Battery life might not be that important when choosing your next gaming laptop.
We make it no secret that we’re particular about battery life at Laptop Mag. For mainstream and business laptops, it’s an absolute necessity that they last long on a full charge. On the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves continuous web surfing at 150 nits, we typically look for 10 hours or more of battery life.
After all, these laptops are typically thin, light, and made to tote everywhere with you. If you bring them to a workplace, college campus, or school, you want them to last the whole day without needing an outlet. Some of the best laptops, like the Dell XPS 13 9345, can last 19 hours or more before running out of juice. Essentially, the longer, the better.
We also stress the importance of battery life for gaming laptops. However, we scale back expectations due to the more demanding power requirements from discrete graphics cards, with six hours or more considered solid for a gaming laptop’s longevity. It’s one piece of our final consensus for any gaming laptop review.
However, is this important? Due to their use cases, we stress the necessity of longevity in mainstream and business laptops. But gaming laptops often aren’t thin, light, or made to be taken on the go, so who needs a gaming laptop with long-lasting battery life?
The case against long-lasting battery life in gaming laptops
Long-lasting battery life in a gaming laptop might not matter to you. If you’re looking to purchase hardware that will remain tethered to an outlet at all times, with it sitting atop a desk or table, it doesn’t matter if it lasts one hour or eight hours before running out of juice. In my case, battery life was never a concern.
Don’t be afraid to opt for the more powerful machine even if its battery life disappoints.
Several years ago, when I was still using a laptop as my primary gaming PC, it never left my house. I played with the laptop on my living room table, perpetually connected to the closest outlet. In fact, later in the laptop’s life, the battery malfunctioned, and the laptop would only work when plugged in. Admittedly, that was pretty annoying, but my day-to-day gaming habits didn’t change much. It was a desktop in laptop’s clothing before and after it malfunctioned.
In a vacuum, it might seem like longer battery life is still a positive regardless, but there’s a trade-off that comes with a longer-lasting laptop: Gaming performance.
The more power allocated towards the laptop’s graphics, the quicker its battery will drain. Longer-lasting laptops have a chance of boasting conservative power settings so their battery lasts longer. Not everyone is willing to accept this trade-off, and if you don’t care about longevity, you will rightly opt for the laptop with stronger graphics performance.
But that’s not the only reason a device can last longer on a single charge. Two gaming laptops can sap the same amount of power, but one could last far longer if its battery is larger.
The best example is the Asus ROG Ally, which features a 40Wh battery, vs. the Asus ROG Ally X, which has an 80Wh battery. While they have the same AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, the Ally X lasted 8 hours and 19 minutes, whereas the original died after 5 hours and 51 minutes.
If all else is equal, it’s always good to have a longer-lasting battery, but if tests show that one laptop is behind the other in graphics performance, don’t be afraid to opt for the more powerful machine even if its battery life disappoints.
The case for long-lasting battery life in gaming laptops
Whereas most gaming laptops don’t try to be light and thin, there’s a market for compact machines out there, especially for those who plan to take them traveling. After all, you don’t want to lug around a 7-pound, 1.1-inch thick, 18-inch gaming laptop like the Acer Predator Helios 18 if you want to game on the move.
Alternatively, a four-pound, .7-inch thick, 14-inch gaming laptop like the Razer Blade 14 is more suited for greater longevity. The allure of a long-lasting battery in a machine you can fit in your backpack is vital for some consumers.
The Razer Blade 14 is practically a stealth productivity laptop and excellently fulfills the best of both worlds.
The Razer Blade 14 is practically a stealth productivity laptop and excellently fulfills the best of both worlds. This market appeal is a big reason why Razer advertises its long-lasting battery life on these machines, with the previous generation of the Blade 14 lasting 8 hours and 35 minutes (although the early 2024 model disappointed with only 6 hours and 26 minutes).
Be mindful of what our final score means
The topic of whether or not battery life in a gaming laptop should matter is an excellent example of how to interpret our reviews and final scores. We always note poor battery life as a con when reviewing a laptop, so while we naturally factor in the category, if a gaming laptop comes up short of its competitors' battery life, that impacts our final score.
But if battery life doesn’t matter to you, especially with a gaming laptop, it’s important to have that context and understand that the laptop might be perfect if it knocks every other metric out of the park. For example, the Acer Predator Helios 18 is an enormous laptop with middling battery life at 4 hours and 53 minutes, but if you don’t care for portability or longevity, it’s an excellent machine overall.
