PC gaming is more common than ever when many of today’s young gamers are approaching the age of careers, disposable income, and higher aspirations. They want to keep up with exciting new games while profiting from high frame rates, resolutions, and consistency. And though creating or purchasing a full-blown gaming desktop seems to be the most common alternative, there are plenty of gamers or want-to-be gamers who opt instead for a gaming laptop.
Nowadays, the best gaming laptop doesn’t mean getting a watered-down but slimmer desktop replacement. Gaming laptops are now elegant, silent, and just as importantly, when it comes to playing the new sports, they always deliver a strong punch. While for some people these hulking workstations do have their place, we are certainly advocates for ultraportable computers capable of keeping track of the latest gaming PCs.
Best Gaming Laptop Under $1200
Acer Predator Helios 300 Gaming Laptop
For the regular player, Acer’s Predator items were already out of the price range. The Predator Helios 300 seems to be the solution to this dilemma for Acer and provides excellent value about the $1200 level. But certain concessions had to be made to reach the price point. The primary one is the screen.
Despite being much dimmer than some more costly Predator laptops, the full HD display panel uses IPS technology to have a wider viewing angle range. The standard of the photographs at this price is equivalent, if not higher, than many laptops. Only don’t expect the higher end Predator laptops to have full-color range.
The Helios 300 has excellent internal features, including a Kaby Lake Intel Core i7 processor with 16 GB of system RAM. Acer has upgraded this laptop to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 which provides improved support for the new games and is better suited to VR gaming than its predecessors. Compared with several other machines the Acer Predator Helios 300 is really good at this price. With games like GTA V, however, requiring 40 GB of disk space just for download, you’ll need to fix the limited but powerful 256 GB SSD.
Pros
- Good battery life
- Comfortable keyboard with clicky feedback
- High-speed performance
- Good display with a high refresh rate
- RGB backlit keyboard
Cons
- Audio quality could be better
- No optical drive built-in
Asus ROG Strix G Gaming Laptop
ASUS has designed laptops of this ROG series specifically for gaming. And this ASUS ROG Strix GL531GT-EB76 laptop is designed for next-generation gamers aiming to take their game to the next stage. If we’re talking about this laptop’s construction, then this laptop’s outer shell is in the metal finish along with RGB lighting on the bottom that gives the feeling of complete gaming.
This gaming machine melds up to 4.5GHz with the new Intel Core 9th-Gen i7-9750H Hexa-Core processor and Turbo boost. It is packed with 4 GB of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 dedicated graphics card to satisfy all the gaming needs and impactful gaming results.
This laptop coupled with 16 GB of RAM offers a buttery-smooth gaming experience. Thanks for having big 1 TB of SSD drive that’s enough room to store all of your games and other files. And the great thing about the SSD drive is it’s quicker than the standard HDD drive. It has a full HD IPS display measuring 15.6 inches, with a resolution measuring 1920 x 1080 pixels. It comes with the ROG Intelligent Thermal Cooling System and anti-dust technology that keeps dust and debris out of the chassis and increases the longevity and also helps to keep the device cold during an intense gaming session.
Pros
- Fast and powerful performance
- Impressive cooling technology
- Decent battery backup
- Beautiful backlit keyboard
- Very lightweight and compact
Cons
- No Thunderbolt C port
- Speakers are average
MSI GS65 Stealth THIN-051 15.6″ Ultra-Thin Gaming Laptop
The GS65 Stealth Slim is a great all-rounder while packing a punch in terms of style and specifications. It has a notebook’s durability and since it’s compact and durable, it’s extremely easy to just put into your backpack and hold it all day for everything you need to use it too.
It has a streamlined matte black aluminum body with gold highlights that looks solid and comfortable and fortunately lacks a strange gaming look. Best of all, the 5 mm narrow bezels of the frame, in addition to a sleek 18 mm width, make for an overall shell size about an inch smaller than most 15-inch laptops, but still packing the same screen real-estate.
There are other good features on the GS65, which also makes it a perfect laptop-a sturdy and sensitive SteelSeries keyboard, a sensitive touchpad, and a webcam at the top of the computer, luckily missing the abysmally unflattering “nose-cam” seen on most thin-bezeled laptops such as the Dell XPS 13. G-Sync is the only game functionality absent here, but this makes for both a lower price tag and battery life that lasts for a whole day of messaging, web surfing, and streaming content.
