You begin your quest for the best gaming laptop only to be met with a harsh reality: Gaming laptops come with hefty price tags. Even midrange options can soar past $2,000, while flagship models may demand a wallet-draining $3,000 or more. Who can afford these astronomical prices?
Fear not, for we’ve compiled a list of the top budget gaming laptops, allowing you to indulge in your favorite games without breaking the bank. In this guide, our focus is on laptops priced at or below $1,000, specifically highlighting gaming notebooks that offer exceptional value for your hard-earned cash.
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Lenovo Legion Slim 5 Gen 8
The best budget gaming laptop
Pros
- Great CPU performance
- Good battery life for a gaming laptop
- Value for money
- Efficient thermals
Cons
- No USB 4 or Thunderbolt
- Display could be better
Lenovo is expected to phase out its Legion ‘Slim’ series this year, but the existing models offer excellent value for your money. Specifically, if we talk about the 16-inch Slim 5 Gen 8, it is currently selling at a price that you should not miss.
The base configuration comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS CPU and an Nvidia RTX 4050 GPU, along with 512GB of storage and 16GB of DDR5 memory. This is priced at $960 on Lenovo’s online store. However, you can grab the same laptop with an RTX 4060, which is a more powerful GPU, for $900 on Best Buy. This configuration originally sells for $1,350, essentially saving you $450!
The notebook isn’t made for groundbreaking performance, but you should get plenty of juice for productivity and gaming. If you can go beyond the $1,000 price, the Slim 5 is available with a sharper 2560 x 1600 resolution IPS panel with a 165Hz refresh as opposed to the standard 1200p 144Hz.
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