The Best Cheap Gaming Laptops for 2025

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What defines a "true" gaming laptop? It has a dedicated graphics processing unit (GPU), the laptop equivalent of a graphics card. And that means that you'll find gaming laptops only so cheap and no cheaper; current-gen models seldom drop below $700. But not everyone needs an expensive machine designed for the hard-core crowd—capable, affordable options, a bit north or south of $1,000, are better than ever. I've been testing gaming laptops for almost a decade, and here's my north-star advice with gaming laptops: Making the correct compromises in what you buy is critical. At PCMag, we evaluate every laptop for performance, usability, and value to separate the deals from the duds, subjecting each to a slate of rigorous, repeatable tests. My current recommendation for a cheap gaming laptop is the Lenovo LOQ 15 or Acer Nitro V 15, depending on how tight your budget is, but below are additional tested picks for narrower preferences and different budgets.

Even on a budget, we assume you want to do more than play games at low settings—you have a Steam account, and you ache to play some of the latest AAA games in all their glory. That's where a dedicated graphics processor (GPU) comes in. It's the starting point for getting serious about gaming on a notebook.

If you're truly serious and insist on playing all your games at very high detail settings and the highest possible screen resolution (for most entry-level laptops, that's 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, assuming you're playing on the laptop's screen and not an external display), you're just going to have to shell out some bucks, especially if you want that laptop to stay game-viable at those settings for more than a couple of years.

High-end future-proofing like that demands top-end graphics silicon: Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, and RTX 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti were the latest and greatest by 2022, but you'll rarely find them in new laptops today. The GeForce RTX 40 series defines most gaming laptops now; getting one of the top-end RTX 40-series GPUs (like the RTX 4070 and 4080) still means big spending, though, and at current prices, they are well outside the budget range, with most models containing them closer to $2,000 than $1,000. Nvidia also announced the RTX 50 series at the start of 2025, but these won't filter down to cheap laptops right away; plus, the high-end GPUs are launching first.

Take comfort, though, that times have changed. You don't necessarily need one of the top-line GPUs for steady gaming performance. With scarce compromise, you can enjoy some respectable gaming at 1080p in machines a notch or two down from the GeForce RTX elite.

Lower-end RTX 40-series GPUs, notably the GeForce RTX 4050 and 4060, are the most common budget GPUs, and can easily get the job done. You'll find these GPUs in most budget gaming laptops sold today. Pricing fluctuates, but these machines are available for just under or just above $1,000, depending on the retailer and any sales. Budget-priced gaming laptops are now an established category, not outliers, and have been embraced by the major players. We've tested models from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, and a few others.

Here's how to make sense of their components—and get the most for your money.

Cheap Gaming Laptops: What to Look For, Component by Component

Our first bit of advice? If gaming's your primary focus and your budget does dead-stop at $1,000, get the best GPU you can for the money, and let everything else follow from there. That may be at the expense of another spec or two—a little less storage or a Core i5 processor instead of a Core i7.

Remember, most notebooks aren't upgradable except for their primary system memory (RAM, not to be confused with graphics memory) and, in some cases, storage. You will be stuck with the screen, the graphics chip, and the processor you buy now, so evaluate these parts wisely. Stretching your budget for the next-tier-higher component can pay dividends in usable laptop lifespan.

Which CPU Should You Get in a Cheap Gaming Laptop?

Some of today's games, especially in the strategy and simulation categories, tend to hammer the processor. Dual-core processors are a thing of the past, as AAA games call explicitly for quad-core CPUs as a minimum.

Regardless, a maxed-out Core i7 or Core i9 CPU is less crucial for gaming than processor-intensive tasks such as video editing and media-file production work. This is because you'll get plenty of gaming pep even from Core i5 CPUs. Intel's 13th Gen chips launched in 2023, and as expected, they increased both power and efficiency; 14th Gen followed after, but are largely deployed in more expensive machines.

In any recent generation, a Core i7 is a super-efficient processor that we'd argue, while helpful to have and a marked performance difference, may be slight overkill for casual gamers stuck to a tight budget. A modern Core i5 chip will likely serve you just fine in a budget gaming laptop.

Today, Intel's 13th Gen chips are found in most budget systems. While a fraction of the laptops in our recommendations still use older chips, the 13th Gen has taken over, even in the budget tier.

