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The Best Cheap Gaming Laptop

By Haley Perry
Updated
A Gigabyte Aorus 15 gaming laptop, to the right of a white mug with colorful spots painted on it.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Powerful gaming laptops can be wildly expensive, with some as much as $3,000. For that price, you can get a slim, light laptop with solid speakers, quiet fans, and high resolutions—in theory. But you don’t have to spend more than $1,500 to get a great gaming laptop, and most people probably shouldn’t. Cheaper laptops are being built with more powerful hardware all the time, and in 2024, we’re seeing more budget models that include high refresh rate displays, slimmer builds, and the newest generation of graphics cards and processors.

We spent months testing laptops for this guide, including against more expensive models costing all the way up to $3,000, and found that the affordable Gigabyte Aorus 15 (BMF-52US383SH) was the only laptop of the 12 we tested that provided consistently good performance while staying cool inside and out.

Everything we recommend

Our pick

This laptop has the newest generation of hardware and performs better than some of the most expensive models we tested. It maintains great frame rates for smooth gameplay and stays quiet and cool to the touch.

Buying Options

Budget pick

The Acer Nitro 5 is the best inexpensive gaming laptop we considered, but it won’t play the newest, most demanding games as well as our top pick. It also has half the storage, and its screen isn’t as nice.

Buying Options

This model is identical to the AN515-44-R99Q but has a four-core Intel processor instead of a six-core AMD processor. We recommend it if the AMD model is unavailable, or if this one happens to be cheaper.

Buying Options

How we picked


  • Affordable price

    We look at laptops that cost less than $1,500—not exactly “cheap,” but gaming models can be pricey.

  • High performance

    Consistent, high-quality performance is key, so long as the laptop doesn’t overheat when you’re gaming.

  • Current hardware

    The newer the graphics card and processor, the longer you should be able to play demanding games in the future.

  • User-friendly

    Fan noises shouldn’t drive you bananas, the port selection should be generous, and the keyboard and trackpad should be responsive.

Our pick

This laptop has the newest generation of hardware and performs better than some of the most expensive models we tested. It maintains great frame rates for smooth gameplay and stays quiet and cool to the touch.

Buying Options

The Gigabyte Aorus 15 (BMF-52US383SH) surpassed all of the other models we tested with consistent, high-quality performance, and it only costs $1,000 at full price (we’ve previously seen it discounted to $800). It has quiet fans and a high refresh rate screen, and it averaged about 90 frames per second on high and ultra settings in most of our gaming tests—even with ray-tracing features enabled.

Budget pick

The Acer Nitro 5 is the best inexpensive gaming laptop we considered, but it won’t play the newest, most demanding games as well as our top pick. It also has half the storage, and its screen isn’t as nice.

Buying Options

This model is identical to the AN515-44-R99Q but has a four-core Intel processor instead of a six-core AMD processor. We recommend it if the AMD model is unavailable, or if this one happens to be cheaper.

Buying Options

If you want the cheapest possible laptop that will get decent performance in games, get the Acer Nitro 5 AN515-44-R99Q or AN515-55-53AG. Because it has less-powerful graphics hardware, the Nitro 5 can’t play the absolute newest, most demanding games at their highest settings, and it doesn’t support VR, but it’s powerful enough to play older games or less demanding modern titles. The Nitro 5 keeps cool enough without blasting its fans, it has a responsive keyboard and trackpad, and it’s easy to upgrade. But compared with our top pick, the Nitro 5 has a dimmer screen at a lower, 60 Hz refresh rate. It also offers less storage for games and comes with a ton of bloatware installed.

I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching and testing models for this guide since 2022. I also test hardware for most of our other gaming guides, including keyboards, controllers, and headsets.

A gaming laptop isn’t right for everyone. If you don’t need a computer you can take with you, consider an entry-level gaming desktop, which is much more powerful than a laptop of the same price, and easier to upgrade in the future. But if a laptop fits your needs better, you may have to compromise on your budget, depending on what games you plan to play.

Spending more money will get you a slimmer, lighter, and more portable gaming laptop, but if performance is your top priority, you don’t need to spend more than $1,500. In recent years, more affordable gaming laptops are getting high refresh rate displays and powerful graphics hardware with support for ray tracing, a type of graphics rendering that allows for more sophisticated and realistic visual effects and lighting, and deep learning super sampling (DLSS), a video rendering technique used to boost frame rates. These features are showing up in more games, and our main pick can utilize ray tracing without sacrificing good performance or high frame rates—but our budget pick will struggle more with this task.

A great gaming laptop should deliver consistent, high-quality performance without overheating—a challenge for gaming laptops of any price. For this guide, we evaluate laptops costing less than $1,500 and have found that more expensive models aren’t worth recommending because they typically run too hot to touch, or don’t perform well enough to justify the price. Here’s how we select the most promising options, in order of importance:

Performance: We look at several variables to determine whether a gaming laptop is powerful enough to be worth the money.

