The Best Budget Gaming Laptops for 2023

When buying a gaming laptop for the first time, its price is one of the most significant deciding factors with close attention paid to value for money. If on a budget, buyers may need to make tradeoffs. This includes having to shave off storage space for a better GPU or trading up from a high refresh rate screen to one with more visual fidelity. A budget gaming laptop can cost anywhere from $600 to $2000, depending on both one’s classification of what a budget gaming laptop represents and its expected capabilities.

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The biggest compromises to make when going for a cheap gaming laptop are aesthetics (thinner, slimmer laptops do end up costing more, especially when packed in with the latest features such as vapor chambers in tow). To help buyers narrow the search, Game Rant has selected some of the most competent laptops for gaming that anyone can buy without breaking the bank.

How To Choose The Best Budget Gaming Laptop

Picking an affordable gaming laptop is a hard task for most users given the plethora of options that are available to users. Thankfully, the below factors should help shoppers make informed decisions.

CPU: The processor is the primary driver of all modern computers and a laptop is no exception. Newer laptop processors are significantly more powerful than their predecessors and often run cooler and more efficiently thanks to newer manufacturing processes. For gamers, having at least an Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5 processor is ideal with APUs from AMD being also a good option for low-end laptop offerings.

GPU: A modern gaming laptop tends to rely mostly on the GPU out of all its components to drive a decent gaming performance for an end user. While AMD’s focus has been concentrated on mid-range gaming laptops this generation with only 2 GPU offerings in the RX7000 mobility series GPUs, Nvidia has deployed more mobile GPU variants than desktop variants, an indication that the GPU manufacturer takes mobile gaming seriously. With technologies such as DLSS and FSR consistently improving over time, it makes sense to opt for a more current-generation GPU that can handle many optimizations better than prior generations; the RTX 4000 series GPUs handle DLSS3 far better than their predecessors, for example.

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RAM: Laptops do come in all shapes and sizes and have memory capacities to boot. While this is normally not an issue for gaming laptops, in some cases, smaller laptops have soldered-on memory making upgrades and repairs significantly complicated for users looking to use their devices for longer than their service warranties. It is always a good idea to read up on what memory a prospective laptop comes with and what potentially suitable memory upgrades are available down the line to avoid being caught unaware.

Storage: The laptop’s bundled hard drive and SSD capacity are of paramount importance for a cheap gaming laptop as modern games become increasingly bloated in terms of size, with some popular titles even pushing past 200 GB at times. Thankfully, modern SSD upgrades are cheap and getting increasingly cheaper as time goes on. This makes it easy to upgrade to better and larger storage.

These Are The Best Budget Gaming Laptops

There was a time when a laptop like the MSI Thin GF63 15.6″ 144Hz Gaming Laptop would be well out of reach for most gamers given its excellent build quality, power under the hood, and high-performance storage coupled with a smattering of I/O options. Thankfully, due to advances made in the industry, anyone can grab this cheap laptop for gaming, which also doubles as a capable work computer for as low as $1200 without compromising on performance, storage options, or build quality.

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The MSI Thin GF63 is a daily driver and has plenty of things going for it, even if it’s somewhat limited thanks to its somewhat average display and sub-par battery life. A major worry for gamers is the fact that this laptop tends to get very hot during extended gaming sessions. A cooler should fix this issue. It may not be ideal to lug this one around for the more mundane tasks users might have, like prolonged hours at a library unless it is plugged in. This is still one of the most capable budget-centric performers money can buy in 2023, despite the shortcomings.

Featuring 8 GB of DDR4 RAM, the MSI GV15 laptop can keep up with the user’s day-to-day work with some light gaming on the side. This is not for hardcore gaming at all. Its performance in productivity apps such as Photoshop or Premiere is decent at best. While the Intel Core i5-11400H isn’t necessarily the most powerful CPU on the market, it’s more than enough considering that the laptop is more limited thanks to its GTX 1650 MaxQ GPU with 4 GB VRAM in tow.

The MSI GV15 Gaming Laptop has a 15.6′ FHD ‘IPS-like’ display. The inclusion of an entry-level GTX 1650 means this cheap gaming laptop is powerful enough to be characterized as a gaming laptop with decent performance when it comes to eSports titles. The MSI GV15 Gaming Laptop also comes with Windows 11 out of the box, which should limit users’ need for software upgrades down the line.

