What Laptop Is Good for School and Gaming
You don't need to drop $2,000 for a laptop that can play most current games on high or ultra settings at 1080p—you can get those capabilities in a laptop that costs less than $1,200. But all cheap gaming laptops make some big trade-offs to pack that much power in at that price. After spending more than 30 hours researching and testing 14 budget gaming laptops, we found that the Asus TUF Gaming A15 (TUF506IU-ES74) is an excellent value if you're willing to overlook some of its shortcomings.
Our pick
Recommended configuration
| Processor: | AMD Ryzen 7 4800H | Screen: | 15.6-inch 1920×1080 144 Hz |
| Graphics: | Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti with 6 GB VRAM | Weight: | 5 pounds |
| Memory: | 16 GB | Dimensions: | 14.1 by 10.1 by 1 inches |
| Storage: | 512 GB SSD | Tested battery life: | 7.3 hours |
The Asus TUF Gaming A15 (TUF506IU-ES74) provides great gaming performance for the price. It also keeps its most-touched surfaces cool during long gaming sessions, and it comes with nice extras such as a comfortable RGB keyboard and a high-refresh-rate screen. It has decent battery life (for a gaming laptop), and it's easy to upgrade if you want more storage. But its fans are loud during games, you have no way to manually run those fans at max speed for extra cooling when you need it, and some owners have encountered problems with the A15's trackpad.
Runner-up
Recommended configuration
| Processor: | AMD Ryzen 7 4800H | Screen: | 15.6-inch 1920×1080 144 Hz |
| Graphics: | Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti with 6 GB VRAM | Weight: | 4.7 pounds |
| Memory: | 16 GB | Dimensions: | 14.1 by 9.4 by 0.9 inches |
| Storage: | 512 GB SSD | Tested battery life: | 5.7 hours |
If our main pick is unavailable, we recommend the HP Omen 15. It's just as powerful as our top pick, but it has even more effective cooling that you can control with easy-to-use software. The Omen 15 also provides a brighter high-refresh-rate display and a reliable keyboard and trackpad, and it's just as easy to upgrade. But our recommended model is typically a few hundred dollars more expensive than our top pick, its fans are even louder, and it suffers from shorter battery life. We recommend the en0029nr model, but if that's unavailable, consider the en0013dx model, which has only 8 GB of memory and an RGB keyboard, or the more expensive en0023dx model, which has an RGB keyboard and 1 TB of storage.
Budget pick
Acer Nitro 5 AN515-55-53AG
Cheaper, less powerful
This model is identical to the AN515-44-R99Q but has a four-core Intel processor instead of a six-core AMD processor. We recommend it if the AMD model is unavailable, or if this one happens to be cheaper.
Buying Options
Recommended configuration
| Processor: | AMD Ryzen 5 4600H or Intel Core i5-10300H | Screen: | 15.6-inch 1920×1080 60 Hz |
| Graphics: | Nvidia GTX 1650 with 4 GB VRAM | Weight: | 4.8 pounds |
| Memory: | 8 GB | Dimensions: | 14.3 by 10 by 0.9 inches |
| Storage: | 256 GB SSD | Tested battery life: | 6 hours |
If you want the cheapest possible laptop that will play games decently, get the Acer Nitro 5 AN515-44-R99Q or AN515-55-53AG. Due to its weaker graphics, the Nitro 5 can't play the absolute newest, most demanding games as effectively as our top picks, and it doesn't support VR, but it's plenty powerful to play older games or less demanding modern titles for the next few years. The Nitro 5 keeps cool enough without blasting its fans, it has a responsive keyboard and trackpad, and it's easy to upgrade. But compared with our top pick, the Nitro 5 has a dimmer screen, at a standard 60 Hz refresh rate. It also has less storage for games, and it comes with a ton of bloatware.
Everything we recommend
Our pick
Runner-up
Budget pick
Acer Nitro 5 AN515-55-53AG
Cheaper, less powerful
This model is identical to the AN515-44-R99Q but has a four-core Intel processor instead of a six-core AMD processor. We recommend it if the AMD model is unavailable, or if this one happens to be cheaper.
Buying Options
Why you should trust us
I've spent thousands of hours gaming on laptops since high school, and I've personally tested and reviewed hundreds of laptops, including most budget and high-end gaming models released in the past six years. I've also written or edited most of Wirecutter's gaming guides, including our reviews of laptops, keyboards, mice, controllers, and headsets.
