Best gaming laptops under $1,500 in 2024

Gaming laptops under $1,500 might be budget-friendly, but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be compromise the laptop's capability of running the latest titles at medium to high settings. 

These devices might not be the turbo-clad behemoths of higher price brackets, but thanks to technologies like Nvidia's DLSS performance and visual enhancing tools, you can still breeze your way through your Steam library with impressive results. At this price bracket, you're likely to secure a great all-around performer with a solid CPU and GPU capable of taking on the latest AAA titles with solid visuals in tow.

If you won't accept anything less than pushing every slider to the right on your graphics menus then why not check out our list of the best gaming laptops for a wider selection of top-notch gaming notebooks. And if your budget is tight, there are always some top entry-level options to choose from in our best cheap gaming laptops or you can peruse the best handheld gaming devices.

However, if you're looking for gaming goodness without breaking the bank, read on for our selection of the best gaming laptops under $1,500 in 2024.

Curated by

Curated by

Rami Tabari

Rami reviewed and tested dozens of gaming laptops over the span of 6+ years. He gets to game on a new machine every time one comes in for review, so he's an expert on what works and what doesn't for any budget. Finding a 4 to 5-star gaming laptop for under $1,500 is getting more difficult as the years go on, but there are still enough out there to curate a list like this. Rami knows that budget shouldn't compromise on quality, and that you deserve the most for your coin. Extensive testing and hands-on has taught Rami which are the best gaming laptops under $1,500.

The Quick List

Best overall

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The Lenovo Legion 5 Pro is the best sub-$1,500 gaming laptop out there and it's no contest. It boasts superb RTX 4070 performance that outperforms its many competitors without a sweat, alongside excellent productivity scores to satisfy your needs in everyday tasks.

On our Borderlands 3, Far Cry 6, and Red Dead Redemption 2 tests, the Legion 5 Pro averaged 110, 97, and 78 frames per second, respectively. That means you’ll be able to make plenty use of its 165Hz screen.

Lenovo also packed in one of our favorite keyboards; our reviewer even called it her keyboard soulmate. By giving the arrow keys a little nook, featuring its own touchpad, and having a wonderful 1.5-mm of key travel, it stands out and excels as one of the best.

While the Legion 5 Pro doesn't have the best display, it is surprisingly high quality for a laptop at this price point. The 16-inch, 2560 x 1600, IPS, 165Hz display managed DCI-P3 coverage of 82.4% and averaged 319 nits of brightness. At this cost, these scores are often rare. 

A surprisingly powerful audio system backs up that pretty display. There are moments when it sounds a bit hollow, but it’s quite loud and punchy. As long as you’re not an audiophile like some of us at Laptop Mag, you’ll get along fine with the Lenovo’s bottom-firing speakers.

With an AMD Ryzen 7 7745HX processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD, this laptop excels with a Geekbench 6 score of 13,063, alongside taking only 4 minutes and 5 seconds to convert a 4K video into 1080p resolution through the HandBrake app. And with the final cherry on top is the SSD’s 2,150 megabyte-per-second transfer rate. 

Every aspect of the Legion 5 Pro’s price-to-performance ratio is unbelievable.

See our full Lenovo Legion 5 Pro review.

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Best budget

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Acer Predator Triton 300 SE resting on a gorgeous white countertop.

The Acer Predator Triton 300 SE is a revelation. Our reviewer put it best as it sits in a “cozy spot where the company offers its best quality components packed into a relatively affordable package.” The slim, 14-inch beauty only weighs 3.8 pounds and is a good grouping of ports. 

It also has a lovely, bright 1080p panel with a 144Hz refresh rate. The Triton clocked in 80.6% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 292 nits of brightness. Those numbers are more than acceptable for gaming. It means you’re getting a relatively bright and colorful display, which is rare on a budget gaming notebook. 

Speaking of gaming, the Triton’s RTX 3060 GPU is more than enough to handle most games on high or medium settings. The Predator Triton 300 SE consistently beats the category average on AAA titles such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. For instance, during the Far Cry New Dawn benchmark, the Acer scored 73 fps, which was enough to match or beat most of the competition. 

The Triton’s Core i7 processor didn’t do as well on our overall performance test, scoring 5,234, which beat the category average but not rival systems. On the Handbrake video transcoding test, the Acer turned in a relatively slow time of 11 minutes and 36 seconds. We got a rosier picture of the battery life, which lasted 6 hours and 41 minutes. 

