Best AMD Advantage gaming laptops in 2024

The best AMD Advantage gaming laptops combine the most powerful AMD Ryzen CPUs with top-of-the-line AMD Radeon GPUs to create some of the most potent gaming laptops available today.

AMD made huge strides with its CPUs starting with the release of the Ryzen 4000 series in 2020, the first 7nm x86 chip. While we first saw the impact of that enhanced performance and efficiency in thin-and-light laptops, it wasn't long before manufacturers leveraged it for gaming laptops and AMD has shown no sign of slowing down. 

AMD Advantage systems are the pinnacle of what AMD has to offer with AMD smart technologies delivering battery, graphics, memory, and performance enhancements that are exclusive to all-AMD laptops. However, it goes beyond that, an AMD Advantage system must also offer an AMD FreeSync-compatible display with a high refresh rate, virtually no input lag, and strong thermal performance. It's easy to see how many of these laptops have landed at the top of our best gaming laptops overall. 

After hours of painstaking research and dozens of down-to-the-pixel reviews, here are our top picks for the best AMD Advantage gaming laptops on the market today.

The Quick List

best overall AMD Advantage gaming laptop

It should come as little surprise that the Alienware m17 R5 is the best AMD Advantage gaming laptop. We named it the "king of AMD gaming laptops" in our review and awarded a rare five out of five stars and an Editor's Choice award. The AMD Ryzen 9 6900XT and Radeon RX 6850M XT GPU have no trouble competing with the best of Intel and Nvidia, while the AMD Advantage software suite ensures that every ounce of that hardware performance shows out on its gorgeous 17-inch 4K display with a 120Hz refresh rate.

Add to this a standout Cherry MX keyboard, excellent speakers, and Alienware's sleek Legend 2.0 design and it's hard to imagine choosing anything else. The only thing that may stop you is the $2,799 price tag for our review model, although discounts and just a couple of feature sacrifices can bring that price much closer to $2,000 and there's no question the Alienware m17 R5 is worth every penny.

Read our full Alienware m17 R5 (AMD Advantage) review.

best sub-$2,000 AMD Advantage gaming laptop

We've touted a number of all-AMD systems from AMD in the past couple of years and the current champion is the Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition. It pairs an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX CPU with an AMD Radeon RX6800M GPU for stellar overall and gaming performance along with almost unbelievable battery life at 10 hours and 32 minutes in our testing. That's double to triple the battery life of some of its competitors.

Topping out at under $1,700, you also get high-end performance without emptying your wallet, which is a nice change of pace from our top choice. There are some trade-offs made to hit that price with a relatively dim display and weak speakers, but a nice gaming headset solves that last problem. The display does make up for it in other ways with a blistering fast 300Hz refresh rate. As long as you aren't trying to game outdoors or right by a window, this affordable AMD Advantage system is easy to recommend. 

Read our full Asus ROG Strix G15 Advantage Edition review.

best all-around AMD Advantage gaming laptop

Lenovo's Legion 7 (not to be confused with the Intel-based 7i) delivers outstanding performance in a reasonably portable package and an impressively bright 16-inch 1600p 240Hz display that hit an average of 483 nits of brightness and peaked at over 500 nits. So if you need to do some mid-day gaming next to the window at the coffee shop the Legion 7 has you covered.

Battery life is strong at 8 hours and 31 minutes in our testing that involves web surfing with the brightness set to 150 nits, but gaming takes a much bigger bite at just 1 hour and 2 minutes so you'll want an outlet nearby when spinning things up to full power.

The Legion 7 is a bit more subtle about its gamer credentials than some of the other options here with a dark grey aluminum and magnesium aerospace-grade metal unibody build with an "environmental RGB system" that can be turned off if you need to drop into stealth gamer mode. 

You'll run into no issues running modern games at 1080p at Ultra settings, but you if you want to hit the full 1600p resolution you'll want to drop to medium settings to stay above 60fps. 

best thin-and-light laptop

At 3.8 pounds the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022) may not be an Ultrabook, but it's thin and light for a gaming laptop and it still manages to deliver stellar performance and amazing battery life thanks to its AMD Ryzen 9 6900HS CPU. At 10 hours and 38 minutes in our Laptop Mag battery test it is still one of the longest-lasting gaming laptops we've ever tested.

Coming in at under $1,800 it also gives you solid audio, a comfortable keyboard and an eye-catching design, including the optional microdot mini LED lights in the magnesium-alloy lid that can display a message or emoji. That last bit isn't exactly crucial to your gaming experience, but it is quite a bit of fun.

The gaming performance does take a hit compared to our top picks, if you want Ultra Settings at 1600p you are going to come away disappointed, but drop to 1080p or Medium settings and it will churn most games out at 60fps or above. Brightness is once again a bit of a challenge at 232 nits, so if you are going to be out and about in sunlight you may want to look at one of the options above.

See our full review of the Asus Zephyrus G14 (2022).