Pros
- Good gaming performance
- Great battery life
- Display with narrow bezels and high refresh rate
- Great audio quality
- Customizable RGB keyboard
Cons
- Heating issues might occur
- Absence of Nvidia G-sync
Dell G5 15 Gaming Laptop
Especially for gaming, Dell has introduced the G series laptops and this Dell G5590-7679BLK-PUS gaming laptop comes from that line. It comes in a Deep Space black metal finish case with eye-catching blue highlights to give this Dell laptop a sleek appearance.
Dell’s designed this gaming laptop with the challenging desires of the gaming community in mind. Thank you for having a full HD IPS anti-glare LED-backlit monitor of 15.6 inches that offers beautiful visibility and outstanding color richness from a wide viewing angle. This gaming laptop has the newest 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9750H 6-core CPU powerhouse and 16 GB of RAM in addition.
The gaming essential of this device is handled by the latest and powerful NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics with 4GB of dedicated memory. To load apps and run this machine faster it comes with 256GB of Solid State Drive and to store all the data it has 1TB of huge Hard Drive. Moreover, it has an innovative dual-fan cooling system with an advanced thermal design that helps to keep the system cool while the action heats up. For a better audio quality and experience every beat, it comes with two tuned front-firing speakers which are powered by Nahimic Sound Center
Pros
- Good display with a high contrast
- Modern and sleek design
- Thunderbolt 3 is present
- Great battery life
Cons
- Gets a little loud sometimes
- Thick chassis
Acer Nitro 7 Gaming Laptop
We all know Acer as a top-quality brand of laptops and its gaming laptops are no less than casual. It is equipped with an Intel Core i7 processor of the 9th generation which is perfect for a gaming laptop within your budget. Also, the capacity is great as it consists of 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD. You need not be surprised by the graphics either as you get NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4 GB.
Going on to the monitor, this laptop has a 15.6 full IPS HD display, which is again a fantastic feature. The battery life is smaller than normal since you get just 7 hours of lifetime. As well as the battery, the weight of this laptop is not comfortable to carry because it weighs 5.9 pounds.
Pros
- Great display with a high refresh rate
- Comfortable keyboard
- Minimal design
- Durable build
Cons
- CPU throttling
- No Thunderbolt port is built-in
Omen by HP 2019 15-Inch Gaming Laptop
Omen by HP 2019 15 inch gaming laptop is designed exclusively for game enthusiasts. You can play countless games without losing the graphics quality, thanks to its cutting-edge technology. You should play as competitive as PUBG, Overwatch, and Fortnight games as possible.
You need a laptop with quick response time when playing a complex game. This laptop comes with a 3-phase motor and a fan. This ventilator comes with larger blades that keep the machine cool and avoid overheating. The graphics on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti take your game to the next level.
The pre-installed Omen command center makes optimal control over the CPU easy for you to manage. By prioritizing your gaming over other operations, you get to improve your gaming performance. You get to enjoy superior gaming performance thanks to the super-fast 9th Generation Intel Core i7 processor. Omen by HP 2019 15-inch Gaming laptop comes with 256 GB of storage capacity.
Pros
- Decent battery backup
- Strong and durable construction
- Decent cooling technology
- Anti-glare protection on display
Cons
- CPU throttling
- Pretty bulky
Sager NP6858EQ 15.6-Inch Thin Bezel FHD 144Hz Gaming Laptop
Sager NP6858EQ is a true gaming laptop and many people don’t know that Sager has also been driven to create a dedicated laptop for gaming. You’ll love gaming with Matte screen on its 15.6 inches full HD 144Hz touchscreen which will never distract you from the glare when playing sports.
This gaming machine has a base frequency of 2.60GHz and a peak frequency of up to 5.0GHz within the new Intel Hexa-Core i7-10750H 10th gen processor. It is supported by NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650Ti graphics with 4 GB of GDDR6 dedicated memory to accommodate all your favorite and new gaming games on this laptop.