  • Graphics card: The graphics processing unit, or GPU, has the biggest influence on what games you can play and at which settings you can play them. You can’t upgrade your laptop’s GPU, and if you cut corners at the time of purchase, you’ll have to shell out for a new computer sooner to play new games in the future. For our latest round of testing, we evaluated laptops built with the newest generation of Nvidia’s 40-series GPUs and AMD’s 6000-series GPUs.
  • Video memory: We also consider a graphics processor’s dedicated video memory, or VRAM. As of 2023, some demanding AAA games like Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 recommend 8 GB of VRAM. We haven’t found a laptop in this price range with more than 6 GB of VRAM worth recommending yet, but our top pick should be able to meet the minimum or recommended system requirements for most demanding games released after 2018.
  • Processor: A gaming laptop needs a processor powerful enough to effectively coordinate with the GPU. We recommend 12th- or 13th-generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processors and 6000- or 7000-series Ryzen 7 or Ryzen 9 processors because they’ll provide acceptable performance for longer.
  • Memory: You can get by with 8 GB of system memory, or RAM, in a gaming laptop if you aren’t live-streaming. But 16 GB of RAM is ideal for modern games, especially if you also live-stream on platforms like Twitch or YouTube.
  • Solid-state drive: A solid-state drive speeds up boot times and reduces loading times in games, so all of our recommendations have SSDs. We prefer at least a 250 GB solid-state drive. With games like 2023’s Starfield demanding 140 GB of free space for a full install, 128 GB options aren’t enough.

Heat: Without an effective cooling system, a gaming laptop can overheat while playing more-demanding games, which can slow gaming performance and shorten the laptop’s lifespan. It can also burn your fingers or your lap—or minimally, make your hands sweaty if the laptop vents heat out to the sides. We test many laptops that perform well in-game, but very few stay cool enough to recommend.

Noise: Noisy fans are a reasonable trade-off for a cool laptop, but they shouldn’t drown out the speakers or split your ears. They also shouldn’t blast during less-demanding activities like browsing the web.

Keyboard and trackpad: The keyboard should be comfortable and responsive, as you use it for the majority of game inputs. And a decent trackpad still matters for web browsing and everyday tasks, even if most people will use a mouse or controller for gaming.

Display: We think 15-inch laptops strike a good balance between screen size and relative portability, though we also evaluated 17.3-inch laptops that met our testing criteria. Any pick we make for the best cheap gaming laptop needs to have a 1920×1080 screen—no exceptions. We also look for IPS panels with refresh rates around 144 Hz, because the higher the refresh rate, the smoother animations appear—so long as the frame rates are also high.

Portability: Plenty of gaming laptops are also used for school or work, so we still consider battery life, size, and weight in this category.

Upgradeability: You should be able to easily remove the bottom panel of the laptop to upgrade the memory and storage. But to keep prices low, laptop makers often design budget models to be less upgradeable.

Software and bloatware: A gaming laptop should come with software for controlling the fans, performance, and lighting. Budget gaming laptops typically come with an excess of bloatware, but you can either remove unnecessary programs one at a time or run Microsoft’s reset utility to remove all that and reinstall any specific programs you need. Resetting Windows gets rid of everything, including the useful programs that manage fans and some important drivers, so make sure you can download those from the manufacturer’s site before you nuke it all.

Build quality: Many cheap laptops flex and creak under light pressure, sound hollow or plasticky, and have wobbly lids, but a well-made laptop will hold up better over years of use (and occasional abuse).

We benchmarked each laptop using Dirt 5, Gears Tactics, and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy to check for any unexpected performance and heat issues. Then we played half an hour of Overwatch 2—a popular game, but not too taxing—on ultra settings. After that, we pushed our finalists with a more graphically demanding game, playing 30 minutes of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy on its highest settings with VSync off. We also turned up the ray-tracing settings to their highest value. We measured the internal temperature of the laptops using HWMonitor Pro, and measured the surface temperature at various points on the keyboard and underside using an IR thermometer.

We used each of the finalists for many more hours of work and games to get a feel for the keyboard, trackpad, screen, and speakers. Using an X-Rite colorimeter, we set our finalists’ screen backlights to 150 nits and ran a web-browsing battery test that cycles through web pages, email, Google Docs, and video. Because we set each laptop to the same brightness, the results are directly comparable.

The Gigabyte Aorus 15 gaming laptop, shown open to display its desktop screen.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Our pick

This laptop has the newest generation of hardware and performs better than some of the most expensive models we tested. It maintains great frame rates for smooth gameplay and stays quiet and cool to the touch.

