There's nothing like a shiny new gaming laptop to brighten your day, but keeping up with constant innovation can get expensive. The good news is that after researching dozens of gaming laptops, I'm happy to recommend the best one for your specific needs.
The Laptop Mag staff reviews more than 100 laptops per year, covering every budget and use case. Gaming laptops especially undergo thorough benchmarking. Everything — from display color to gaming — is scrutinized to the decimal point. You won't need to worry about a gaming laptop being a couple of frames faster than another; we'll contextualize everything for you.
To test laptops, I watch films, play games, write articles, and occasionally take them on the go. I'll use them like they're mine and tell you what's right and what's wrong. Exceptional systems land on this page, earning four stars or higher or our Editors’ Choice award. Here are the best gaming laptops right now.
Rami has reviewed and tested dozens of gaming laptops over the span of 6+ years. He gets to game on a new machine every time one comes in for review, so he's an expert on what works and what doesn't for any budget. Currently, he's using the HP Omen 16 with an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU, which has been very reliable thus far (and got a 4 out of 5 star review). Rami knows that budget shouldn't compromise on quality, and that you deserve the most for your coin. Extensive testing and hands-on has taught Rami which are the best gaming laptops for every budget.
The Quick List
Best Overall
The Strix Scar 18 is a beast thanks to its intense Intel Core i9 CPU and Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU. This monster of a gaming laptop acts as a desktop replacement in any gaming setting imaginable.
Best budget
The Acer Predator Triton 300 SE is where performance and affordability meet. Packed into this 14-inch body is all the gaming performance you need to jump-start most AAA games.
Best under $1,500
The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is one of our favorite gaming laptops because it offers mid-tier specs, which, depending on the game, can consistently deliver high frame rates. It’s also under $1,500, which is music to our ears.
Best under $2,000
Are you looking for a 40 Series Nvidia GPU without breaking the bank? Then we highly recommend the MSI Katana 15, which offers a powerful Intel Core i7 CPU, and RTX 4070, which delivers powerful overall graphics performance.
Best performance
The MSI Titan 18 HX is stacked. It has a beautiful display and a mechanical keyboard, as well as a Core i9 CPU and Nvidia 4090 GPU. It’s a beast of a machine that conquered everything we put in front of it.
Best battery life
The Razer Blade 14 is the best gaming laptop for battery life, but not only that. You get powerful gaming and productivity performance, a vivid display, a sleek aluminum chassis, and intense audio.
Recent updates
Updated May 1 to add star ratings to the grid, update strap lines, organize pros and cons.
The best gaming laptops you can buy today
Why you can trust Laptop Mag Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Each gaming laptop on this list has been painstakingly tested and received the hands-on time necessary to review it. You can rest assured that any choice you make will equip you to run the games you love the most.
Best Overall
Our favorite config:
The Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 is my first taste of the new chips from Intel and Nvidia; it's incredibly delicious. The Strix Scar 18 is a relentless beast, running with Intel's Core i9-13900HX processor and Nvidia's RTX 4090 GPU. Both are uber-powerful and highly overclockable so you can squeeze every power out of the system. Plus, the notebook has this Blade Runner vibe I'm very into. Along with its 18-inch, QHD+ (2560 x 1600), 240Hz display that serves up a beautiful picture with buttery smooth rendering, it's easily our favorite config.
So, onto the tests, there were very few places where the ROG Strix Scar 18 missed the mark. The laptop easily trounced everything we threw at it. The Strix Scar 18 rarely falls below a three-digit result during gaming tests. We saw a scorching 154 fps on the AssassinAssassin'salhalla benchmark while it reached 181 and 152 fps on Rise of the Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto V. How about overall performance?
The 13th Gen CPU smoked the competition, scoring 19,233 on Geekbench 5.4, which is more than double the premium gaming laptop's overall performance average. This system completed our video transcoding test in just 2 minutes and 49 seconds (more than a minute faster than the MacBook Pro 16-inch M2 Pro Max), while its pair of 1TB SSDs dominated our file transfer tests.
However, all that power comes at a cost. The Scar 18's battery life is 4 hours and 26 minutes short. Another con is the 720p webcam; we would expect 1080p at this eye-watering price. Overall, the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 is the gaming laptop to beat and has also earned its way onto our Best Asus Laptops page.
Unfortunately, the webcam is rough, so if that's athat'sity to you, we recommend checking out the best webcams.
