In this article, we will look at some of the best budget gaming laptops that are perfect for gaming and productivity. Our focus will be on laptops that generally cost about $1000, but there will be exceptions.
If you’re someone who’d prefer a machine with portability and if you’re a busy person who travels a lot, a gaming laptop is better than a powerful desktop. While many consider gaming laptops inferior to desktop computers, depending on the situation, a laptop could be miles better than a desktop.
Best Budget Gaming Laptops
Without further introduction, let’s look at some of the best budget gaming laptops in 2023.
Acer Predator Helios 15
The Acer Predator Helios 15 is a laptop with a 15.6 FHD display, an RTX 3060 6GB GPU, and an Intel i7 12th-gen processor. Depending on your choice of RAM and the SSD size, the machine will cost from $1300 to $2000, generally.
This laptop is capable of running many modern games on high settings at 1080p with a smooth, solid framerate. However, the hard disk sizes of 1 to 2 TB may be off-putting to some. Then again, many gaming laptops on this list have similar disk sizes. It’s best if you choose an external HDD/SSD to go with these.
Gigabyte G5 (2023)
This is a rather affordable RTX 4060 gaming laptop that would fit a tight budget. For about $1000, this laptop offers an RTX 4060 8 GB, an Intel Core i5 12th-gen processor, 16 GB RAM, and 512 GB SSD. Again, a bigger SSD is almost mandatory for this laptop as well.
Arguably, this laptop is better than our previous pick in many ways, and this is one of the best budget gaming laptops on the market right now.
Acer Nitro 5
This laptop is quite cheap at about $850. While its RTX 3050 Ti GPU can be off-putting to some, it’s still a good GPU for the price and is able to run many modern games on medium-high settings. The RTX disabled allows for more performance. The GPU’s power is more or less equivalent to a GTX 1660 but with Ray-tracing capabilities, a 12th-gen i5 CPU, 16 GB RAM, and a 512 GB SSD.
MSI Katana
This is another laptop that generally costs less than $1000. With an RTX 3050 Ti GPU, i7 12th-gen CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and a 512 GB SSD, this can be considered an alternative to our previous laptop which will cost a bit more. There’s also an RTX 4070 variant of this that’s obviously more powerful but costs around $1500.
ASUS TUF Gaming A16
This laptop is one of the cheaper ones on this list. For about $800, this laptop offers an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS with 16GB DDR5 Memory, a Radeon RX7600S GPU, and a 512GB SSD. This laptop is a fantastic option if you prefer AMD processors and GPUs, and it’s quite a good laptop for its decent price.