Buying Options

Processor:Intel Core i5-13500H
Graphics:Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 with 6 GB VRAM
Memory:8 GB
Storage:512 GB
Screen:15.6-inch 1920×1080 144 Hz
Weight:5 pounds
Dimensions:14.2 by 10.7 by 0.82 inches
Tested battery life:4 hours 23 minutes

The Gigabyte Aorus 15 can play most of the newest titles at medium or higher settings at full HD 1080p resolution—and maintain excellent frame rates while doing so. It has a high, 144 Hz refresh rate display, and it’s equipped with the newest generation of graphics and processing hardware that should be able to play games smoothly for years to come.

Performance is smooth and the graphics are sharp. The Aorus performs well on ultra settings in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Overwatch 2. We cranked the graphics settings to the highest presets, and set ray-tracing to ultra on Guardians, and both games played great. We saw a few screen tears and stutters after starting up Guardians initially, but after that, there were no issues.

It delivers consistently high frame rates, which makes visuals look smoother and more realistic. In our benchmark tests, the Aorus 15 averaged more than 90 fps in almost every game on high or ultra settings. The exception to this was during our benchmark tests of Dirt 5 on ultra, where it averaged around 55 fps.

It stays cool under pressure. This laptop’s keys and underside never got too hot to touch, and its internal components stayed acceptably cool when we pushed its performance to the max. No other laptop we tested managed to do this.

The fans are quiet. The Aorus 15’s fans aren’t perfectly silent, but most of the time we barely noticed them. At their default speed, they never drowned out the speakers, even during the most demanding games. The volume can be thunderous if you set the fan mode to Turbo on Gigabyte’s Control Center software, but you probably shouldn’t do this anyway—we rarely notice substantial performance benefits from these types of modes, and the noise isn’t worth the trade-off.

The ports on the side of a Gigabyte Aorus 15 gaming laptop.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh

The speakers are surprisingly adequate. Many gaming laptops we’ve tested in this price range have speakers that are too quiet, or sound tinny and compressed. The Aorus 15’s speakers can get very loud, and we found gaming and listening to music to be enjoyable enough at medium volumes—especially because the fans aren’t too loud to dampen the experience.

The included Control Center software is easy to use. Using the Gigabyte Control Center software, you can adjust the fan speeds from different preset or custom modes, assign macros, or modify the keyboard’s three-zone RGB lighting with colors and effects. The software is pretty barebones, but we like that it’s simple to navigate and figure out.

It has a good port selection, and some are even mounted on the back. You won’t have to worry about an Ethernet or power cable jutting out into your mouse hand or strewing across your desk, because these ports are located on the rear edge, along with a Thunderbolt, HDMI 2.1, and mini DisplayPort jack. On the sides, there are three additional USB-A ports, a headphone port, and a USB-C port.

It’s not ugly. This laptop is a sleek, black rectangle with subtle stripes on the back edge of the chassis. There’s a lightbar underneath the display that emits a faint glow, which is a nice and understated embellishment that can be customized with different RGB effects (or turned off entirely). You may prefer a more cutting-edge design, but at the very least, the Aorus 15 doesn’t scream “gaming” and won’t clash with your surroundings.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It might not have enough VRAM to play newer, more intensive games. This laptop has 6 GB of VRAM, which is enough to play most demanding games released after at least 2018 at their recommended settings, but as of 2023, we began to see some AAA games (like Starfield) recommend 8 GB of VRAM. We will test games that demand higher VRAM on this laptop and will update this guide with our findings soon.

It comes with less memory than we’d prefer. This configuration of the Aorus 15 comes with a single stick of 8 GB DDR5 RAM. This is enough to get by, and a single stick of DDR5 RAM runs dual channels so it won’t be a problem for gaming. But if you want the best performance and you’re interested in streaming, we recommend adding an extra stick of 8 GB RAM, which you can easily install yourself for around $20.

The battery life is adequate for a gaming laptop, but underwhelming. Most gaming laptops don’t last long on battery power, even when you’re not gaming. We measured this laptop’s battery life at 4 hours 23 minutes running only web-browsing tasks. In contrast, our top pick for the best photo and video editing laptop has a tested battery life of 14.5 hours, and our business laptop pick lasts about 10 hours.

The Acer Nitro 5, our budget pick for best cheap gaming laptop, with a flaming red graphic on the screen.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh

Budget pick

The Acer Nitro 5 is the best inexpensive gaming laptop we considered, but it won’t play the newest, most demanding games as well as our top pick. It also has half the storage, and its screen isn’t as nice.

Buying Options

This model is identical to the AN515-44-R99Q but has a four-core Intel processor instead of a six-core AMD processor. We recommend it if the AMD model is unavailable, or if this one happens to be cheaper.

