If you’re a gamer, it’s essential to keep ahead of the competition. A cheap gaming laptop can provide excellent performance while staying on budget. However, it might be a daunting task to search for a cheap gaming laptop.
No matter how tricky, it’s not impossible to find one that suits your needs, especially if you know a handful of things. In this article, we’re going to dig deep into a few things that you need to know before you buy one.
What are Cheap Gaming Laptops
Now that AMD is making a resurgence in the world of cheap gaming laptops, and Intel has just released its 11th generation chipsets, the market for budget gaming laptops is flourishing. These cheap gaming laptops can do everything their flagship competitors can do, including support for VR headsets and high frame rates.
At the same time, AMD has come up with its flagship 5000-series GPUs. Meanwhile, fearing competition in the gaming industry, NVIDIA has launched its latest 3000-series graphics cards.
You might be thinking, how come these top-notch products are to be found in a cheap gaming laptop?
Yes, you’re right. But wait a minute.
The release of the latest generations of chipsets, GPUs, and graphic cards means a significant price drop for the previous gaming laptops. It also means that you can get previous-generation gaming laptops at a reasonable price without compromising performance.
What to Look for in a Cheap Gaming Laptop
The world of gaming laptops is full of all kinds of options. We find the best of the best in the market when it comes to gaming laptops.
Most of these laptops come under the four-figure category. However, they boast fantastic performances, crazy displays, and longer battery life.
You don’t need to spend $4000 to buy a flagship when you can serve your gaming habits with less than a thousand bucks for all practical purposes.
It would be best not to consider that you need to buy the best to feel the real thrill of gaming. While buying a cheap gaming laptop, you should consider configurations carefully. You can enhance your gaming experience with an external display, mouse, keyboard, speakers, and other accessories.
- The first thing you should pay attention to is the processor. Unlike storage and RAM, this essential component of a gaming laptop can’t be upgraded or changed.
- It would also be best to look for a laptop that packs an older Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050 Ti. You can also look for a newer GTX 1650 graphics card when it comes to graphics.
These graphics cards can run graphics-demanding games in high or medium settings. If you don’t mind spending $1000 on a gaming laptop, you should go for a laptop that comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 or 1660 Ti.
In addition to a graphics card, make sure your laptop comes with the following or better:
- A seventh or eighth-generation Intel Core i7 or Core i9 chipset
- At least 6GB of random access memory
- A 256GB solid-state drive
Most gaming laptops let you customize your RAM and storage easily. It means that you should put your money into buying a better CPU and GPU.
Similarly, you don’t need to buy a laptop with the latest processor in the market when you can get the same performance from a lower model. For instance, the latest Core i7 laptops with 12th Gen processors offer almost identical performance to an 8th or 9th Gen processor. Moreover, you can play the latest games like Elden Rings on your 9th Gen laptop if your GPU meets the system requirements.
What to Ignore in a Cheap Gaming Laptop
You don’t need to have a 1TB SSD for most of your gaming requirements. However, high-end games can take as much as 50GB of storage quickly.
With storage below 256GB, you might need to uninstall and reinstall the game. It’s not a good thing to do and can be a pain-stacking task.
When buying a cheap gaming laptop, think about the components that you can sacrifice. When it comes to this, you can compromise on keyboard features such as backlights, display, and build quality. You can also sell your used laptop for cash to save some dollars and add extra components to your new laptop.
No matter what, most gamers either use a mouse or a game controller. So you don’t need to have a fantastic keyboard.
The backlit keyboard is a money-draining feature only, even if it’s not a gaming laptop. In addition, keyboard lights distract your attention a lot.
What is the Best Cheap Gaming Laptop?
When it comes to cheap gaming laptops, Acer Aspire 5 Slim is the best option for everyone. It has a plethora of features and comes under $600.
The top feature of this machine is its Ryzen 5 3500U processor. While it’s not the best in the industry, it’s still a flagship.
The good thing about this processor is that it performs well both for gaming and video editing. On the other hand, Intel processors are only good for gaming and don’t perform well on video editing.
The second best thing about this laptop is the Rj-45 port. This port doesn’t even come in some flagships.
The laptop features a USB-3 port besides two USB-2 ports. Acer could have done better than that by packing only USB-3 ports and none of the USB-2 ports. A USB-3 port is 10X faster than a USB-2 port.
This machine hosts 8GB DDR4 RAM along with 256GB SSD. The laptop comes with an integrated AMD Radeon Vega 8 graphics, which is more than sufficient for most of your gaming needs.
Final Thoughts
If you’re an enthusiast gamer but don’t want to break the bank, you need not worry. Without caring much about fancy features, you can easily get a cheap laptop. Make sure you check the features and specs of the laptop, as we’ve mentioned above.