Read our full Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 review
Best budget
Our favorite config:
The Acer Predator Triton 300 SE is a revelation. Our reviewer put it best as it sits in a “cozy spot where the company offers its best quality components packed into a relatively affordable package.” The slim, 14-inch beauty only weighs 3.8 pounds and is a good grouping of ports.
It also has a lovely, bright 1080p panel with a 144Hz refresh rate. The Triton clocked in 80.6% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 292 nits of brightness. Those numbers are more than acceptable for gaming. It means you’re getting a relatively bright and colorful display, which is rare on a budget gaming notebook.
Speaking of gaming, the Triton’s RTX 3060 GPU is more than enough to handle most games on high or medium settings. The Predator Triton 300 SE consistently beats the category average on AAA titles such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. For instance, during the Far Cry New Dawn benchmark, the Acer scored 73 fps, which was enough to match or beat most of the competition.
The Triton’s Core i7 processor didn’t do as well on our overall performance test, scoring 5,234, which beat the category average but not rival systems. On the Handbrake video transcoding test, the Acer turned in a relatively slow time of 11 minutes and 36 seconds. We got a rosier picture of the battery life, which lasted 6 hours and 41 minutes.
Other cons include weak audio and a mushy keyboard, but these are minor quibbles for the price. However, if you want to put in some money to resolve those issues, we recommend checking out our best gaming headsets and best gaming keyboards pages.
See our full Acer Predator Triton 300 SE review.
Best under $1,500
Our favorite config:
Need an affordable gaming laptop without making too many sacrifices? Then, the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is just the system for you. Beneath its understated yet elegant design is a laptop chomping at the bit to lay waste to the big bad in whatever game you’re playing and their minion horde. Despite its office-ready appearance, the Lenovo still has some gamer cred thanks to its vibrant RGB backlighting. And it’s got plenty of ports to create a formidable battlestation.
The Legion 5i Pro marches onto our Best Lenovo Laptops and Best Lenovo Gaming Laptop pages with its last-gen RTX 3070 Ti GPU. While it’s not the latest 4000 series GPU, the Legion 5i Pro shows that the 3000 series still has plenty of punch, delivering an impressive 81 fps on Red Dead Redemption 2 and 132 fps on Grand Theft Auto V. The notebook’s 12th Gen Intel processor is also not to be underestimated as it crushed on both Geekbench 5.4 and our video transcoding tests.
The 16-inch QHD display, with its 165Hz refresh rate, does the work—covering 80% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and reaching a peak average of 474 nits of brightness. That’s bright enough to take this gaming laptop out on a sunny day while the color is vibrant enough to immerse you into your favorite worlds.
As good as the Legion 5i Pro is, there are a few hiccups: a lackluster webcam and a sluggish SSD. And it is chunky, coming in at 1.0-inch thick. However, everything I mentioned above makes the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro an absolute win of a value buy.
But if you wanted to, you could check out the best webcams to resolve at least one of those issues.
Read our full Lenovo Legion 5i Pro review.
Best under $2,000
Our favorite config:
Why pay more for an Nvidia 4090 GPU when the 4070 GPU exists? MSI seeks to answer that question with the excellent Katana 15. A laptop that kept pace with more powerful competitors without breaking a sweat. For those who prefer a more understated look, the Katana 15 exterior is in a black aluminum chassis with the company's logo engraved at the top of the lid. The interior is a lot more colorful and has a comfortable, 4-key, customizable RGB keyboard. It is heavier side at 8.8 pounds, so you need a backpack with strong straps to tote this system around.
But let's talk performance. Our reviewer reported that Katana 15 consistently gave between 50 and 55 fps on Elden Ring at a resolution of 2K. The Katana also dominated on the Borderlands 3 benchmark at 99 fps (1080p, high), as well as AssaAssassin'sed Valhalla (106 fps), Dirt 3 (103 fps), Far Cry 6 (94 fps), and Red Dead Redemption 2 (72 fps). Long story short, the Katana gave a master class in gaming performance. The MSI kept up the pressure during the overall performance. The system's i7 CPU hit 11,581 on the Geekbench 5.5 test and sparked the competition on the Handbrake benchmark with a blistering time of 5 minutes and 4 seconds.
But there are a few places where the Katana 15 could improve. The 2-hour, 48-minute battery life is abysmal in this day and age. We wish MSI could have found a better panel than the dim, lackluster display with which it's equipped. But at $1,600, it's a better value than the RTX 4090 systems, which cost upwards of $4,000.
If the display troubles you that much, check out the best gaming monitors.
See our full MSI Katana 15 review.
