If you want the freedom to play your favorite PC games at your desk, on your TV, or in your bedroom, a gaming laptop may be a great fit for you. Fancy gaming laptops can be wildly expensive, but you don’t have to spend more than $1,500 to get a great one. Our picks are powerful enough to play the newest and most demanding games at high resolutions—and they should continue to do so for years to come.
Our pick
This laptop has the newest generation of hardware and performs better than some of the most expensive models we’ve tested. It maintains great frame rates for smooth gameplay and stays quiet and cool to the touch.
The Gigabyte Aorus 16X (9KG-43USC54SH) is the best gaming laptop you can get for less than $1,500. Equipped with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card and a powerful processor, it should be capable of playing the newest games on medium to high settings for years to come. It also has quiet fans, a slim build, and a high-resolution, high-refresh-rate display.
Budget pick
This Acer model offers great performance for a great price, but its graphics card may not provide enough VRAM to play new games for as long as our other picks.
We don’t have many negative things to say about the Acer Nitro V 15 (ANV15-41-R2Y3). Offering reliable performance, quiet fans, and a small footprint, this laptop is a solid value. It’s the most portable and affordable of our picks, but due to the mere 6 GB of VRAM included in its Nvidia RTX 4050 graphics card, it’s a little less powerful, and it may not meet the system requirements of the newest games in the future the way Gigabyte’s Aorus 16X or G6X can.
Also great
This Gigabyte laptop is a sound alternative to our top pick if you can’t find the Aorus 16X in stock. It’s powerful enough to play modern, demanding games on high settings, but it has loud fans and a stockier design.
Compared with our top pick, the Gigabyte G6X (9KG-43US864SH) is slightly bulkier and has much louder fans, and games don’t look as nice on its display. But it performs comparably to the Aorus 16X and keeps its surface and internal temperatures cool. It’s a fine alternative if you find it on sale, or if our top pick goes out of stock.