Other cons include weak audio and a mushy keyboard, but these are minor quibbles for the price. However, if you want to put in some money to resolve those issues, we recommend checking out our best gaming headsets and best gaming keyboards pages.

See our full Acer Predator Triton 300 SE review.

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Best value

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Awkward -- we reviewed last year's version of the HP Victus 16, but this year's model offers a better deal and comes in a very similar package. This HP Victus 16 offers an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

We loved last year's HP Victus 16 for its office-like design and its colorful 16-inch display, which this Victus seems to share if the specs are any indication. It also impressed us with its performance benchmarks, averaging 66 frames per second on the Borderlands 3 (Badass, 1080p) test.

The HP’s 16-inch, 1920 x 1080, 16:10 display also impressed us — that’s not the usual praise we’d give to a budget gaming laptop. It registered 75.2% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is decently colorful, but that’s not what struck us. It averaged 313 nits of brightness on our tests — enough brightness to combat well-lit spaces.

What I don’t see, or hear, enough of is great speakers. The HP Victus 16 doesn’t have that problem. Its Bang & Olufsen speakers excelled with a depth that captured highs, mids, and lows without a whisper of distortion. There’s not a lot of bass, mind you, but the HP Victus is one hell of a loud machine.

Where the HP Victus 16 plants a flag in my heart is the battery life. You get 7 hours and 26 minutes before you have to tether yourself to a wall. That’s almost enough time to finish an entire work or school day.

We can advocate for the HP Victus 16 we reviewed, and the latest model will likely land in the same place. However, we cannot guarantee that. What I can say is that it's a good deal.

See our full HP Victus 16 review.

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Best battery life

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Lenovo Legion 5i Pro playing Cyberpunk 2077.

Need an affordable gaming laptop without making too many sacrifices? Then, the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro is just the system for you. Beneath its understated yet elegant design is a laptop chomping at the bit to lay waste to the big bad in whatever game you’re playing and their minion horde. Despite its office-ready appearance, the Lenovo still has some gamer cred thanks to its vibrant RGB backlighting. And it’s got plenty of ports to create a formidable battlestation. 

The Legion 5i Pro marches onto our Best Lenovo Laptops and Best Lenovo Gaming Laptop pages with its last-gen RTX 3070 Ti GPU. While it’s not the latest 4000 series GPU, the Legion 5i Pro shows that the 3000 series still has plenty of punch, delivering an impressive 81 fps on Red Dead Redemption 2 and 132 fps on Grand Theft Auto V. The notebook’s 12th Gen Intel processor is also not to be underestimated as it crushed on both Geekbench 5.4 and our video transcoding tests.

The 16-inch QHD display, with its 165Hz refresh rate, does the work—covering 80% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and reaching a peak average of 474 nits of brightness. That’s bright enough to take this gaming laptop out on a sunny day while the color is vibrant enough to immerse you into your favorite worlds.

As good as the Legion 5i Pro is, there are a few hiccups: a lackluster webcam and a sluggish SSD. And it is chunky, coming in at 1.0-inch thick. However, everything I mentioned above makes the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro an absolute win of a value buy.  

But if you wanted to, you could check out the best webcams to resolve at least one of those issues.

Read our full Lenovo Legion 5i Pro review.

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Best Intel

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MSI Katana 15 playing Elden Ring.

Why pay more for an Nvidia 4090 GPU when the 4070 GPU exists? MSI seeks to answer that question with the excellent Katana 15. A laptop that kept pace with more powerful competitors without breaking a sweat. For those who prefer a more understated look, the Katana 15 exterior is in a black aluminum chassis with the company's logo engraved at the top of the lid. The interior is a lot more colorful and has a comfortable, 4-key, customizable RGB keyboard. It is heavier side at 8.8 pounds, so you need a backpack with strong straps to tote this system around.

But let's talk performance. Our reviewer reported that Katana 15 consistently gave between 50 and 55 fps on Elden Ring at a resolution of 2K. The Katana also dominated on the Borderlands 3 benchmark at 99 fps (1080p, high), as well as AssaAssassin'sed Valhalla (106 fps), Dirt 3 (103 fps), Far Cry 6 (94 fps), and Red Dead Redemption 2 (72 fps). Long story short, the Katana gave a master class in gaming performance. The MSI kept up the pressure during the overall performance. The system's i7 CPU hit 11,581 on the Geekbench 5.5 test and sparked the competition on the Handbrake benchmark with a blistering time of 5 minutes and 4 seconds. 