Who this is for
If you want to play games but also need an affordable laptop for school or work—and your top priority isn't playing the newest games at maxed-out graphics settings at QHD or 4K resolution—these picks are for you. But if you don't need a portable computer, you can get an entry-level gaming desktop with similar performance for around $800. And if you want to play new games at 4K on ultra settings, you're better off with a desktop that offers more powerful graphics: A $1,200 desktop is much more powerful than a laptop at the same price, and you can more easily upgrade it in the future.
Spending around $1,200 on a gaming laptop these days buys you a machine that can play most new games—titles such as Star Wars: Squadrons, Death Stranding, and Borderlands 3—on high settings or better at 1920×1080 resolution at or above 60 frames per second. You don't need to spend $2,000 on a more powerful gaming laptop to get great performance. More to the point, you shouldn't: Right now, laptops with more powerful graphics don't offer worthwhile performance benefits on a 1080p screen (the type of display in most gaming laptops), and they aren't worth the extra cost. Some gaming laptops in the $1,200 range have high-refresh-rate screens and RGB keyboards, features that were previously relegated to much more expensive models.
You can also spend less than $1,000 and get a laptop that will still serve you well for classic games and less-demanding modern titles like Apex Legends, Overwatch, or PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and you can expect it to play most games on at least medium settings for the next few years.
Whether you're getting a gaming laptop for the first time or replacing an older model that doesn't play games as well anymore, take a look at what games it will and won't be able to play (and on which settings) according to Notebookcheck's useful Computer Games on Laptop Graphic Cards chart. Our top pick has VR-ready Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics, and our budget pick has a GTX 1650 GPU.
How we picked
Budget gaming laptops have to make trade-offs to keep their prices low. You can get a great one for less than $1,300, but you typically have to spend more than $800 (unless you find a great sale or an exceptionally good model). Our top pick will play just about any game on high or even ultra settings at 1080p, and it will continue to play games on higher settings for more years. More affordable models tend to cost around $800 and typically have middling graphics that are better suited for classic and less demanding games. The even weaker graphics processors in cheaper laptops can't handle current AAA games at high settings, let alone future games, so we don't recommend them.
Here's what we look for, in order of importance:
Performance
Graphics: The most important feature in a gaming laptop is the graphics hardware, since it has the greatest influence on what games you can play and at what settings you can play them. You can't upgrade your laptop's graphics processor, and if you cut corners at the time of purchase, you'll have to shell out for a new computer sooner to keep playing new games.
In 2020, the graphics options for budget gaming laptops are a mess: You can find six good choices packed into a range of just $600 or so. After researching performance differences and pricing out the alternatives—in addition to recalling our experience with some of these GPUs (graphics processing units) in 2019—we found that the Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti still offers the best price-to-performance ratio, and that the GTX 1650 is still the best basic GPU that will play games well enough.1 (Of Nvidia's options, anyway—we'll get to AMD graphics in just a moment.)
The RTX 2060 supports ray tracing (a type of graphics rendering that allows for much more sophisticated visual effects and lighting) but is only around 7% faster on average (video) in games compared with the GTX 1660 Ti—that comes out to a difference of only a few frames per second in the examples above. If you find a laptop with an RTX 2060 graphics card for about the same price as a laptop with a GTX 1660 Ti card, that's worth considering, but such a small performance boost is not worth paying extra for.
We also don't recommend the GTX 1650 Ti because it's not much better (around 7%) than the notably cheaper GTX 1650. And spending just a little more on the GTX 1660 Ti gets you a noticeable performance jump of around 45% over the 1650 Ti—the difference between a game being playable on high settings and being stuck on medium. The GTX 1660 Ti also supports VR, while the GTX 1650 Ti and GTX 1650 do not.
In addition, AMD has two promising options that we considered this year. The AMD Radeon RX 5500M lands between Nvidia's GTX 1650 Ti and GTX 1660 Ti in Notebookcheck's performance benchmarks, and the RTX 5600M offers performance between that of the GTX 1660 Ti and RTX 2060. We didn't find any 5500M models that made sense for the price—they were priced too similarly to systems with the more powerful GTX 1660 Ti—but we did consider models in the 5600M category.
