1080p Laptop Best Buy
Every gaming laptop here is one that we have personally tested. That means writing on them, browsing on them, watching video, and most importantly gaming on them. That experiential take on how good a machine is to actually use is vital when it comes to making recommendations on the best gaming laptop.
1080p laptop best buy
To get a holistic view of how good an actual gaming laptop is, it's this mix of the subjective experiential view and the objective benchmarks that give us our final list of the top notebooks for gaming.
For our money it's a toss-up between the Razer and Asus machines for top gaming laptop honors. The Blade series from Razer are clean-cut, stylish notebooks that have a matte black gaming MacBook aesthetic that we really dig. And Asus is a brand that knows how to do all the important hardware stuff; can deliver on style and technological substance, but can also offer better value than the more premium-focused Razer laptops.
That really depends on what you want to do with your laptop. An 8-core, 16-thread AMD Ryzen chip will allow you to do a whole load of productivity on the road, but honestly, it will have little benefit in gaming. That's one of the reasons Intel has launched its Tiger Lake H35 chips; they're quad-core, 8-thread CPUs, but they're clocked high to deliver high-end gaming performance when paired with something like the RTX 3070.
This will arguably have the most immediate impact on your choice of the build. Picking the size of your screen basically dictates the size of your laptop. A 13-inch machine will be a thin-and-light ultrabook, while a 17-inch panel almost guarantees workstation stuff. At 15-inches, you're looking at the most common size of the gaming laptop screen.
Nah. 4K gaming laptops are overkill; they're fine for video editing if you're dealing with 4K content, but it's not the optimal choice for games. The standard 1080p resolution means that the generally slower mobile GPUs are all but guaranteed high frame rates, while companies are slowly drip-feeding 1440p panels into their laptop ranges.
The best gaming laptop is a thing of beauty. A piece of PC gaming hardware that's as sleek and portable as it is powerful. We're at a point in PC tech where you can genuinely have desktop gaming performance in a notebook less than an inch thick and small enough to pack in a backpack.
You've decided to buy a gaming laptop at the right time. The next generation of mobile GPU and CPU is only just hitting the shelves, offering the best Nvidia, AMD, and Intel has to offer. I've already tested the alternatives, and the best gaming laptop is the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (opens in new tab). It makes the best RTX 4090 gaming laptops , including the Razer Blade 16 (opens in new tab) and Asus ROG Zephyrus M16, and even the frankly ridiculous MSI Titan GT77 HX (opens in new tab), look like overkill with similar gaming performance and a far lower sticker price for its RTX 4080 power.
But we know even these new chips will mostly be wrapped into the same chassis we've grown to love over the past year. And the price on last-gen offerings ought to come down in the short term, too, which makes this inflection point between two hardware generations a good time to start looking for a new gaming laptop.
Lenovo Legion Pro 7i (Gen 8) Intel Core i9 13900HX Nvidia RTX 4080 (150W) 32GB DDR5 1TB NVMe SSD (opens in new tab)The RTX 4080 model is our absolute favorite version of the Legion Pro 7i. That's the same one we've tested ourselves. This awesome chassis delivers enough headroom for the RTX 4080 to shine in games, and it often matches laptops with more restrained RTX 4090 GPUs inside. Tough to argue with that.
The final part of the package is the 1600p 240Hz screen. Which is fine. I fear I've been spoiled by the joy of the mini LED backlights used in the last few laptop displays I've tested, because this one lacks the punch that I now want from a gaming panel. What it does have, however, is the 16:10 aspect ratio (opens in new tab) I never knew I needed in a gaming laptop until I started using them on the regular. The 2560 x 1600 native resolution is a great match for the 16-inch screen size the Legion Pro comes rocking.
The Legion Pro 7i manages to outperform both the Razer Blade 16 and the Asus Zephyrus M16 regularly, at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions. Only the chonky boi MSI Titan GT77 is able to utilise its RTX 4090-ish GPU to its fullest potential. And then at the expense of acoustics and potentially your sanity.
The latest spin of the Razer Blade 15 once again improves on one of the best gaming laptops ever made. It has the same gorgeous CNC-milled aluminum chassis as its predecessor, only this time it can house one of Nvidia's latest RTX 40-series GPUs and an Intel 13th Gen Core i9 CPU.
The Blade 15 isn't the lightest gaming laptop you can buy, but five pounds is still way better than plenty of traditional gaming laptops, while also offering similar performance and specs. That heft helps make it feel solid too. It also means the Blade 15 travels well in your backpack. An excellent choice for the gamer on the go... or if you don't have the real estate for a full-blown gaming desktop and monitor.
