is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.
Gaming laptops come in various shapes and sizes, though many of the heavy hitters remain thick and beefy machines that maximize cooling to get the most out of their powerful chips. Most are awash in RGB lighting and edgy designs geared towards capital-G Gamers, but there are also thinner, lighter options that are more portable and less showy.
Our go-to recommendation that checks the boxes for most people is, and has been for a while, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. It’s a gaming laptop that doesn’t forget the “laptop” part. The G14 is a versatile machine for both play and work, and it travels exceptionally well.
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Other great, though pricey, recommendations include the big and heavy Asus ROG Strix Scar and Lenovo Legion Pro 7i, or the Razer Blade 16 for lots of graphics power in a thin and sleek design.
The most important part of any gaming laptop, just like desktop PCs, is the graphics card. Laptop GPUs can’t stack up to full-size cards that reach much higher wattage in desktops, but that doesn’t stop the likes of Nvidia from making things a little confusing with the naming scheme on its RTX brand of GeForce cards. So keep in mind that, for example, an RTX 5090 laptop card doesn’t come anywhere near the performance of a desktop 5090. Desktops may always win out in raw performance, but gaming laptops are a simpler turnkey solution that can easily go places (yes, even the ones that feel like you’re toting around a cinderblock).
Even more confusing: the same GPU in one laptop may not perform as well in another if it’s throttled by thermal constraints. We try to test a wide range of gaming laptops, as well as regular laptops, and these are the ones we confidently recommend.
What we’re looking for How we test Collapse Our gaming laptop testing involves a mix of synthetic benchmarks and experiential testing (playing a bunch of graphically-intensive games). We run benchmark tests like Geekbench, Cinebench, and 3DMark; as well as in-game ones from titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong. We also use the laptops in our day-to-day work to see how they fare with multitasking productivity apps and real-world battery life. Value Collapse A gaming laptop is a pricey purchase, but we want to ensure you’re getting a good, capable machine for the money. If it has a super-high cost, it should offer something special. Frame rates Collapse Some people may be fine with a baseline of 30 frames per second, but we expect a gaming laptop to achieve a smoother 60 fps, or much higher, at high resolutions. Screen Collapse The higher the resolution and higher the refresh rate, the better. Games look their best when they’re crisply sharp and buttery smooth, as long as the laptop’s chips are up to the task. Port selection Collapse Gaming laptops usually range from having a handful of ports to being littered with lots of I/O for external monitors, a mouse, keyboard, and other accessories. A thinner, more portable model may not have as many ports as a giant desktop replacement, but it should still offer much more than something like a MacBook. Storage Collapse Some gaming laptops still start with a 512GB SSD, but with how big modern games can be, you really want 1TB or more. Thankfully, most have user-replaceable drives, so you’re not limited to what’s configured from the factory. Some even have extra M.2 slots, so adding storage is easy.
The best gaming laptop
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 270, HX 370 / GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060, RTX 5070, RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080 / RAM: 16GB, 32GB / Storage: 1TB / Display: 14-inch OLED, 2880 x 1800, 120Hz, 500 nits / Dimensions: 12.24 x 8.66 x 0.63 to 0.64 inches / Battery : 73Whr / Weight: 3.31 pounds
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