Video memory: We also consider VRAM—a graphics processor's dedicated video memory. The GTX 1660 Ti has 6 GB and the GTX 1650 has 4 GB. How much VRAM you need depends on the resolution you use (1080p in this case), the games you play, and the settings at which you play them. Most games don't need more than 4 GB of VRAM at 1080p, but some recent, more demanding games can make use of more.
Processor: Your laptop needs a processor that's powerful enough to avoid bottlenecking the GPU. The GTX 1660 Ti graphics processor is best paired with an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 4800H processor or a six-core Intel Core i7-10750H, and the GTX 1650 works fine with an Intel Core i5-10300H or an AMD Ryzen 5 4600H.2
Memory: 16 GB of RAM is ideal for modern games, especially if you also live-stream, but you can get by with 8 GB in a cheap gaming laptop.
Solid-state drive: A solid-state drive speeds up boot times and reduces loading times in games, so all of our recommendations have SSDs. We prefer at least a 250 GB solid-state drive because 128 GB won't hold more than your operating system and a couple of games.
Other important features
- Heat: Without an effective cooling system, a gaming laptop will overheat, which can slow gaming performance, shorten the laptop's lifespan, or even burn you.3 No gaming laptop can keep completely cool—all the heat from the CPU and GPU has to go somewhere. But a laptop must keep its high-contact areas, such as the WASD keys and the left palm rest, cool; the same goes for its internal components. It's more forgivable for a laptop to get hot in areas where you make less direct skin contact.
- Noise: Noisy fans are a reasonable trade-off for a cool laptop, but ideally a gaming laptop can keep high-contact areas cool without drowning out the speakers with loud fans. The fans shouldn't blast during non-gaming activities, either.
- Keyboard: The keyboard should be comfortable and responsive, as you use it for the majority of game inputs.
- Display: 15-inch laptops strike a good balance between screen size and relative portability, and they fit our budget. Any pick we make for the best cheap gaming laptop needs to have a 1920×1080 screen—no exceptions. Lower resolutions look terrible, and the GPUs in these laptops can't play games well at resolutions above 1080p anyway. Some laptops in this price range now have high-refresh-rate (120 Hz or 144 Hz) panels, which are a nice bonus for first-person games like Overwatch or PUBG; the higher the refresh rate, the smoother animations appear, as long as the frame rate is also high.4 IPS screens are usually brighter and more color accurate than TN panels, but we didn't rule out a laptop with a TN panel if it otherwise met our requirements.
- Trackpad: Most people use a mouse while gaming, but a decent trackpad still matters for web browsing and everyday tasks.
- Portability: Plenty of gaming laptops are used for school or work, too. For that reason, battery life, size, and weight remain important in this category.
- Upgradability: You should be able to easily remove the bottom panel of the laptop to upgrade the memory and storage—to keep prices low, laptop makers often design budget models to be less upgradable.
- Software and bloatware: A gaming laptop should come with software for controlling the fans, performance, and lighting. Budget gaming laptops typically come with an excess of bloatware, but you can either remove unnecessary programs one at a time or run Microsoft's Refresh Windows tool to remove all that and reinstall any specific programs you need. The Refresh tool gets rid of everything, including the useful programs that manage fans and some important drivers, so make sure you can download those from the manufacturer's site before you nuke it all.
- Build quality: Good build quality is important, but it's rare in budget gaming laptops. Many cheap laptops flex and creak under light pressure, sound hollow or plasticky, and have wobbly lids. A well-made laptop will hold up better over years of use (and occasional abuse), but it also costs more.
How we tested
We benchmark each laptop using Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Gears Tactics to check for any unexpected performance and heat issues. Then we play half an hour of Overwatch on ultra settings—a popular game, but not too taxing. After that, we push our finalists with a more graphically demanding game, playing 30 minutes of Shadow of the Tomb Raider on ultra with VSync off. We measure the laptops' internal temperatures using HWMonitor Pro and measure the surface temperature at various points on the keyboard and underside using an IR thermometer.
We use each of the finalists for many more hours of work and games to get a feel for the keyboard, trackpad, screen, and speakers. Using a Spyder4Pro colorimeter, we set our finalists' screen backlights to 150 nits (or candelas per square meter, cd/m2) and run a web-browsing battery test that cycles through web pages, email, Google docs, and video. Because we set each laptop to the same brightness, the results are directly comparable.