Best performance
Our favorite config:
MSI has always taken a kitchen sink approach to its flagship gaming laptops, and we're not complaining when you get something as powerful as the MSI Titan 18 HX. This is an exorbitantly priced system, even for a top-tier gaming laptop. But for that arm, leg, and vestigial organ you're contemplating selling, you get an absolute powerhouse that shrugs off almost everything you can throw at it.
The Titan's Nvidia RTX 4090 with 16GB of VRAM cut through frame rates like a hot knife through butter, smoothly and immensely satisfying. It crushed every one of its competitors in the battle for frame rates, even its predecessor. The notebook breezed through our overall performance tests with its Intel Core i9-14900HX CPU and 128GB of RAM. Its dual SSDs in RAID 0 configuration posted a blistering 2,664.34 megabytes per second in our file transfer test.
The thorn in this mighty beast's paw is the 2 hours and 40 minutes of battery life. But if you're looking for the most powerful gaming laptop on the block, you'd be hard-pressed to find one better. If the MSI Titan 18 HX (2024) isn't your speed but you still want an MSI notebook, check out our best MSI laptops page.
Are you ready to hear about this monster's gorgeous 18-inch, 3,840 x 2,400 Mini LED display clocked in at 120Hz? This baby has a whopping 559 nits of brightness and covers 112.4% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. You will experience a level of immersion to rival an OLED display (and I don't say that lightly).
There's not much we can do about the price or battery life, but if you stay tuned to our laptop deals, you might see the MSI Titan for a discounted holiday price.
See our full MSI Titan 18 HX (2024) review.
Best battery life
Our favorite config:
gWho said that gaming laptops always have lousy battery life? It can't be me because the Razer Blade 14 is coming in swinging with 8 hours and 35 minutes of battery life. That's enough time to get through an entire workday before you have to go home and plug it in to get some gaming in. But battery life isn't the only massive feature that the Razer Blade 14 has going for it.
The Razer Blade 14 is packed with a powerful AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU that'll clock through almost every game you throw. The Razer clocked in with 98 fps on the Borderlands 3 test, 85 fps on the Far Cry 6 test, and 73 fps on the Red Dead Redemption 2 test. Nailing AAA titles above 60 fps is a big win.
Top that off with a stunning 14-inch, 2560 x 1600, 240Hz display. It covered 114.3% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and averaged 465 nits of brightness. For a gaming laptop with such impressive battery life, it'll be one hell of a time watching film and TV on this machine. Turning the graphics down or running some less-intensive games will let you take full advantage of the 240Hz panel. That'll provide the visual experience of playing a game at 240 fps.
It's sharp as a razor and smooth as a clean shave. Let's not forget about these bangin' speakers. It's rare for a gaming laptop to come out of left field with great audio. Oh, and of course, it's a Razer laptop, so we get that gorgeous aluminum chassis that's as premium as a MacBook.
The fans can get loud, so we recommend gaming in a well-ventilated area.
See our full Razer Blade 14 review.
How we test gaming laptops
When we bring a laptop into our laboratory, we aim to see how it would work if you brought it into your home or office. While we use industry-standard benchmarks such as Geekbench and 3DMark, we focus heavily on real-world tests that we have developed in-house.
To test endurance, the Laptop Mag Battery test surfs the web at 150 nits of brightness until the system runs out of juice. We use a giant spreadsheet macro that matches 65,000 names with their addresses to judge pure processing power, a video transcoder that converts a 4K video to 1080p, and the Geekbench 4 synthetic test. We measure graphics prowess with 3DMark Ice Storm / Fire Strike and a series of actual game titles.
We use a colorimeter to measure screen brightness and color gamut, while other instruments help us determine a laptop's key travel and ambient heat. See this page on How We Test Laptops for more details on our benchmarking procedures.
Also tested
We deliberately make our best gaming laptops list short so you don't suffer from indecision. However, if you like having all of your options open to you, we have quite a few gaming laptops that we've also tested. Get ready to go swimming.
These can range from excellent to subpar, buand each has itswn pros and cons. Here's our list.
How to find the right gaming laptop
How to find the right gaming laptop
When shopping for a gaming laptop, there's a lot to consider. We wrote a detailed piece about the nine most important factors for buying a gaming laptop. But to simplify the process of choosing a system, here are seven key points to keep in mind.
Budget: How we split cost categories
Money is getting tight. There was a time when you could find a good gaming laptop for under $1,000, but those are few and far between. If you're looking for a quality gaming laptop and are trying to budget yourself, try aiming for at least $1,300. If you have a larger budget, you can push for a more powerful mainstream gaming laptop, which is often priced between $1,500 and $2,000.