But there are a few places where the Katana 15 could improve. The 2-hour, 48-minute battery life is abysmal in this day and age. We wish MSI could have found a better panel than the dim, lackluster display with which it's equipped. But at $1,600, it's a better value than the RTX 4090 systems, which cost upwards of $4,000. 

If the display troubles you that much, check out the best gaming monitors.

See our full MSI Katana 15 review.

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Best handheld

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You're probably thinking, "this isn't a gaming laptop." Well, I'm here to tell you that it's arguably better. Not only are handheld gaming devices cheaper than your average gaming laptop, but they also have quite a bit of power backed behind them.

The Asus ROG Ally is a classy entry into the handheld gaming scene post Steam Deck. One of the biggest advantages you have with the ROG Ally is the display. Yes, it's smaller than a gaming laptop, but it looks way better. The 7-inch, 1920 x 1080p AMD FreeSync touch panel sports a 7-millisecond response rate with a 120Hz refresh rate. It averaged 465 nits of brightness, which is brighter than some premium gaming laptops.

As far as performance goes, you're not going to play games on high settings, so put that out of your mind. But considering the size, the Ally pushed hard on our testing. For example, with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the ROG Ally scored 29 fps at 1080p on High. Turn that to low and you'll likely get over 60 fps.

Talk about portability — the ROG Ally weighs only 21.4 ounces and measures 11 x 4.4 x 0.8 inches. You can practically throw this thing in a purse (I did). Unfortunately, its portability doesn’t extend to the battery life. Unlike the other products on this list, you’re getting 1 hour and 43 minutes — that is persistent gaming. If you’re not gaming, it lasts 5:51, but something tells me you won’t be using this Switch-like device for anything but.  

The Asus ROG Ally may not be what you're looking for, but between the price and what you get, you should consider it. This is great for controller-based gaming and playing on the go, whether you’re on your daily commute or traveling across the skies. 

See our full Asus ROG Ally review.

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How we test gaming laptops

When we bring a laptop into our laboratory, we aim to see how it would work if you brought it into your home or office. While we use industry-standard benchmarks such as Geekbench and 3DMark, we focus heavily on real-world tests that we have developed in-house.

To test endurance, the Laptop Mag Battery test surfs the web at 150 nits of brightness until the system runs out of juice. We use a giant spreadsheet macro that matches 65,000 names with their addresses to judge pure processing power, a video transcoder that converts a 4K video to 1080p, and the Geekbench 5/6 synthetic test. 

We ramp up our 3DMark testing to also include Fire Strike Ultra and Time Spy Extreme, which determine how well the laptop copes with DX11 and DX12 4K graphics workloads. If the laptop is equipped with a graphics card that supports DirectX ray-tracing, we also use the 2560 x 1440 Port Royal test. (We don’t bother with Night Raid here—who cares about integrated graphics on a gaming laptop?) For the best equipped laptops on the market, we may also run Speed Way, which plies the deepest and most demanding features of DX12 Ultimate.

We run all of gaming benchmarks in full-screen mode with vertical sync disabled, always at least at 1920 x 1080 (1080p) resolution, as well as the laptop's native resolution. Games include: Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Borderlands 3, Far Cry 6, and more.

We use a colorimeter to measure screen brightness and color gamut, while other instruments help us determine a laptop's key travel and ambient heat. See this page on How We Test Laptops for more details on our benchmarking procedures.

How to find the right gaming laptop

When shopping for a gaming laptop, there's a lot to consider. We wrote a detailed piece about the nine most important factors for buying a gaming laptop. But to simplify the process of choosing a system, here are seven key points to keep in mind.

Budget: How we split cost categories

Money is getting tight. There was a time when you could find a good gaming laptop for under $1,000, but those are few and far between. If you're looking for a quality gaming laptop and are trying to budget yourself, try aiming for at least $1,300. If you have a larger budget, you can push for a more powerful mainstream gaming laptop, which is often priced between $1,500 and $2,000. But we're trying to get you under $1,500 right now

Remember that the bigger the GPU, the bigger the gaps in price points. So, list the games you play and start checking the PC requirements. Almost any gaming laptop with a 40-series GPU can play an indie game, but if you're dabbling in AAA titles, you have to decide which settings you're comfortable playing on.