Our pick: Asus TUF Gaming A15
Our pick
Recommended configuration
| Processor: | AMD Ryzen 7 4800H | Screen: | 15.6-inch 1920×1080 144 Hz |
| Graphics: | Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti with 6 GB VRAM | Weight: | 5 pounds |
| Memory: | 16 GB | Dimensions: | 14.1 by 10.1 by 1 inches |
| Storage: | 512 GB SSD | Tested battery life: | 7.3 hours |
Every cheap gaming laptop makes trade-offs, but the Asus TUF Gaming A15 (TUF506IU-ES74) doesn't sacrifice the things that make games enjoyable. Even on more recent games, it provides solid gaming performance for the price. It also keeps its most-touched surfaces cool during long gaming sessions, and it has a high-refresh-rate screen that looks good. It also has good battery life (for a gaming laptop), and it's easy to upgrade if you want more storage in the future. But its fans are loud during games, you have no way to manually run the fans at max speed for extra cooling if you need it, and some owners have reported issues with the A15's trackpad.
On its default fan settings, the TUF Gaming A15 kept the most-touched WASD keys the coolest among all the laptops with equivalent graphics we tested this year. After we played Shadow of the Tomb Raider for half an hour, these keys measured 87 °F, which felt neutral, not even warm, to my fingers. The A15's internals were on the warmer end in the same test, with the CPU at 104 °C and the GPU at 82 °C. We saw similar surface and internal temperatures in our Overwatch testing. Despite those high internal temperatures, we didn't experience any performance dips that would indicate thermal throttling in games, and the A15 kept cool where it counts.
Like many other cheap gaming laptops we tested this year, the A15 has a vent on the right side, toward the back, which can blow warm air onto your right hand. We barely noticed the warm air during our gaming tests, and we don't expect it to be a major problem.
The A15's keyboard is responsive and comfortable to type and game on, and Asus also squeezed in a full-size number pad. The whole keyboard has RGB backlighting—a nice perk that is only just becoming more common in laptops in this price range—though it shows only one color at a time and offers limited customization in Asus's Armoury Crate software. You can choose from Static, Breathing, Strobing, or Cycling effects, and you can select one color for the whole keyboard for the first three effects. The precision trackpad has two physical click buttons that are responsive and not annoyingly loud, and you can disable the touchpad with Fn + F10. We encountered some owner reviews about the trackpad being finicky—more on that topic in the next section.
The A15's 144 Hz 1920×1080 IPS display looks decent, and its high refresh rate is especially great for less-demanding first-person games like Overwatch. In such games, where the laptop can maintain a high frame rate, everything looks smoother and sharper. (You can also see the difference on this display compared with a standard 60 Hz screen when you're scrolling quickly up and down a website; the higher-refresh-rate screen looks smoother, while the 60 Hz screen looks jagged and skips around.) The A15's screen is unusually dim by default—and we found a handful of owner reviews complaining about this topic—but once we turned off the VariBright automatic brightness setting in the Display tab of the Radeon Settings app, the display got much brighter. Even with that setting disabled, though, the A15's display maxes out around 260 nits, on the dimmer end. If you need a bright screen, consider the HP Omen 15 instead.
In our web-browsing battery test, the A15 lasted 7 hours 16 minutes. It won't quite last a full day of work or classes, but it's above average for a gaming laptop—it survived more than an hour longer than our other picks. (In previous years, we were able to squeeze a few more minutes out by lowering the screen's refresh rate to 60 Hz, but that didn't make enough of a difference to make doing so worthwhile.) At 5 pounds—6.1 pounds with the charger—the A15 is certainly no thin-and-light ultrabook, but such a weight is typical for a laptop that can both play games well and keep cool. It's a bit deep from front lip to hinge, but our pick should still fit into any backpack that can accommodate a 15-inch laptop.
Asus leaves a second storage bay open, so you can add more storage to the laptop without removing what's already there. Our recommended model has an empty M.2 PCIe slot—but no 2.5-inch drive bay—so you can add another solid-state drive if you need more room for games. You can access the A15's expansion slots by removing 11 Phillips screws on the underside and popping off the bottom of the chassis with a plastic opening tool. In previous years, we appreciated gaming laptops with access panels that were easier to deal with; every laptop we tested in 2020 requires removing a large number of screws and taking off the whole bottom to gain access.
