Best gaming laptops under $1,000: Best overall, best battery life, and more

Let’s face it, not all PC gaming enthusiasts have the scratch to purchase a premium gaming laptop. Luckily, there are some great budget options out there. Budget gaming laptops nowadays can sport some pretty decent CPU and GPU performance. Sure, you might have to dial back those ultra graphics settings in order to hit the 60fps sweet spot, but your experience can still be plenty satisfying.

The important thing is that you make the right compromises. Which is where our list of the best gaming laptops under $1,000 comes in. (Note that laptop prices can fluctuate and there might be times when the price of one of our picks hovers over $1,000.)

Why you should trust us: Hey, it’s in our name! PCWorld prides itself on laptop experience and expertise. We’ve been covering PCs since 1983, and we now review more than 70 laptops every year. All of the picks below have been personally tested and vetted by our experts, who’ve applied not only performance benchmarks but rigorous usability standards. We’re also committed to reviewing PC laptops at every price point to help you find a machine that matches your budget.

Best laptop deals right now:

• Acer Nitro 17, AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU/Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU/16GB RAM/1TB SSD/17.3-inch 1080p display, $1,106.07 ($93.92 off at Amazon)
• Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3, AMD Ryzen 5 6600H CPU/Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU/8GB RAM/256GB SSD/15.6-inch 1080p display, $689 ($210.99 off at Amazon)
• MSI Thin GF63, Intel Core i5-11400H CPU/Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU/16GB RAM/512GB SSD/15.6-inch 1080p display, $629 ($70 off at Walmart)

For more recommendations on gaming laptops, see our roundup of the best gaming laptops across all prices, or take a look at our roundup of the best laptop deals.

MSI Thin GF63 (2023) – Best overall

Pros

• Reasonably priced
• Decent 1080p gaming
• Well made
• Attractive red keyboard backlighting

Cons

• Disappointing screen
• Not the most powerful
• Poor battery life

If you’re looking to pick up an affordable laptop that can easily handle 1080p gaming, the MSI Thin GF63 is your best bet. For a gaming laptop, it’s actually quite lightweight and portable at just over four pounds, which is good news if you like to game on-the-go. As for the internal components, it’s a good amount of power for a budget gaming machine. Let’s get into it.

The MSI Thin GF63 is rocking an Intel Core i7-12650H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of SSD storage. Given the hardware, you should be able to run most games on the Medium or High graphics preset. For more intensive titles where speed is everything, we’d recommend scaling things back a bit. The 15.6-inch display has a resolution of 1920×1080 and a refresh rate of 144Hz. Although it manages just 300 nits of brightness (which is common for a budget gaming laptop), gameplay should be relatively smooth thanks to the high refresh rate. It’s not the most vibrant or color-accurate screen we’ve ever seen, but it’s passable, especially for under $1,000. If you can live with some of the compromises, then the MSI Thin GF63 is a great budget option for most people.

Read our full

MSI Thin GF63 (2023) review

Asus TUF Gaming A16 Advantage Edition – Best battery life

Pros

• Outstanding all day battery life
• Gorgeous and smooth FHD+ 16:10 display
• Robust chassis with US military grade certification

Cons

• Left-side port orientation won’t suit left handers
• Keys feel a bit soft and fatiguing
• The 720p HD camera isn’t the best

Gaming laptops aren’t known for having the best battery life and gaming while unplugged can drain your battery in the blink of an eye. This makes it difficult to game on the go without being tethered to the nearest outlet. However, that’s not the case with the Asus TUF Gaming A16 Advantage Edition. It packs a massive 90 watt-hour battery, which lasted a staggering eleven hours during our testing. Of course, intensive gaming will reduce this significantly, but you can still expect to get in the neighborhood of seven hours of continuous 1080p gaming without having to plug-into an AC outlet. That’s an amazing result considering most gaming laptops only muster between three to six hours. The robust chassis and sturdy overall design means it can also take the occasional accidental bump or knock while out and about.

It’s no slouch when it comes to performance either. It expertly handles 1080p gaming due to its combo of a Ryzen 7 processor and AMD Radeon RX 7600S graphics card. During out tests, it scored very well in our Shadow of the Tomb Raider game benchmark tests, outpacing more expensive competitors. This all combines to make the A16 an excellent option for 1080p gamers who want to enjoy untethered gaming on the go.