Screen Size: 14 and 16 inches are the go-to

You'll rarely find a 13-inch gaming laptop nowadays, and 15.6-inch laptops have taken a backseat to the hyped-up 14-inch and 16-inch laptops. Those 17-inch gaming laptops also feel like a thing of the past. Well, now we have 18-inch gaming laptops. Yeah, they're beasts, but what all these sizes have in common is that they're getting more compact.

If you're looking for a gaming laptop to take on the go and even use as a school or work laptop, 14-inch gaming laptops are the perfect fit. Smaller gaming laptops also tend to have longer battery life as well. 16-inch gaming laptops are more manageable in size than 17 or 18-inch machines without sacrificing any power. But if you're looking for true desktop replacements, you'll probably want to go all out with a larger size. They tend to be the most powerful but require you to always be near an outlet.

Screen Resolution: 1080p (high refresh rates), 4K (detail), 1440p (sweet spot)

Regarding gaming laptop displays, you want to balance frame rates and aesthetics. And if you're planning to get a truly mobile system, battery life also deserves consideration. A 1080p resolution is the bare minimum you'll find, which isn't great unless you're trading resolution for a high refresh rate. Panel makers now serve up screens with a 360Hz refresh rate and a three-millisecond response time. But I don't count out 4K screens yet, as many laptops with 4K displays are clocked at 120Hz. Remember that laptops with lower resolutions tend to have longer battery life overall.

Are you looking for a sweet spot between the two? More and more gaming laptops are shipping with 1440p displays, which provide high refresh rates and a sharp panel. This strikes an outstanding balance between the two without charging a premium price.

Refresh rate: 120Hz is a minimum

Depending on the kind of games you're playing, particularly first-person shooters and MOBAs, you'll take anything that enhances accuracy. Surprisingly, the higher a display's refresh rate is, the more accurate your shot becomes. We've experienced this firsthand during many demos. At this point, 60Hz is unacceptable for a gaming laptop, so we recommend investing in a panel with at least a 120Hz refresh rate.

You also have to balance graphics performance with resolution and refresh rate. Sometimes, a laptop is paired with a low-performing GPU and a high resolution and refresh rate. The math doesn't add up. If your gaming laptop cannot take advantage of the sharp screen or high refresh rate, then what's the point? Make sure you check the benchmarks.

Intel or AMD?

A couple of years ago, the answer to this question would have been undoubtedly Intel. However, AMD has made a furious comeback with its new Ryzen CPUs, which deliver outstanding overall performance and battery life. Thanks to the new Ryzen chips architecture, they're super power efficient without sacrificing productivity. The Ryzen 8000 series CPUs have consistently impressed with its performance versus battery life.

Not to be outdone, Intel's 14th-generation chips are nothing to sneeze at. Laptop manufacturers have started rolling out systems with Intel's Core Ultra chips. These chips are extremely powerful and are catching up to AMD with their battery life game. 

Gaming laptops have been balancing performance with battery life, and it's changing the use case for these rigs for the better.

Battery Life: At least 5.5 hours

Unless it's plugged in, gaming laptop battery life tends to be very short, especially when gaming. However, the battery life of gaming laptops has increased over the years. So much so that anything under 5.5 hours is considered below average. We've reviewed several gaming laptops that last a whole workday and jump into the double digits. With results like that, we expect gaming laptops will match their non-gaming counterparts sooner rather than later. Our most recent power-efficient gaming laptop (Razer Blade 14) lasted over 8 hours.

Specs: 1080p / Core i5 / 16GB are a minimum

You can spend a lot of time delving into specs, but here are the key components. If you want decent mainstream performance, go for a Core i5 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 1080p screen.

Why Trust Laptop Mag

Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing laptops for over two decades. We test over 150 different models per year, subjecting each system to a series of rigorous benchmarks that provides a complete picture of performance, battery life and usability.

Our expert reviewers also use each product to see how it looks and feels in everyday situations. Because we see so many different notebooks, we can compare each to its direct competitors and give you an idea of how it stacks up to the average laptop in its price band.