One of the best things about the Blade 15 is the number of configurations (opens in new tab) Razer offers. From the RTX 3060 Base Edition to the RTX 3080 Ti Advanced with a 144Hz 4K panel, there's something for almost everyone. It's one of the most beautiful gaming laptops around and still one of the most powerful.
Whatever config you pick, we think the Razer Blade 15 is the overall best gaming laptop on the market right now, though you will be paying a premium for the now-classic design. It may also be the last of its breed, as the Blade 16 is only slightly larger because it has a far smaller bezel around the display; I would expect Razer to discontinue the 15-inch version sooner rather than later.
We checked out the version with AMD's RX 6800S under the hood, which AMD is yet to replace with an RX 7000-series chip, so for now it's the best we can get. There is an option with the lower-end RX 6700S for a chunk less cash, too. Arguably, that cheaper option sounds a bit better to us, as the high-end one can get a little pricey and close in on the expensive but excellent Razer Blade 14. It's not helped much by its 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM in that regard, though we do love having all that speedy memory raring to go for whatever you can throw at it.
Best Razer laptop for gaming (opens in new tab) Best Acer laptop for gaming (opens in new tab) Best MSI laptop for gaming (opens in new tab) Best gaming keyboard (opens in new tab) Best gaming mouse (opens in new tab) Best gaming chair (opens in new tab)
Alienware m17 R5 AMD AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT 1080p 240Hz (opens in new tab)The config I suggest is a little less overkill than what was reviewed. Instead of the 4K display, a speedier 1080p 240Hz display is a better fit in order to maximize frames on some of your favorite games and save a couple of bucks.
One thing I love about Alienware is the company's unrelenting confidence in its new products. Whether that's boasting about a desktop being a "Benchmark Bruiser (opens in new tab)" or releasing one of the slickest OLED gaming monitors (opens in new tab) to date. So, when I get offered the chance to check out the new Alienware m17 R5 it has dubbed "the most powerful 17-inch AMD Advantage gaming laptop," how can I pass that up?Powering the Alienware m17 R5 is an AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX and Radeon RX 6850M XT combo that, on paper, seems like a slam dunk for Team Red. It's also the first gaming laptop we've tested with an RX 6850M XT, and so I was stoked to see how it stacked up against laptops with an RTX 3070 Ti and even RTX 3080 Ti mobile GPUs. It's not quite as new as the RTX 40-series or RX 7000-series GPUs out now, however.The surprisingly bright 500cd/m 4K display got a lot of use for streaming video. I appreciate seeing the detailed stress lines on Guenther Steiner's face in the last season of F1: Drive to Survive in 4K on Netflix. Games look pretty good, though this display is better served for professionals and creatives. So if you don't fall into that category, you may be better off sticking with the 1080p display at 240Hz to save money and add time to your much-needed battery life.
This laptop also takes advantage of AMD's suite of game-boosting technologies (opens in new tab), such as SmartAccess Graphics, which automatically switches your output from the Ryzen APU and Radeon GPU, along with Smartshift Max, which automatically shifts around your power depending on what app or game you're using. The good thing about these features is that they just work without you messing with them. All nice features, especially if you are bouncing between gaming and, let's say, video editing and trying to eke out extra horsepower.
On the GPU side, the Alienware m17 R5 AMD Advantage model excelled at nearly all our gaming benchmarks at 1080p on mostly maxed-out settings. It hit triple-digit framerates in nearly all the games I played, with a Hitman 3 average of just over 200 fps.If you value frame rate over resolution, the m17 R5 easily delivers over 100 fps frames on most games at 1080p. Even Cyberpunk was hitting around 128 fps (with FSR turned on). The high 120Hz refresh rate on the display means you'll run into little to no screen tearing. Because of the drastically higher frame rates, I played more games at 1080p than 4K. If you're playing a shooter like Apex Legends or Fortnite, that's the way to go, which makes the 4K display a bit redundant much of the time.The Alienware m17 R5 might not be the most powerful gaming laptop ever, but it isn't through lack of trying. Even with the CPU performance lagging behind some of its rivals, the m17 R5 makes up the deficit with impressive gaming results. The 4K display is great for anyone watching movies or working, but you could save a few hundred dollars by scaling down some of the more expensive components and score yourself a really solid 1080p gaming laptop. Read our full Alienware m17 R5 AMD review (opens in new tab). 041b061a72