Cheap gaming laptops suffer from mediocre build quality, and the A15's lid, keyboard, and palm rest all flex a bit under pressure. The laptop is sturdy enough, but just as with our other picks, we don't recommend stacking anything on top of the A15 or putting pressure on the lid in a bag.
The A15 has one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) port, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one USB-A 2.0 port on the right side, an HDMI 2.0b port, a power jack, an Ethernet jack, an audio jack, and a Kensington lock slot. It comes with a one-year limited warranty (PDF).
Our pick: Flaws but not dealbreakers
Asus's Armoury Crate software allows you to choose among four performance modes—Performance, Turbo, Silent, and Windows—but offers no way to simply blast the fans for maximum cooling as our other picks do. We prefer more control over a laptop's fans, but since the A15 keeps its most-touched surfaces cool enough, this drawback is not a dealbreaker.
As with most gaming laptops, the A15's fans can get pretty loud during intense gaming. We found that the fan noise was about average among the laptops we tested this year, with a bit of an annoying high-pitched timbre when the fans were running at their peak.
Although the A15's trackpad was responsive for gestures, clicks, and taps in the vast majority of our testing, we found a few complaints in owner reviews about the trackpad stuttering or failing to respond. We were able to re-create the problem by doing lots (and lots) of tasks at once while trying to move the trackpad pointer, but we didn't encounter any issues with an external mouse in the same situation. It seems like a driver problem—one that we hope Asus fixes in a future update—but it's infrequent and easy enough to work around that we don't consider it a dealbreaker.
The A15 comes with a typical amount of bloatware—it's not overwhelming, as on our budget pick, but we still recommend removing the junk either one program at a time or via the Windows Refresh tool. If you choose to start fresh, you may need to redownload some important drivers and software from Asus's website.
Runner-up: HP Omen 15
Runner-up
Recommended configuration
| Processor: | AMD Ryzen 7 4800H | Screen: | 15.6-inch 1920×1080 144 Hz |
| Graphics: | Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti with 6 GB VRAM | Weight: | 4.7 pounds |
| Memory: | 16 GB | Dimensions: | 14.1 by 9.4 by 0.9 inches |
| Storage: | 512 GB SSD | Tested battery life: | 5.7 hours |
If our main pick is unavailable, we recommend the HP Omen 15. It's just as powerful as our top pick, and it has more effective cooling that you can control with easy-to-use software, plus a brighter high-refresh-rate display. It's also just as easy to upgrade as the Asus we recommend, and it has a reliable keyboard and trackpad. But it typically costs a few hundred dollars more than our top pick, its fans are even louder, and it offers less battery life.
We recommend the en0029r model, but if that's unavailable, consider the en0013dx model, which has an RGB keyboard but only 8 GB of memory, or the more expensive en0023dx model, which has an RGB keyboard and double the storage.
Even on its default fan settings, the HP Omen 15 was one of the coolest gaming laptops we tested this year. The Omen 15 kept its WASD keys nearly as cool as the TUF Gaming A15 did, and its internals also stayed cool after 30 minutes of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, with the CPU measuring 98 °C and the GPU measuring 74 °C. The Omen Command Center software also has a straightforward toggle to max the fans, and this setting kept the internal temperatures 15% to 20% lower. These are the coolest internal temperatures we've seen in a gaming laptop this powerful, thanks to the Omen 15's extremely effective cooling system.
The Omen 15's keyboard feels snappy and enjoyable for typing and gaming. This laptop doesn't have a full-size number pad like our other picks do, but it does have full-size arrow keys, unlike the A15. The model that we tested and recommend has a white-only backlight, but some models have RGB-backlit keyboards—double-check when you buy. We had no issues with the precision touchpad; it was accurate and responsive for all the gestures, clicks, and taps we tried. You can disable the trackpad with the Fn + F11 keys.
Both the refresh rate and the resolution are the same on the Asus TUF Gaming A15 and the HP Omen 15: 144 Hz and 1920×1080. The Omen 15's IPS display looks a little warm; it has a yellowish or orangish tint, in contrast to the A15's cool, blue-tinged display. But the Omen 15's screen looks great in games, and it gets much brighter than the screens of our other picks, reaching a maximum brightness of about 375 nits.
The Omen 15 is on the lighter side of the models we tested this year at 4.7 pounds (6 pounds with the charger), but we weren't able to feel much of a difference. It is a little more compact, measuring 14.1 by 9.4 by 0.9 inches.