Read our full

Asus TUF Gaming A16 Advantage Edition review

Dell G16 – Best for work and play

Pros

• Strong performance for the price
• Versatile and bright 16-inch 16:10 QHD display
• Thunderbolt 4 on board

Cons

• Bulky, boring design
• Mushy keyboard, tiny touchpad
• Grainy 720p webcam
• Lots of fan noise

If you’re able to stretch your budget, the Dell G16 is a fantastic laptop for work or play. It crushed the competition in the processor department. That means it has plenty of power for everyday tasks like office productivity, video chatting, checking e-mail, and more. This laptop also turned in 131 FPS while running the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark. For hardware, it features an Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of PCIe NVMe SSD storage. The G16 isn’t the most attractive laptop we’ve ever reviewed, but it gets the basics right and that’s what really matters. If you’re on the hunt for a laptop that you can work and play on, there’s no better option than the G16.

Read our full

Dell G16 review

How we tested

The PCWorld team puts each and every Windows laptop through a series of benchmarks that test GPU and CPU performance, battery life, and so on. The idea is to push the laptop to its limits and then compare it against others we’ve tested. Below, you’ll find a breakdown of each test and the reasons why we run them.

Windows laptops

• PCMark 10: PCMark 10 is how we determine how well the laptop handles lighter tasks like web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, and so on.
• HandBrake: HandBrake is more intensive than PCMark 10. It basically measures how long a laptop’s CPU takes to encode a hefty 30GB file.
• Cinebench: Cinebench is a brief stress test of the CPU cores. It does this by rendering a 2D scene over a short period of time.
• 3DMark: 3DMark checks if 3D performance remains consistent over time by running graphic-intensive clips.
• Gaming tests: We benchmark each gaming laptop using several titles.
• Video rundown test: To gauge battery life, we loop a 4K video using Windows 10’s Movies & TV app until the laptop dies.

What you should look for in a budget gaming laptop

When it comes to picking the right gaming laptop, it really depends on what you want to do with it. Do you plan on playing lightweight indie titles like Stardew Valley (no shade, I love this game) or something more visually demanding like Cyberpunk 2077? Are you going to use the machine for work as well as play? It’s possible to get reliable performance out of a gaming laptop that costs under a grand, but you’ll need to take a hard look at the individual components. You don’t need a powerful GPU for something like Fortnite. You can run even most of the newest games very well at 1080p resolution with even entry level graphics cards if you don’t mind dialing down the in-game visual settings from Ultra to more-reasonable High to Medium settings. You’ll almost certainly need to do so to hit 60 frames per second in modern games on a gaming laptop under $1,000, but the good news is they should still look good, especially on a laptop display.

• GPU: The thing about the GPU is that it can’t be swapped out and upgraded later, so you need to be real choosy about which one you pick, as this component will determine how well your machine runs games. Luckily, you don’t need the best of the best to get reliable gaming performance. The GTX 1650 is an entry-level GPU that’s affordable and good enough for 1080p gaming with mid-to-high graphics settings. That said, expect lower frame rates on newer titles. If you’re looking for a bit more power, the more modern RTX 3050 and 3050 Ti are preferred options, and commonly found in gaming laptops under $1,000. You may occasionally find a deal on an RTX 3060-powered laptop under $1,000, but they’re relatively rare.
• CPU: Like the GPU, the processor can’t be upgraded either, so you’ll want to be selective. For Intel, we’d recommend an 11th-gen Intel Core i5 or i7. For AMD, you’ll want to spring for a Ryzen 4000 or 5000. A processor with at least four cores is good, but six cores or more is better.
• RAM: You’ll want at least 8GB of RAM. If you can afford 16GB of RAM, go for it. Memory is normally upgradable, so you can always swap it out and add more later on.
• Storage: Storage impacts how many games and applications you can install on your laptop. Like RAM, storage is often upgradable and can be swapped out later. However, you should aim for at least 512GB of SSD storage plus a hard drive, as AAA titles tend to eat up a lot of space. SSDs load games faster, as data is stored on chips rather than spinning disks.
• Display: 1080p is what you can expect at this price range, either with a 60Hz or 144Hz (preferred) refresh rate. Budget gaming laptops don’t always have the best displays, as that’s where manufacturers tend to cut corners to keep the cost low. If you’ve got a dim display, you can always pick up an external monitor to plug into it.
• Battery life: Generally speaking, gaming laptops are known for having poor battery life. That’s because they use a ton of power. They also tend to be heavier than other laptops because they need more space for heatsinks and other cooling components. Depending on the use, most will last anywhere from four to six hours on a single charge. That said, there are a few exceptions. The HP Envy 14 (featured above), for example, hit the 15 hour mark during our battery test.