Adding to the complexity, Intel's newest laptop chips, the Core Ultra, are here, with dedicated AI processing core clusters called neural processing units (NPUs). The first two generations of these chips, "Meteor Lake" and "Lunar Lake," have not been considerable factors in budget gaming laptops, though performance is solid. The same can be said, for the time being, of the 14th Gen "Raptor Lake Refresh" processors, whose "HX" chips are used in pricier high-end machines. The latest Core Ultra "Arrow Lake" chips will be available this year, and we may see further adoption in gaming as they roll out. But they're not a factor in cheap gaming machine quite yet.

Meanwhile, things are looking up on the AMD side of the fence. Previously, AMD CPUs and GPUs were rarely seen in midrange and high-end laptops, but they were ideal fits for budget laptops (because the components were value plays, to begin with). Even then, there weren't too many laptops with AMD chips.

Today, you can get Zen 4 architecture-based Ryzen 7000 and (more recently) Ryzen 8000 models; some have made their way down to the budget tier. AMD also offers its own NPU-bearing Ryzen AI chips (the first series being the Ryzen AI 300), but the adoption story for gaming is the same as with Intel Arrow Lake, for now. We now see more laptops with AMD's Ryzen 5 or 7 mobile CPUs than ever, but Intel is still more common overall.

How Much Memory Is Enough for Gaming?

Given an around-$1,000 budget, 8GB is the minimum memory you should settle for. (We haven't seen less in a machine with dedicated graphics for years.) Some sub-$1,000 machines with dedicated graphics won't have any more than that, but 8GB is adequate for most moderate use and mainstream gaming. It used to be that 8GB of RAM was far more common than 16GB, but even in the budget tier these days, you'll find many of our picks include 16GB. Given the choice, we'd opt for 16GB if the cost difference isn't much.

Further facets to investigate are whether the laptop's RAM is user-upgradable later on, and what the memory ceiling is. Regardless, even if you can upgrade the memory, the laptop may have memory modules occupying both slots, which would mean replacing them when upgrading later. It's best to get what you need up-front.

How Much Storage Is Enough in a Cheap Gaming Laptop?

Even in the budget tier, laptops now default to using solid-state drives (SSDs) instead of hard drives (HDDs). The occasional 18-inch-screen model might offer a small-capacity SSD boot drive alongside a secondary-storage platter hard drive, but by and large, standalone SSDs now reign supreme. (Note that most budget gaming laptops under a grand will be 15.6-inchers or 16-inchers.)

You can still opt for this dual-drive approach if you can find it and afford it, but it isn't the norm any longer. If you can find such a laptop, the smaller, faster SSD would be home to the operating system and a few favorite games, and the larger, more economical hard drive would host the rest of your games and other programs that don't need quick loading times. (It's possible to split your Steam and other game libraries across drives.) Some larger-bodied budget gaming laptops let you add the second drive yourself inside an empty 2.5-inch bay. That can be the most economical choice since 2.5-inch hard drives of significant capacity are easy to find for less than $100. Or, you could put a 2.5-inch SATA SSD in there instead.

An SSD plus a hard drive can be a cost-effective storage solution for a gaming laptop, given how large modern game installations have become, ballooning over 100GB at times. Your small SSD will fill up quickly, so 512GB is the bare minimum you should aim for in a gaming laptop's boot drive. Just know: The storage subsystem affects game load times and in-game level changes. (That can be particularly important in open-world games, where huge environments load in real time.) The difference in performance "feel" between a hard drive and an SSD boot drive is hard to ignore, so bear that in mind if you're thinking about installing or opting for a secondary platter drive as a game library to complement your boot SSD. (See our picks for the fastest SSDs.)

Optical drives are extinct on new gaming laptops at any screen size these days. Even if you have many games on disc, know that you can always use an external USB DVD/CD drive in a pinch, and they cost just $20 or so.

What Kind of Display to Get in a Cheap Gaming Laptop?

Four specs should be considered when examining a gaming laptop's display panel: the screen size, the native resolution, the refresh rate, and the panel type.

As noted earlier, 15.6 or 16 inches is the general screen size rule for most gaming laptops, costing around $1,000. This size is a good compromise in ways that extend beyond cost. Sometimes, gaming on the biggest laptop screen possible—there is a spread of 16-, 17-, and 18-inch machines these days—is the way to go. They aren't as portable, though (many of these notebooks weigh six pounds or more), and the lightest ones tend to be far from the cheapest.

