Gaming laptops are way too expensive. Here are the best budget gaming laptops you can buy, especially if you’re trying to keep your budget under $1,000.
You’re searching for the best gaming laptops, and you’re hit with a big dose of reality: Gaming laptops are really expensive. Even midrange laptops can cost upwards of $2,000, and if you want a flagship laptop, you can spend as much as $5,000. Who’s supposed to buy these things anyway?
Fret not, as we’ve rounded up the best budget gaming laptops so you can play your games for cheap. For this guide, we’re focusing on laptops you can by for at or below $1,000, with a particular focus on gaming notebooks that provide the best bang for your buck.
Lenovo Legion Pro 5 Gen 8The best budget gaming laptop
The Lenovo Legion Pro 5 shouldn’t be a budget gaming laptop, but somehow, it is. Lenovo’s Legion range consistently offer some of the highest performance we see out of gaming notebooks, and although this range typically sells in the neighborhood of $1,500, you can find the latest model for as little as $1,100.
The base configuration comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 7645HX CPU and an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU, along with 512GB of storage and 16GB of DDR5 memory. If you can stretch your budget a bit, you can get an even better configuration. For instance, the $1,250 model comes with an RTX 4060 and Ryzen 7 7745HX.
You can save $100 or so with similarly configured laptops from other brands (we’ll highlight a few here, even), but the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 stands out for its quality. It’s a little more expensive, but it’s built like a flagship laptop, with an excellent keyboard, minimal body flex, and solid battery life.
Out of all of the gaming laptops we review, the Lenovo Legion Pro 5 is usually the go-to option regardless of your budget. The fact that Lenovo offers a budget-friendly configuration is just the cherry on top. It’s not the absolute cheapest laptop you can buy, but it’s well worth a small premium.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022)The best budget gaming laptop on sale
Asus’ popular ROG Zephyrus G14 is too expensive for this list. However, you can find last year’s model for very cheap, and if you can pick one up on sale, it’s easily the best deal on a gaming laptop you can find.
We’re talking about the 2022 model, and in particular, the base configuration with a Ryzen 9 6900HS processor and Radeon RX 6700S graphics card. It retails for $1,650, but you’ll commonly find it for around $1,100 these days. On sale, you can find it as low as $800, and it offers performance that easily beats the other options on this list.
The ROG Zephyrus G14 earns its stripes due to premium features. You’re getting more storage space than most other laptops on this list, a beautiful 120Hz display, and features like USB-C charging that are normally relegated to high-end machines like the Razer Blade 14.