Just like our top pick, our recommended Omen 15 model has an empty M.2 PCIe slot if you need to add more storage, and its two filled RAM slots and filled M.2 slot are easy to access for future upgrades. We didn't have any trouble removing eight Phillips screws and taking off the bottom of the laptop, though a plastic opening tool made the process a little easier.
The Omen 15 has one USB-C (5 Gbps) port, three USB-A (5 Gbps) ports, an HDMI 2.0a port, a Mini DisplayPort, an Ethernet jack, an audio jack, a power jack, and an SD card slot. And it comes with a one-year limited warranty.
Runner-up: Flaws but not dealbreakers
Next to the other gaming laptops with these specs, our recommended configuration of the HP Omen 15 is on the expensive end—if you can find it in stock at all. And alternative models tend to cost more, not less. The Omen 15 is certainly worth the cost, but it's pushing the limits of what we consider a "budget" gaming laptop.
As a trade-off for such effective cooling, the Omen 15's fans can get pretty loud, especially when they're running at maximum speeds. Like our other picks, the Omen 15 has a vent on the right side of the laptop. But this vent is placed farther forward, and the Omen 15 produces more intense airflow, so during games I noticed the warm air blowing on my hand here more than I did with our other picks.
The Omen 15 lasted 5 hours 43 minutes in our web-browsing battery test, more than an hour short of the Asus TUF Gaming A15. It won't survive through a full day of work or classes, but that's pretty typical for a gaming laptop.
Although the Omen 15 doesn't have quite as much unnecessary bloatware as our budget pick, it does still come packed with unnecessary programs that we recommend uninstalling. If you use the Windows Refresh tool to wipe it clean, you'll need to reinstall the Omen Command Center software to control the fans, and you may need some drivers from HP's website.
The Omen 15's lid has a quite a bit of flex in the center—more than our other picks—so we recommend being extra careful to avoid putting pressure on the lid in a bag or stacking anything on top of the laptop. The edge of the Omen 15's palm rest is also sharper than the edges of our other picks; we didn't find it uncomfortable for everyday work and gaming, but some owner reviews we saw did note this problem.
Budget pick: Acer Nitro 5
Budget pick
Acer Nitro 5 AN515-55-53AG
Cheaper, less powerful
This model is identical to the AN515-44-R99Q but has a four-core Intel processor instead of a six-core AMD processor. We recommend it if the AMD model is unavailable, or if this one happens to be cheaper.
Buying Options
Recommended configuration
| Processor: | AMD Ryzen 5 4600H or Intel Core i5-10300H | Screen: | 15.6-inch 1920×1080 60 Hz |
| Graphics: | Nvidia GTX 1650 with 4 GB VRAM | Weight: | 4.8 pounds |
| Memory: | 8 GB | Dimensions: | 14.3 by 10 by 0.9 inches |
| Storage: | 256 GB SSD | Tested battery life: | 6 hours |
If you want the cheapest possible laptop that will play games decently, get the Acer Nitro 5 AN515-44-R99Q or AN515-55-53AG. At this price, no laptop will play the latest games as well as our top picks. But the Nitro 5 is powerful enough for older games or less-demanding modern ones. The cooling system remains effective without running the fans full tilt. The laptop has a responsive keyboard and trackpad, too, and it's easy to upgrade. But compared with our top pick, the Nitro 5 has more downsides: a dimmer screen with a 60 Hz refresh rate, less storage for games, no support for VR, and too much bloatware.
We tested the AN515-44-R99Q model with a six-core AMD Ryzen 5 4600H processor, but we also recommend the AN515-55-53AG model with a four-core Intel Core i5-10300H processor if the AMD variant is sold out or if the Intel model is cheaper. We didn't see any differences in gaming performance between those two processors on the other laptops we tested this year. Both models usually cost $700 or less, while most other laptops with similar specs cost at least $800.
At its default fan settings, the Nitro 5 kept its most-touched surfaces and its internal components cool enough in our gaming tests. After half an hour of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the Nitro 5's WASD keys hit 96 °F—which felt a little warm to the touch, but not uncomfortably so—while the CPU measured 82 °C and the GPU reached a comparatively cool 64 °C. Setting the fans to Max in Acer's NitroSense software made a big difference on the CPU and GPU and kept those components 15% to 25% cooler. (It kept the WASD keys only a little cooler, though.) This setting is effective if you're playing a more demanding game or gaming in a warmer room.