A 15-inch gamer still won't be ideal for daily travel, but most are a lot more manageable than their larger kin. Also, today's 15-inch gaming rigs are better suited for use in true mobile fashion—that is, off an AC power plug—than those of past years. Some hit six or more hours of battery life, albeit in everyday productivity use or playing back video; gaming will trim that number considerably. (See our picks for the laptops with the best battery life.)

As for the screen's native resolution, 1,920 by 1,080 pixels (commonly called 1080p) is the norm in budget-priced and mainstream gaming machines. The more pixels you need to push, the more graphics power you need, and a savvy maker of gaming laptops won't outfit a laptop with a screen whose native resolution the GPU can't do justice. So, the scarcity of higher-than-HD screens in budget gaming machines is no accident. Not only do such screens cost more and sap more battery life, but the graphics chips found in under-$1,000 gaming rigs wouldn't power gameplay on them very well. (Screens with resolutions much higher than 1080p tend to look small and squinty at the 15-inch size, anyway.)

Display Details: Refresh Rate and Panel Type

Like the native resolution, you should take note of the panel's refresh rate. If a laptop advertises its refresh rate (measured in hertz or Hz) as a feature, it's likely higher than the baseline 60Hz. Most ordinary laptop screens stick to 60Hz, which means they redraw the on-screen image 60 times per second and thus can display up to 60 frames per second (fps) of in-game performance. (In other words, if your graphics chip can produce 90fps in a game, you'll see only 60 frames.)

Essentially, all new gaming notebook screens these days, though, can display at 144Hz or more. This feature initially arrived only in costly gaming laptops, but now it's standard fare even in budget models. All our picks offer at least 120Hz, and most go to 144Hz or beyond. These high refresh rates can be beneficial for some extremely fast-paced games, particularly titles played competitively online, including stalwarts such as CS: GO, DOTA 2, and Overwatch, as well as Fortnite, Apex Legends, Marvel Rivals, and Call of Duty: Warzone.

Still, a fast screen isn't strictly necessary unless you're attempting to become a professional gamer or get ranked globally in a particular popular title. Plenty of gamers are still "stuck" with 60Hz displays, after all, if they haven't bought a new PC in the last few years or are playing on a non-gaming laptop. Still, with high-refresh panels now the norm even in budget gaming machines, the lack of one indicates an older model to avoid.

Another spec to watch for is panel type. If possible, you'll want to go for an in-plane switching (IPS) panel, as they generally offer the best off-center viewing angles and colors. Some gamers are content with cheaper twisted nematic (TN) panels, which make you settle for narrower viewing angles—but then, you're probably seated directly in front of the screen, so that's not an issue. TN panels can offer slightly faster response times.

A final note about touch input: Despite the undeniable convenience of touch screens for Windows, they are not the norm on gaming machines, and we don't know of any GeForce- or Radeon RX-based gaming models in the under-$1,000 class with a touch screen. (See our picks for the best touch-screen laptops.)

What Is the Best GPU to Get in a Cheap Gaming Laptop?

The dedicated graphics chip is the backbone of any gaming computer. Even in budget gaming machines, Nvidia's GeForce RTX line has supplanted its GTX predecessor; you will find these in most new gaming laptops.

In 2023, the laptop versions of the GeForce RTX 40-series desktop GPUs debuted, first in the expensive part of the market in machines like the beastly MSI Titan GT77.

This generation now represents the majority of GPUs you'll find in new laptops at all price ranges in 2025, with some RTX 30-series options occasionally sticking around in the least expensive base models. As mentioned, RTX 50 series GPUs have been announced, but they won't be a factor in cheap gaming laptops until the entry-level GPUs launch. Below, you'll find a rundown of the specific GPUs you'll see at the moment.

In particular, you should expect mostly the RTX 4050 GPU in this price range, plus a few RTX 4060 models. Despite initial guidance that some RTX 3060 and RTX 4060 models would be available for less than $1,000, current prices see most of them above that mark; the RTX 4050 is the most popular GPU in the around-$1,000 tier right now. That said, there are exceptions, and the least-expensive current options sit under $1,000.

So, what can you expect from these GPUs? The RTX 4050 laptops vary from one to the next, but we've generally found them to be capable 60fps-plus performers in mainstream and more demanding games, so long as you stay at 1080p (which is what most budget gaming laptops are limited to, anyway, if you rely on their built-in screens). That's what has made them such a fitting pick for this category.