The Acer Nitro 17 Gaming Laptop (AN17-41-R7G3) is one of the more popular mid-range gaming laptops simply because of the sheer number of boxes it ticks. It offers a fast, efficient CPU bundled with a relatively new, but capable GPU from Nvidia, in addition to decent RAM by default. With a focus on cooling, it keeps temperatures low and prevents throttling while sporting a large 1 TB SSD.

While the Nitro 17’s large form factor is a mixed bag, its excellent 17.3-inch QHD display with 165Hz and a full 4-zone RGB keyboard is not. The display and keyboard take advantage of the larger form factor to deliver more than some of its smaller peers. While some might like the Nitro’s ability to be a powerful desktop replacement, others might decry its large size as being a negative for portability despite its relatively low weight for its own spec and form factor class. At the end of the day, the Nitro 17 is a powerful, power-efficient, yet stylish cheap gaming laptop that has a unique value proposition for users who plan to use it on a desk more than on the go but are able to take advantage of all that it offers for its asking price.

For gamers with a larger budget, the MSI Katana 15 15.6″ 144Hz FHD gaming laptop is a surprisingly well-endowed package that can rival laptops that cost nearly $500 more with ease in terms of raw spec count. It runs relatively cool for a laptop of its caliber and packs most of the highest-end hardware one would normally look for in a laptop that costs sub $2k. With DDR5, the latest Intel Core i7 processor, and an RTX 4070 in tow, there isn’t much this variant of the MSI Katana can’t handle in terms of modern games.

If one could make a wishlist of improvements, one would probably want to talk about the somewhat abysmal battery life while gaming coupled with a better screen than the one included. But at the price point it competes at, the Katana more than delivers adequately, making it Game Rant’s pick for the best high-end gaming laptop on a budget thanks to its uncompromising focus on performance.

The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 14′ WQXGA is hands down Game Rant’s pick for a compact cheap gaming laptop, and it is so far ahead of the competition when it comes to price-to-performance ratios. The internal Radeon 6700S GPU is a somewhat beefy GPU that should handle users’ non-ray tracing requirements easily for mobile gaming. It clocks in between the RTX 3070 and 3060 from the last generation or quite close to the current generation RTX 4050 in terms of rasterization performance.

With a high-end 1 TB PCI-E 4.0 SSD in tow coupled with one of the best mobile CPUs, the AMD R9 6900HS, there is plenty on offer in terms of not only gaming but productivity performance. ASUS endows the Zephyrus G14 with one of the best displays in the business, with a WQXGA display that is rated at 500 Nits of brightness. The laptop supports Dolby Vision HDR and does 120Hz. This excellent combination can be rightly considered the highlight of the Zephyrus laptop.

The ASUS ROG Strix G16 (2023)’s RTX 4050 powered SKU is a curious choice. It offers extra power under the hood for the RTX 4050 and a dedicated MUX switch in addition to one of the best mobile gaming CPUs in the shape of the Intel Core i9 13980HX which makes it a very potent combination. It pairs this with an excellent ROG Nebula QHD display that offers 240Hz refresh rates in addition to above-average brightness. While the RTX 4050 is a decent GPU to offer, especially with a tweaked 140W TGP, it can handle few, if any, 2023 titles at the stated maximum of the ROG Nebula display. This makes the G16 a great laptop for Esports, but otherwise, it offers a relatively underutilized display that will see the laptop increasingly dependent on technology such as DLSS3 to bridge the gap.

On the thermal side, the G16 is solid. It hosts a tri-fan cooling solution that also uses Thermal Grizzly’s patented high-performance liquid metal solution, the Conductonaut to keep temperatures manageable for the high-end CPU it houses. At the same time, it offers one of the better gaming keyboards on a laptop in addition to Wi-Fi 6E out of the box. Users can also opt for a faster RTX 4060-based version of the G16 if their budget allows, as it skips on some of the shortcomings of the cheaper RTX 4050-based variant above.

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FAQ

Q: Are budget gaming laptops worth it?

Absolutely. There are a handful of pocket-friendly gaming laptops on the market that pack some decent specs. Additionally, GameRant’s guide on budget laptops features some of the most reasonable options available to anyone looking to save money on a new laptop purchase.

Is 4 GB of RAM enough for a gaming laptop?

Nowadays, that’s a no-no. Even 8 GB of RAM is only sufficient for mid-range gaming. To stand a chance to play modern titles without hassle, a laptop with at least 16 GB of RAM is strongly advised.

How much SSD do I need for gaming?

With games’ installation size steadily growing, getting an SSD of at least 500 GB should be okay for a number of titles. Whether one chooses to upgrade to a higher storage capacity depends on their budget and preference.