Like many of the cheap gaming laptops we tested in 2020, the Nitro 5 has a vent positioned toward the back of the laptop's right side. This vent directed some warm air onto my mousing hand—but since the laptop runs so cool, I didn't notice any discomfort during gaming sessions.
On the Nitro 5's default settings, the fans weren't quite as loud as the default cooling on our top picks. When running at max speeds, the fans still produced a loud, impossible-to-ignore whooshing noise, but in our testing we found that max fans weren't necessary to maintain reasonable temperatures in less-demanding games. We still appreciate the option to max them in the NitroSense software when the extra cooling is needed.
The Nitro 5's red-backlit keys are lightly cupped and responsive; the keyboard also has a full number pad, and the WASD, arrow, and Nitro keys all have a bold red outline. Sometimes, when I pressed very lightly on the outside edge of a key, the keypress wouldn't register, but I didn't have any issues with the keyboard in regular typing or gaming as I did on the Nitro 5's more powerful sibling, the Acer Predator Helios 300. The Nitro 5's one-piece precision trackpad was reliable and accurate for all of our gestures, taps, and clicks, and you can disable it during games by pressing Fn + F7.
No laptop in this price range has a high-refresh-rate screen, and the GTX 1650 graphics processor can't maintain high enough frame rates in as many games, anyway. It's not surprising that the Nitro 5's 60 Hz 1920×1080 IPS display doesn't get very bright, and its viewing angles could be better. Although we'd prefer a brighter screen with better viewing angles, the screen looked fine enough when we were playing games.
Our budget pick's battery won't last quite long enough for a full day of work or classes, but this machine has pretty good battery life for a gaming laptop. Our top pick lasted about an hour longer, but most cheap gaming laptops we've tested have terrible battery life. The Nitro 5 isn't especially portable at 4.8 pounds (or 5.9 pounds with the charger), but it weighs about as much as each of the budget gaming laptops we considered this year, and like our top picks it will fit into any backpack designed to hold a 15-inch laptop.
Like all of our picks, the Nitro 5 has an empty M.2 PCIe slot for extra storage, and it has an open RAM slot, too. When you fill up the included 256 GB SSD, we recommend adding another M.2 PCIe solid-state drive, since you can get 500 GB for around $65. (The Nitro 5 also comes with a hard drive upgrade kit, but we recommend the PCIe SSD because it's much faster, especially for gaming, and not too expensive.) You can access the Nitro 5's expansion slots by removing 11 Phillips screws and popping off the underside of the chassis. We found a plastic opening tool helpful to get started, but we didn't have any trouble opening the Nitro 5.
Our budget pick has one USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) port, three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, an HDMI 2.0 port, an Ethernet jack, an audio jack, and a Kensington lock slot. The Nitro 5 also has a power jack on the back of the laptop, so the cable can face either direction and stays out of the way when you're gaming. The Nitro 5 has the latest-generation Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, and it comes with a one-year limited warranty.
Budget pick: Flaws but not dealbreakers
It's easy and not too expensive to add more storage, but the Nitro 5's 256 GB of SSD space will fill up quickly with games. In addition, compared with our GTX 1660 Ti–equipped top picks, the Nitro 5 and its GTX 1650 graphics processor will be unable to play equally demanding games for quite as many years, and it doesn't support VR. Even so, the Nitro 5 offers unbeatable gaming performance for the price.
The Nitro 5 comes with so much bloatware, and we recommend removing it all. If you opt to use the Windows Refresh tool rather than removing each program individually, search for your model number on Acer's website to reinstall the NitroSense software for controlling fan speed and any drivers that you may need.
Like many cheap gaming laptops, the Nitro 5 suffers from mediocre build quality. Its lid flexes, so we don't recommend stacking things on it or putting too much pressure against it in a bag. That said, the Nitro 5's plastic chassis is good enough, especially considering its price.
What to look forward to
At CES 2021, Nvidia announced its next generation of mobile graphics. The low-end RTX 3060 will run modern games better and will appear in gaming laptops starting around $1,000. And in May, Nvidia announced new RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3050 graphics that will (finally) replace the GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1650 in gaming laptops around $800. Many laptop manufacturers have already updated their lineups with the RTX 3060, and RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3050 laptops are expected to ship this summer. We plan to test these new models as soon as they're available.
