Best budget gaming laptop 2024

The Gigabyte G5 is a well-balanced laptop with RTX 4060 graphics and 16 GB DDR6 VRAM that will offer good levels of performance at 1080p for several years yet, as long as you are realistic about settings in the latest AAA games.

An ace up the RTX 4000 series is the introduction of DLSS 3 frame generation which improves the smoothness of the experience for games that support it, making better use of the 144hz display. You can even play Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing at respectable framerates, something that was almost unthinkable on lower-end laptops just a few years ago. If you play esports titles, you’ll have no issue running them flat-out at the native refresh rate and resolution.

The G5 is equipped with 16GB DDR4 RAM, and while not at the cutting edge, the 12th gen Intel i5-12500H with its 4 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores will make short work of gaming and productivity workloads. At 512GB, the SSD is a little on the leaner side, but you can upgrade to the best SSD for gaming if you need more storage later down the line.

The 2023 G5 has seen a size reduction of 22% from the last generation, with no sacrifice made to the screen size or performance, which makes it great for fitting in a backpack. On the downside, the battery life is only around 5 hours in a mixed workload of writing, light photo editing, and browsing, which means you need to stay close to a power outlet.

The ASUS ROG Flow X13 can often be found on sale below $1,000/£1,000. It’s a productivity monster, with an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS to make short work of any CPU load. Powering the visuals is the RTX 3050 Ti which can tap into features such as DLSS 2 to get games running at faster speeds to make use of the 120Hz display.

The Flow X13’s display is in the 16:10 aspect ratio, which isn’t common to see in this price range outside of ultrabooks. The extra vertical distance goes a long way with productivity and reading and makes the 13.4-inch display feel quite expansive for its small footprint. If you find it a little small to use at home though then you might find a great alternative in our top picks for the best gaming monitors.

The integrated 680M of the Ryzen CPU is no slouch itself and can quite closely hold its own with the 3050 Ti in games that don’t support Nvidia-exclusive features. You might find you get better battery life running lighter titles off of the iGPU.

It is somewhat of a strange pairing though, the 6900HS was at the top end of the mobile AMD CPU stack in 2022 and it massively outclasses the GPU which tells us that the Z13 most likely has work applications that require CUDA cores in mind and gaming being a secondary feature. But game they do and we won’t complain about having a top-class ultrabook for under $1000.

Lenovo makes just about every laptop imaginable but one of their most popular is the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 and for good reason. Whilst its specs might be on the lower end, so is the price as it can be had for $699.99 (£695).

The RTX 3050 won’t so much as flinch when it comes to older esports titles and will make good use of the 120Hz display. Any dropped frames will get smoothed out by the FreeSync display for a consistent and tear-free gaming experience.

If you’re away from the plug, Lenovo claims you can get up to 13.5 hours of battery life watching videos (with the brightness down) by just using the AMD 6600H which is an extremely efficient CPU with an equally impressive integrated iGPU, the 660M which can also play many games in its own right.

The US version however only comes with a 256GB SSD which hurts its value proposition somewhat but this is easily user-replaceable. Also upgradable is the RAM which at 8GB is pretty paltry, even for basic workloads such as browsing and light photo editing so you will want to grab another 8GB stick at some point. This will offer even more performance as you will be running your RAM in dual channel so you will see quite the uplift in framerates.

If you need a lot of space for work or want your mobile gaming to be as immersive as possible, the Acer Nitro 5 is a good buy. You might struggle to run the latest and greatest with the RTX 3050 graphics card, but it’s enough for lighter esports titles, and with modest settings, especially at 1080p. The 144Hz panel is smooth, but we found it a little dim for playing games or working in bright environments.

The 16GB of RAM will let you engage in varied workloads too without a hitch, be it 3D modeling, photo editing, and having multiple documents open. The aesthetics, whilst gamer-inspired are quite subtle.

All that extra space offers you ample cooling and a 90 Whr battery that returns some impressive battery life so you should be confident in a full day’s work if you’re just using the iGPU. It also means that Acer has been able to include an open 2.5” hard drive bay with an included SATA cable, meaning you’ll be able to expand the storage with a still fast and cheap SATA SSD.

If you run Linux, you’ll be well suited with an AMD machine too as the open-source drivers for AMD are some of the best and most stable on the OS. No matter the operating system, your games will look great on the solid 144Hz display with the Radeon RX6500M pushing the frames. The 6500M isn’t going to set any records but most esports titles and older games will run well.

If you do a lot of typing you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the quality of the keyboard at this price point. The keys are nice and tactile and you also get a numpad, which some people can’t live without.

Letting the HP Victus down is its single channel 8GB of RAM which seriously hampers your performance. Upgrading to 16GB is highly recommended and doesn’t cost much extra. The UK version also only gets a 256GB SSD, whereas in the US you get 512GB.

Graphics Intel Iris Xe

CPU Intel i5-1135G7

RAM 16GB LPDDR4X dual channel

Storage 512GB (US) / 256GB (UK) SSD

Connectivity 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (type A), 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (type C), 1 x HDMI, Headphone/microphone 3.5mm jack, MicroSD card reader

Screen 15.6-inch, 1920×1080, 144Hz

Dimensions (W x D x H) 14.08 x 9.48 x 0.73 inches (35.76 x 24.08 x 1.85 cm)

Weight 4.30 lbs (1.95 kg)

Pros:

It’s no secret that computer components have soared in price over the last few years and one of the potential solutions to remedy this is via cloud streaming with services such as GeForce NOW, Xbox Cloud Gaming, and Amazon Luna. This is where the Asus Chromebook Vibe C55 Flip positions itself in the market.

Provided you have a good enough internet connection, you can have a great gaming experience. The 144Hz display delivers a smooth experience and almost makes you forget you’re on an affordable Chromebook.

Being a Chromebook, you get all the Android niceties such as Google Assistant and being able to run Android apps natively. Steam also recently improved the gaming front-end performance on ChromeOS so gaming has never been better for Google’s desktop OS. A lot of Android games play much nicer with a controller and luckily for you, we’ve already taken a look at the best PC controllers.

It would be great to have a dedicated GPU at this price bracket. As ChromeOS game support is so limited you may not mind, but it reduces its useability as a dual booting machine. It’s also unfortunate that at a similar price, the UK version only gets a 256GB SSD.