How to Choose the best AMD Advantage gaming laptops

When shopping for a gaming laptop, there's a lot to consider. To help you choose a system, here are five key points to keep in mind when choosing a system.

Budget: What you get for the money

You can find good inexpensive gaming laptops for under $1,000. However, more powerful mainstream gaming laptops are often priced between $1,500 and $2,000. Premium systems typically cost more than $2,000 and come stacked with a host of high-powered goodies such as high-powered specs and tricked-out software.

Screen Size: 15 inches is the go-to

It's very rare that you'll find a 13 or 14-inch gaming laptops nowadays as smaller bezels and lighter frames have paved the way for seriously thin-and-light gaming laptops. That means the days of chunky 15.6-inch laptops putting a strain on your back are over (almost).

From there, you have the 17.3-inch desktop replacements that like their smaller counterparts are becoming super svelte. But there are still the big behemoths that don't skimp on the specs. However, weighing upwards of 8 pounds, those big boys are made for your home gaming station. 

Screen Resolution: 1080p for high refresh rates, 4K for detail

When it comes to gaming laptops displays, you want to strike a balance between frame rates and aesthetics. And in case you're planning to get a truly mobile system battery life is also deserves consideration. We recommend checking out a system with a 1080p resolution. Panel makers are now serving up screens with high refresh rate, topping out at 360Hz with a 3 millisecond response rate. But don't count out 4K screens yet as we're starting to see laptops with 4K displays with 120Hz. Keep in mind that laptops with lower resolutions tend to have longer battery life overall.

Refresh rate: 120Hz is the sweet spot

Depending what kind of games you're playing, particularly first person shooters and MOBA, you'll take anything that will enhance accuracy. Surprisingly, the higher a display's refresh rate is, the more accurate your shot become. It's a phenomenon that we've experienced first hand during many demos. And while 60Hz is passable, right now we recommend investing in a panel with at least a 120Hz refresh rate. 

Intel or AMD?

A couple of years ago, the answer to this question would have been undoubtedly Intel. But AMD has made a furious comeback with its new Ryzen CPUs, which are delivering great overall performance. Thanks to the architecture in the new Ryzen chips, they're super power efficient without sacrificing productivity. The Ryzen 5000 series CPUs have consistently impressed with its performance versus battery life.

Not to be outdone, Intel's 11th Gen chips are nothing to sneeze at. Laptop manufacturers have started rolling out systems with the Intel's 11th Gen H-series Tiger Lake chips. The 10-nanometer chips are extremely powerful, but still at the low-end of the spectrum with the overclockable HK-series CPU, due to launch soon. Why do you want to invest in an overclockable processor, because with the touch of a button, you can squeeze even more power out of the system. It comes in handy when you're multitasking or playing a really demanding game. 

Battery Life: At least 4.5 hours

Unless it's plugged in, gaming laptop battery life tends to be very short, especially when gaming. However, gaming laptop battery life has gotten increasing longer over the years. So much so, that anything under 4.5 hours is considered below average. But we've just reviewed our first gaming laptop that's lasted into the double digits. With results like that, we expect gaming laptops will match their non-gaming counterparts sooner than later. Our most power-efficient gaming laptop ran over 11 hours and sits on our longest-lasting laptops page.

Specs: 1080p / Core i5 / 16GB Are Best Bets

You can spend a lot of time delving into specs, but here are the key components to think about. If you just want really good mainstream performance, go for a Core i5 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and a 1080p screen.

How We Test the best AMD Advantage gaming laptops

We put each gaming laptop through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers and heat management.

In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and sRGB color gamut of the laptop's display. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 4.3 and 5.0 and 3DMark professional graphics tests. 

To determine real-world performance, we task the laptop to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and to duplicate a 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is the Dirt 3 benchmark with medium settings at 1080p resolution.

We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 10 laptops, a runtime of over 9 hours is considered a good result whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered for longer than 5 hours deserve praise. 

These tests are complemented with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.

See this page on How We Test Laptops for more details on our benchmarking procedures.

Why Trust Laptop Mag

Laptop Mag reviews over one hundred different laptops every year, from paperweight ultralights to everyday workhorses to lumbering gaming notebooks that scorch the frame rates of even the hottest AAA games. We're not just experts in the laptop field, as we go one step further by meticulously testing smartphones, tablets, headphones, PC accessories, software, and even the latest in gaming. 

We are 100% independent and have decades of experience to help you buy with confidence. In fact, Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing products for three decades, and we continue to deliver trustworthy reviews you can rely on. 

Our experienced team of writers and editors scour the available information about the laptop and put it through its paces to determine which is best for you. But before they start, the testing team subjects each system to a rigorous regimen of synthetic and real-world tests to see how a system handles the type of work and games you’re most likely to throw at it. 

Our editorial trustworthiness is enforced by one of the world's largest technology publishers, Future Publishing. As a company, we have unrivaled experience across every tech sector — and we're the group's specialist for all things mobile tech.