Until we've updated our guide with new picks, we recommend extra caution when shopping for a gaming laptop right now. In previous years, you could expect similar performance from any gaming laptop with the same graphics (with the exception of Nvidia's lower-wattage Max-Q graphics). But with Nvidia's latest 30-series graphics, GPU performance will vary depending on how much power the laptop maker chooses to send to it, which means that a GTX 3060 could outperform a GTX 3070 if given more wattage. Manufacturers can also pick and choose which additional Nvidia 30-series features to include on each machine. PCWorld and Dave2D both have more in-depth explanations of the situation. We'll be taking these performance variations into account when we make new picks in the coming months.
The competition
RTX 2060 and GTX 1660 Ti options
In our tests, the WASD keys on the Lenovo Legion 5i (15″) with a GTX 1660 Ti graphics processor ran at least 10 degrees warmer than those on the Asus TUF Gaming A15 and the HP Omen 15, and it's not possible to max the fans using Lenovo's included software. In addition, the model we tested, with a six-core Core i7 processor and 8 GB of RAM, posted weaker performance in our tests compared with our top picks, which had eight-core Ryzen 7 processors and 16 GB of memory.
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G15 (GA502IV-WS74) has RTX 2060 Max-Q graphics and similar performance to our top picks. But its surface temperatures were uncomfortably warm and its fans sounded sickly, and although maxing the fan speeds in Asus's software is possible, it's unintuitive.
The successor to our previous pick, the Acer Predator Helios 300 (PH315-53-72XD) posted by far the best performance for the price of all the models we tested this year. But its WASD keys also ran about 10 degrees hotter than those of our top picks, and its keyboard has a dealbreaking flaw: Unless you press firmly in the middle of each key, it may not register the keystroke. We had issues typing and gaming on two different units, and we found numerous reports of the same problem in owner reviews.
The Gateway Creator Series GWTN156-3BK also ran too hot even with its fans blasting, and its RTX 2060 graphics are bottlenecked by its Core i5 processor and 8 GB of memory.
The Dell G5 15 Special Edition (5505) with AMD Radeon RX 5600M graphics had the hottest internals I've ever seen in a gaming laptop, and we encountered frequent crashes during our testing despite its having the most current drivers. During our research, we found many other reports from owners on Dell's forums and in various communities on Reddit indicating similar crashing problems, so we can't recommend this laptop.
GTX 1650 options
Compared with our budget pick, the Asus TUF Gaming A15 (TUF506IH-RS53) typically costs at least $100 more, doesn't allow you to manually max the fans in Asus's included software, and runs a bit louder during games.
Footnotes
Sources
-
Allen Ngo, GeForce RTX 2060 is only 5 to 10 percent faster than the GTX 1660 Ti on laptops, Notebookcheck , August 1, 2019
-
Whitson Gordon, What Is Ray Tracing, and Should You Care?, IGN , October 10, 2019
-
Jarrod'sTech, GTX 1660 Ti vs RTX 2060 - Ryzen Laptop Comparison!, YouTube , July 22, 2020
-
Alex Iliev, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 vs GeForce GTX 1650 Ti – the difference is insignificant, LaptopMedia.com , June 3, 2020
-
Allen Ngo, Asus ROG Strix G15 G512LI Laptop Review: $1000 USD for GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Graphics is Too Much, Notebookcheck , July 19, 2020
-
Allen Ngo, Radeon RX 5600M vs. GeForce RTX 2060: AMD is So Freaking Close, Notebookcheck , June 24, 2020
-
Brent Hale, How Much VRAM Do I Need for Gaming (at 1080P, 1440P, 4K), Tech Guided , July 27, 2019
-
Joe Shields, How Much Memory Do You Need: 8, 16 or 32GB of RAM?, Tom's Hardware , April 22, 2019
-
Computer Games on Laptop Graphic Cards, Notebookcheck , October 20, 2020
About your guide
Kimber Streams is a senior staff writer and has been covering laptops, gaming gear, keyboards, storage, and more for Wirecutter since 2014. In that time they've tested hundreds of laptops and thousands of peripherals, and built way too many mechanical keyboards for their personal collection.
What Laptop Is Good for School and Gaming
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/the-best-budget-gaming-laptop-so-far/
0 Response to "What Laptop Is Good for School and Gaming"
Post a Comment