Buying Options

Processor:

AMD Ryzen 5 4600H

or Intel Core i5-10300H

Graphics:Nvidia GTX 1650 with 4 GB VRAM
Memory:8 GB
Storage:256 GB SSD
Screen:15.6-inch 1920×1080 60 Hz
Weight:4.8 pounds
Dimensions:14.3 by 10 by 0.9 inches
Tested battery life:6 hours

The Acer Nitro 5 is one of the cheapest gaming laptops you can consistently find in stock, and it’s been our budget pick for this guide since 2020. If you can’t find our top pick on sale for a price you’re happy with, you should go with the AN515-44-R99Q or AN515-55-53AG—whichever is cheaper. Both configurations have dated hardware that won’t be able to run the newest AAA games perfectly, but they’re suitable if you play older or less-demanding titles.

It can play some newer, demanding games at lower settings. This laptop has an Nvidia GTX 1650 graphics card, which came out in 2019. Games have gotten much more demanding since, but this GPU is still a workhorse capable of running some newer titles on low or medium settings. It has only 4 GB of VRAM, but it still meets the minimum requirements for some games launched in 2023, such as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Street Fighter 6.

It has an effective cooling system. At its default fan settings, the Nitro 5 kept its most-touched surfaces and its internal components cool enough during our gaming tests, and the fans weren’t too loud. When running at max speeds, the fans still produced a loud, impossible-to-ignore whooshing noise, but in our testing we found that max fans weren’t necessary to maintain reasonable temperatures during less-demanding games.

The battery life is pretty good for a gaming laptop. This laptop lasts through about six hours of regular web-browsing use, which won’t get you through a full day of work or classes, but it’s still longer than most other models we’ve tested—including our top pick.

It’s easy to upgrade the storage and memory. The Nitro 5 has an empty M.2 PCIe slot for extra storage, plus an open RAM slot. We recommend adding another solid-state drive, since you can get 500 GB for around $50, and the included 256 GB of storage may fill up fast.

The port selection is generous but dated. The Nitro 5 has one USB-C port, three USB-A ports, an HDMI port, an Ethernet jack, an audio jack, and a Kensington lock slot. Although its USB and HDMI ports are a couple of generations behind the current standards, they’ll still get the job done. We also like that the power jack is located on the back of the laptop, so the cable won’t get in the way while you’re gaming.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It has mediocre build quality. The lid of the Nitro 5 flexes, so we don’t recommend stacking things on it or putting too much pressure against it in a bag.

The laptop vents hot air out of the upper right side. We usually consider side vents to be a dealbreaker, because it can quickly make your mousing hand sweaty and uncomfortable. In our tests, the laptop ran cool enough to keep this from being an issue, but the heat could become bothersome if you run newer, more demanding games.

The Nitro 5 comes with a lot of bloatware, and we recommend removing all of it. If you opt to use the Windows Refresh tool rather than removing each program individually, search for your model number on Acer’s website to reinstall the NitroSense software for controlling fan speed and any drivers you may need.

For our next update, we will test the Gigabyte G6X (9KG-43US864SH), which has a 16-inch display, a 13th-generation Intel i7 processor, and an Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics card. It also has 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1 TB solid-state drive. We will update this guide once we’ve finished our evaluation.

We’re also researching models such as the Dell G15 and Alienware M16 R2, along with new gaming laptops from Acer, Asus, Lenovo, and MSI.

The fans on the Acer Nitro 5 (AN515-58-56CH) were intolerably loud whenever the display was turned on. The bottom of the laptop also ran too hot.

We dismissed the Acer Nitro 16 (AN16-41-R3ZV) and Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 (PHN16-71-50JG) because both laptops vent hot air out of the sides.

In our benchmark tests, the Gigabyte G5 (KF-E3US333SH) delivered wildly inconsistent results. And the fans have a mind of their own—not only are they loud, but they also blasted on and off at their own will.

The MSI Cyborg 15 (A13VE-218US) ran too hot on some of the keys and on the underside in our 30 minute playtests, even on the lowest graphics settings.

The Acer Predator Helios 300 (PH315-53-72XD) was a former pick in this guide, but its WASD keys also ran about 10 degrees hotter than those of our top picks, and its keyboard has a flaw that we considered to be a dealbreaker: Unless you press firmly in the middle of each key, it may not register the keystroke. We had issues typing and gaming on two different units, and we found numerous reports of the same problem in owner reviews.

The MSI GF65 Thin (10SER-458) ran too hot in all our tests, even with the fans maxed out.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i (15″) ran too hot in all our tests.

Additional reporting by Kimber Streams. This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Caitlin McGarry.

Meet your guide

Haley Perry

Haley Perry is an associate staff writer at Wirecutter covering video games and technology. She used to review video games full-time, and she’s also a big fan of mezcal. If you get enough in her, she may just admit that she still plays The Sims ... a lot.

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