It comes with a huge 32 GB of DDR4 RAM to take charge of the multitasking on this computer which is strong enough to give you smooth buttery gaming experience. This laptop has big 1 TB of SSD drive on the storage front, which is good enough capacity, and it also offers better performance compared to HDD drive. This game machine’s keyboard is a full-size, multicolor, illuminated keyboard that brings the game experience to the next level. If you’re thinking about networking, you have all the ports and slots you need.
Pros
- Durable build
- Comfortable backlit keyboard
- Loud and powerful speakers
- Sharp display with narrow bezels
Cons
- Thermal could be better
- Fans can seem loud at times
Buying Guide
While for many Computer gamers the laptop remains supreme, sometimes you just need something a little bit more compact. A gaming laptop is an on-the-go machine, with the ability to play games in a format that you can take along. But when you purchase a laptop for gaming you don’t just look at settings. You are looking at a whole machine with an integrated keyboard and panel. Here we explain all the options you’ll have to make when you purchase a gaming laptop so you can find the right one for your budget and needs.
Storage
Storage has always been a gamers’ challenge. Games on your hard drive will take up a lot of space but bigger hard drives seem to be slower. Today there are two main types of hard drives: HDD and SSD. With their read and write speeds, the SSD, or solid-state drives, are much smoother making them ideal for downloading the operating system and games.
They do seem to be smaller, however. An HDD, or hard disk drive, is a conventional, decades-old hard drive. These drives seem to be much bigger, giving you more than enough space for your games, but they spin slowly so that they don’t even have their reading and writing times on the same playing field as an SDD.
We recommend choosing something that can offer both. A 512 GB SSD is genuinely perfect in today’s market with a 7200 rpm HDD built alongside it to allow you plenty of room for your files and maybe even a few games you don’t play as often or those that don’t need loads of regular load times to run.
CPU
Your choice of CPU will greatly affect everything you do, from the frame rates you see in games to the reaction times of applications, and even the battery life of the laptop. Multiple cores support multitasks in a CPU, with each core serving as an internal processing unit that can operate in parallel with something to be accomplished.
We suggest at least a Core i7 processor to ensure good in-game output when broadcasting or capturing the gameplay. Higher clock speeds and core counts are especially important if you are engaging in live streaming games because capturing software also needs considerable computing power to encode the content.
GPU
Although some games use the CPU, most games are still GPU-bound, so this is one of the main choices you make when you choose a gaming notebook. Many gaming notebooks come with Nvidia GeForce GTX or RTX GPUs. If you don’t have to play at the highest levels, you can go for a GTX 1650 or RX 5500 M that will allow you to play most games, even with mid-settings.
A GTX 1660 Ti will give you a little bit more control and we usually think the investment is visible and worth it. A laptop with these cards would cost you about $800 to $1,100. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2060 is a decent middle-of-the-road card which will allow you to play most high-settings games.
RAM
How much RAM a laptop requires depends on how you intend to use the device. 8 GB RAM will be adequate for mid-range gaming applications and most work applications. Many modern PC games mention a minimum device requirement of 8 GB of RAM or more. 16 GB of RAM allows the device to run higher-settings, multiple background programs, and streaming applications for newer and more resource-intensive games.
32 GB of RAM is suitable for multitasking heavy tools, including sports, content creation, and video editing or rendering. While your system’s amount of RAM is probably the most critical metric for the average consumer, there are other RAM features worth considering as well.
Display
For any gaming laptop, the required resolution is 1920×1080- anything less and you are looking for blurry graphics. Increasingly popular are laptops with QHD (2560×1440) or 4K (3840×2160) panels, lauded for their stunning features and color. Described as the future of the show, an OLED panel consists of a film of organic compounds that, when an electric current is applied, generates illumination. The technology enables smaller, more power-efficient panels to offer extremely rich contrast and color.
Any computer notebooks have begun to deliver touch screens, which is good whether you play Candy Crush or Cut The Rope. We’ve reviewed a wide variety of touch-screen displays and this feature is redundant on most gaming PCs, though it makes sense for reversible systems or 2-in-1s.
Bottom Line
In the end, it is not just about matching the parts or the form factor of one gaming laptop to another. It’s about discovering the functionality you truly need and choosing the computer that has what you’re searching for.