Best Gaming Laptops for All Budgets (2024 Edition)

Whether you want the ultimate high-performance gaming laptop or you just need the best portable gaming PC you can get on a tight budget, you need to find the best gaming laptop.

Best Gaming Laptops of 2024

Now that you know the important factors to look for, here is our top 10 list for recommended gaming laptops. 

What To Look For In A Gaming Laptop

Now, we’ll go over everything you need to know to make an informed buying decision. We’ll also cover common questions about laptop tech, what features to look for, and why they’re important.   

Display Types

Depending on your budget and the laptop you choose, your display technology may vary. Here’s a quick rundown of the different kinds and their benefits. 

LCD: Liquid crystal display screens need a backlit light source to illuminate the pixels, which moves and changes how light passes through, which then affects what you see on your screen. 

IPS Display (In plane switching): A type of LCD technology that aligns the liquid crystals parallel to the panel, resulting in more accurate colors, better consistency, improved contrast, and higher image quality. They can have slower response times compared to other display options, however, so you may experience motion blur in fast-paced content. 

LED (Light emitting diode): LED monitors are technically LCD monitors, but not all LCD monitors are LEDs. Confused yet? In regard to display, LED and LCD are the same in regard to the lighting source. They both can use backlighting, but LCD uses fluorescent lighting to illuminate the crystals whereas LEDs produce their own light through light-emitting diodes. There is a lot of overlap and sometimes these terms are used interchangeably, only adding to the confusion. LEDs are diverse, have sharper images, and last longer than many other types of display technology. They are quite common in laptops and other screen based equipment. 

OLED (organic light emitting diode): A type of LED tech, OLED doesn’t need a separate backlight as each pixel has its own light. This means higher contrast between black shades and light, improved responsiveness, and other massive benefits to image quality. The downside is they’re usually much more expensive. Also, they can suffer from “dead pixels,” where power doesn’t reach a particular pixel (or more) as a defect. This means you’ll have a tiny black or white dot in your screen that can be incredibly distracting. 

Refresh Rates

60 Hz and 144 Hz, etc., are measures of refresh rate, an integral display specification if you’re a serious gamer. 

If you’ve ever played a game and it feels choppy, that’s because the frame rate, or Frames Per Second (FPS), is dropping. 60 FPS will look smooth to most people. A lower 30 FPS is considered acceptable (especially by console gamers) but won’t feel as smooth. 

FPS and refresh rate are both measures of how many individual images are being displayed in the span of a single second.

• FPS measures images-per-second from the software
• Refresh rate measures images-per-second from the hardware/display

If these numbers don’t match, the experience may look choppy. If your FPS exceeds your refresh rate, you won’t see the benefits of those higher frames, since the lower refresh rate can still only show off 60 images per second.

A laptop with a 144 Hz display gives you benefits when games run at frame rates higher than 60. This leads to an increase in perceived fluidity and responsiveness, and can be a competitive advantage in multiplayer games. Refresh rates continue to increase as tech advances. 240Hz is considered high these days, but there are niche offerings that can go as high as 360Hz and even further, as tech evolves.

How CPUs Impact Gaming Performance

When playing PC games, you can turn down graphics settings to achieve higher frame rates, but there are limitations, especially if you have a low-end CPU. This is called a CPU bottleneck, and that’s troublesome with laptops, as you can’t upgrade your hardware, so get a good CPU today so you aren’t hurting tomorrow.

• CPU determines the maximum performance in any game, regardless of graphics settings
• GPU determines the best performance you can get at particular settings or resolutions

How Much RAM Do You Need?

RAM is a spec that determines how good your PC will be at juggling different tasks. With most machines having 8 GB or more of it, your needs will be taken care of just fine.

However, you may see a performance benefit with higher-end memory kits, especially for games built for using 16 GB of RAM.

Understanding SSD and HDD types

Here are the basic storage speed classes, each increasing in ability: 

• 5400 RPM HDD: This is a traditional, outdated laptop hard drive. Most experiences are fine, but initial boot/game loading times will be long
• 7200 RPM HDD: This is the standard speed you can expect from a desktop PC or current-gen games. Loading times are improved, but still slower than an SSD
• SATA SSD: Massively faster than any HDD, and has far faster loading times and boot times
• NVMe SSD: Much faster than a current-gen SATA SSD but doesn’t make as big a difference for pure gaming purposes. You’ll need a more powerful CPU to see a difference with storage speeds

What Difference Does An Ethernet Cable Make?

An Ethernet cable is a must-have for gaming online. Most laptop users use Wi-Fi to get online, however, nothing matches the reliability of an Ethernet cable, due to wireless interference, which adds variability to the signal between your machine and the game server. This is fine if you’re watching Netflix, since your data will be buffered far ahead of when it’s played, and little disruptions pass easily.

When gaming, though, this becomes a problem. If you’re playing online, a second of lag at the wrong time can get you killed. It’s even worse if you’re playing competitively.

To prevent these issues, use an Ethernet cable to reduce latency.

If you get a laptop without an Ethernet port, get a USB Ethernet adapter to compensate.