configuration—that is, the 9KG-43USC54SH version that includes an Nvidia RTX 4060 GPU and an Intel Core i7-13650HX processor—we think it’s still a great option.

The fans on the Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-58-56CH) were intolerably loud whenever the display was turned on. The bottom of the laptop also ran too hot.

We dismissed the Acer Nitro 16 (AN16-41-R3ZV), the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 (PHN16-71-50JG), and the Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 (PHN16-72-99PA) because they vented hot air out of the sides. The keys and underside on the PHN16-72-99PA were too hot, as well.

The Acer Nitro V 16 (ANV16-41-R5J0) has a limited port selection, and the underside got too hot in our benchmark tests. It also vented hot air to the sides.

The Acer Predator Helios 300 (PH315-53-72XD) was a former pick in this guide, but its WASD keys ran about 10 degrees hotter than those of our top picks, and its keyboard has a flaw that we considered to be a dealbreaker: Unless you press firmly in the middle of each key, it may not register the keystroke. We had issues typing and gaming on two different units, and we found numerous reports of the same problem in owner reviews.

During our initial benchmark tests, the keys and underside of both the Alienware m16 R2 and the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (GA402RK) got way too hot, and both laptops vented hot air to the sides. The m16 R2’s CPU also overheated immediately.

The Asus TUF Gaming F16 (FX607JV-ES73) failed our benchmark tests because it vented hot air out the sides, and the keys measured too hot.

During our benchmark tests, the underside of the Dell G15 5330 reached temperatures of up to 140 °F.

In our benchmark tests, the Gigabyte G5 (KF-E3US333SH) delivered wildly inconsistent results. And the fans had a mind of their own—not only were they loud, but they also blasted on and off seemingly at their own will.

The MSI Cyborg 15 (A13VE-218US) ran too hot on some of the keys and on the underside in our 30-minute playtests, even on the lowest graphics settings.

The MSI GF65 Thin (10SER-458) and MSI Katana 15 (B13VFK-817US) ran too hot in all our tests, even with the fans maxed out.

Kimber Streams contributed reporting. This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Signe Brewster.