If you can snag an RTX 3060- or RTX 4060-based budget laptop in this range, know it's a marked step up from the xx50 tier. This GPU class cruises over 60fps in most games and can meet that mark even in demanding AAA games. Most of the time, it won't even require you to lower settings, though the most straining titles may need some compromise. If you can find a laptop at the "60" level for a similar price to others, it's worth making it the priority in your decision.

The "R" in "RTX" stands for ray tracing, which is an advanced lighting technique that only GPUs with the RTX moniker carry the hardware to pull off. The GPUs at the top of the hierarchy (the RTX 3080 and RTX 4090, for example) are superior for performing this technique, as it will drag down your frame rates, but any RTX machine is technically capable. This is especially true with DLSS, an Nvidia visual feature that helps relieve the graphics burden at higher resolutions. Pulling this off on budget laptops at all is an impressive feat and shows how this category is healthier than ever in terms of performance.

Naturally, the full-size RTX desktop graphics cards have such a high-performance potential that the mobile versions of the same name can't hope to keep up, given the space and thermal discrepancies. (See our examination Laptop vs. Desktop GeForce RTX 4090: How Much Do Nvidia's Top GPUs Differ in Performance?) Additionally, manufacturers can outfit a given laptop GPU at a variety of wattages to fit a specific laptop's design and thermal needs, often resulting in differing real-world performance from that given GPU.

This can even apply to the same GPU in two different laptops; one may push the power ceiling because the laptop is larger, while another may limit its performance to fit in a smaller chassis. If you want to learn more, you can read about these complicated performance nuances. However, reading independent reviews with individual performance testing for laptops is more critical than ever.

As for Nvidia's competitor AMD, its dedicated graphics chips are less common in budget gaming laptops (or higher-cost ones, for that matter), even as its Ryzen processor success rises against Intel. Some laptops offer AMD CPUs paired with Nvidia GPUs, and you'll occasionally find a few among our picks. AMD announced its Radeon RX 7000 series in early 2023, but we don't see nearly as many Radeon RX GPUs as we do GeForce RTX ones, and rarely in cheap laptops. Intel has made some small strides with its discrete Arc GPUs on desktop, but they aren't much of a factor in the gaming laptop market. It's mostly Nvidia's game there.

Don't Forget the Keyboard: Lighting and Layouts

One of the typical features that sets apart a gaming laptop is a colorful, backlit keyboard. These vary quite a bit from model to model, with more elaborate backlighting going hand-in-hand with higher prices and a higher general level of other components.

Most budget gaming laptops use single-color backlighting (often red or white) to decrease costs. The next step up is lighting programmable by zone, with three or four blocks of the keyboard independently customizable in different colors, but this is not common in budget machines. Keyboards with per-key, individually programmable lighting are the province of high-end machines only.

Also, look at the key layout. Models with an isolated cluster of arrow keys or well-defined WASD keys get bonus points in our book. Also, because most budget gaming laptops are 15.6-inch models, check for a dedicated number pad to the right of the main key area if you prefer to have one—or not, for that matter. Some machines of this screen size will have one, and some won't. (A 17-inch laptop almost invariably will, however.)

Ready to Buy the Right Cheap Gaming Laptop for You?

Throughout this article, we've mapped out our top-rated models to investigate. As mentioned, some configurations sent to us for testing were above $1,000; this is virtually unavoidable given today's market. Some remain under that mark, while others rise and fall below that line depending on availability, deals, and generally fluctuating costs.

Also, note that most of these models are a single version of a machine in a varied line. So, use the linked reviews as guidelines, not absolutes, when assessing each laptop family. You may not get quite the level of performance we did if key components were downgraded to get the price below $1,000. But you should get a solid idea of the various laptops' screens, build, and input quality from our reviews.

In addition to poring over our reviews and checking out the vendors' sites, using the price filters at a reseller like Newegg.com can help you see different configurations at different price points. Some manufacturers offer many differently weighted versions of the same laptop (say, more storage in one config, a better GPU in another). Playing with the filters on these sites can be an illuminating exercise in give-and-take.

Want to round out your PC gaming experience? Check out our picks for the best gaming mice and headsets, as well as our picks for the best gaming laptops overall, price aside.