The 10 Best Gaming Laptops

Editor's Notes

October 23, 2026, by Ezvid Wiki Admin:

The Asus Strix G16 RTX 5060 now heads the list because it pairs a strong processor and serious cooling with a current graphics chip, without the price of the flagship tier. Every model on the old list, from the MSI GP66 Leopard to the Razer Blade Pro and Dell G7, ran graphics chips two or three generations old and has been discontinued, so all of them are gone.

The Acer Nitro V 16S AI is the one pick with a full independent review of the exact model. Tom's Hardware lab results for it, and for the Strix G16, Katana 15 HX and Predator Helios Neo 14 families, carried most of the weight, along with makers' spec sheets and the Consumer Product Safety Commission's recall records. Several of these sell above the maker's own list price, so check the exact configuration before you pay. The old boutique-builder shout-outs are out; Razer's Blade 18 and the Framework Laptop 16, whose graphics module can be swapped, are in.

March 18, 2021:

Some six months after the release of the Nvidia RTX 3000 series, a gaming laptop is, surprisingly, just about the only place most people will be able to find one of the new GPUs. So, if you're looking for something high-end, there are a few 3000-series notebooks to choose from, but you'll want to pay close attention to the exact specifications of the GPU.

One seemingly small but actually significant difference in the latest crop of gaming laptops is how the GPUs are designated. Previously, Nvidia mobile GPUs came in two configurations. The Max-Q variant was highly efficient but performed poorly, and the full-power "Max-P" worked very well, but got hot and was particularly hard to find in a laptop. The major change here is that Nvidia is no longer binning a portion of the GPUs, but rather leaving it up to the laptop manufacturers to determine clock and memory bus speeds. This isn't entirely unexpected due to consumer frustration over subpar Max-Q output. Thankfully, Nvidia is also now requiring manufacturers to list their GPU's actual specifications, and that kind of disclosure is a must-have for consumers.

With that in mind, we left off a handful of otherwise promising options that, after investigation, throttled down GPU performance by as much as 30 percent. For example, the CUK Asus ROG Strix G17 is one of the few Asus models with a TGP of over 105, as its TGP rating of 130 is nearly on a par with the best. The MSI GP66 Leopard 10UG is another such model.

At the other end of the spectrum, the entry-level 3000-series cards have not yet been released, although they should come out soon. In fact, a laptop known so far as just the Samsung 760XDA was recently discovered on GeekBench, and it will apparently come with an optional 3050 or 3050 Ti. At the moment, though, the RTX 2000 series notebooks remain viable options if you don't want to spend a fortune. The Acer Nitro 5 is one such example. Alternatively, for just a few hundred more, you can pick up the MSI GF65, although you'll almost certainly want to add an extra 8 gigabytes of RAM right away.

March 05, 2020:

There are a few main considerations when buying a gaming laptop. Gaming is highly visual, so we stuck to the 15"-17" range; that's where the overwhelming majority of gaming laptops are because anything smaller is just not very immersive. Of course, that range really only consists of two sizes -- 17.3" and 15.6" -- but there aren't any modern laptops bigger, and if you're going smaller you may not even need a dedicated gaming rig, because many of today's integrated graphics chipsets can play games at 720p. So if you need something smaller, for example, for travel purposes, and you don't play the newest AAA titles, a regular laptop should do the trick.

On the small end of the range, the Asus ROG Zephyrus S GX502 is an extremely high-powered unit that, while expensive, should leave all but the most demanding users satisfied. On the other end of the price spectrum is the Asus Tuf, which is a good choice for those who like high frame rates but don't need the absolute most advanced technology. The Lenovo Ideapad L340 is another affordable option, although we prefer the general build quality and rugged construction of most of the stuff from Asus. The Acer Predator Helios is another medium-budget offering that measures 15.6".

But in some cases, bigger is better, and gaming is one of those cases. We won't waste any time before we mention the Razer Blade Pro; a 17.3-inch screen with a 4K resolution and 120-hertz refresh rate are basically unheard of. In fact, it's almost impossible to find anything else like it in early 2020. So if you have a few grand sitting around and want to play Halo on the bus, it's worth a shot.

Let's talk about some more interesting tech. We saw a few laptops last year tease us with these displays, but the Gigabyte Aero 15 X is one of the few readily available laptops with a high-end OLED panel, and if you're ever used this type of panel technology before, you know how nice it looks. The Dell Alienware M17 offers premium build quality and some really nice touches, including but not limited to dual 512-gigabyte NVMe SSDs in a RAID0 configuration that makes for nearly instantaneous load times. The only major drawback to most Razer, Gigabyte, and Alienware products is that they are, in many cases, insanely expensive.

Occupying the sweet spot for many dedicated gamers are an interesting pair. The HP Omen is a high-quality, brand-name option that you can trust to work well and perform even better. And while you haven't likely heard of the folks behind the Eluktronics Mech G1R, they're actually quite popular with the types of people who hang out in seedy online forums asking for laptop purchasing tips. In particular, this model is noteworthy due to its full-speed mobile GeForce RTX 2070 graphics card. A lot of laptops -- many of them good ones -- utilize a trimmed-down version of the GeForce GPU called a "Max-Q" design, and while it doesn't get quite as hot or use as much battery, it simply doesn't perform as well as the full-speed variant (known internally as "Max-P," although you won't find that name on any public marketing).