Premium systems typically cost more than $2,000 and come stacked with many high-powered goodies such as high-powered specs and tricked-out software. Remember that the bigger the GPU, the bigger the gaps in price points. So, list the games you play and start checking the PC requirements. Almost any gaming laptop with a 40-series GPU can play an indie game, but if you're dabbling in AAA titles, you have to decide which settings you're comfortable playing on.
Screen Size: 14 and 16 inches are the go-to
You'll rarely find a 13-inch gaming laptop nowadays, and 15.6-inch laptops have taken a backseat to the hyped-up 14-inch and 16-inch laptops. Those 17-inch gaming laptops also feel like a thing of the past. Well, now we have 18-inch gaming laptops. Yeah, they're beasts, but what all these sizes have in common is that they're getting more compact.
If you're looking for a gaming laptop to take on the go and even use as a school or work laptop, 14-inch gaming laptops are the perfect fit. Smaller gaming laptops also tend to have longer battery life as well. 16-inch gaming laptops are more manageable in size than 17 or 18-inch machines without sacrificing any power. But if you're looking for true desktop replacements, you'll probably want to go all out with a larger size. They tend to be the most powerful but require you to always be near an outlet.
Screen Resolution: 1080p (high refresh rates), 4K (detail), 1440p (sweet spot)
Regarding gaming laptop displays, you want to balance frame rates and aesthetics. And if you're planning to get a truly mobile system, battery life also deserves consideration. A 1080p resolution is the bare minimum you'll find, which isn't great unless you're trading resolution for a high refresh rate. Panel makers now serve up screens with a 360Hz refresh rate and a three-millisecond response time. But I don't count out 4K screens yet, as many laptops with 4K displays are clocked at 120Hz. Remember that laptops with lower resolutions tend to have longer battery life overall.
Are you looking for a sweet spot between the two? More and more gaming laptops are shipping with 1440p displays, which provide high refresh rates and a sharp panel. This strikes an outstanding balance between the two without charging a premium price.
Refresh rate: 120Hz is a minimum
Depending on the kind of games you're playing, particularly first-person shooters and MOBAs, you'll take anything that enhances accuracy. Surprisingly, the higher a display's refresh rate is, the more accurate your shot becomes. We've experienced this firsthand during many demos. At this point, 60Hz is unacceptable for a gaming laptop, so we recommend investing in a panel with at least a 120Hz refresh rate.
You also have to balance graphics performance with resolution and refresh rate. Sometimes, a laptop is paired with a low-performing GPU and a high resolution and refresh rate. The math doesn't add up. If your gaming laptop cannot take advantage of the sharp screen or high refresh rate, then what's the point? Make sure you check the benchmarks.
Intel or AMD?
A couple of years ago, the answer to this question would have been undoubtedly Intel. However, AMD has made a furious comeback with its new Ryzen CPUs, which deliver outstanding overall performance and battery life. Thanks to the new Ryzen chips architecture, they're super power efficient without sacrificing productivity. The Ryzen 8000 series CPUs have consistently impressed with its performance versus battery life.
Not to be outdone, Intel's 14th-generation chips are nothing to sneeze at. Laptop manufacturers have started rolling out systems with Intel's Core Ultra chips. These chips are extremely powerful and are catching up to AMD with their battery life game.
Gaming laptops have been balancing performance with battery life, and it's changing the use case for these rigs for the better.
Battery Life: At least 5.5 hours
Unless it's plugged in, gaming laptop battery life tends to be very short, especially when gaming. However, the battery life of gaming laptops has increased over the years. So much so that anything under 5.5 hours is considered below average. We've reviewed several gaming laptops that last a whole workday and jump into the double digits. With results like that, we expect gaming laptops will match their non-gaming counterparts sooner rather than later. Our most recent power-efficient gaming laptop is right on this page (Razer Blade 14), lasting over 8 hours.
Specs: 1080p / Core i5 / 16GB are a minimum
You can spend a lot of time delving into specs, but here are the key components. If you want decent mainstream performance, go for a Core i5 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 1080p screen.
Why Trust Laptop Mag
Why trust Laptop Mag
Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing laptops for over two decades. We test over 150 different models per year, subjecting each system to a series of rigorous benchmarks that provides a complete picture of performance, battery life and usability.
Our expert reviewers also use each product to see how it looks and feels in everyday situations. Because we see so many different notebooks, we can compare each to its direct competitors and give you an idea of how it stacks up to the average laptop in its price band.
